The Scripting of A National History: Singapore and Its Pasts

Conclusion: No End to History

Conclusion: No End to History In 2006, some months after the general elections in which the ‘post-65' generation ofSingaporeans who were bom after the coun仕y became independent in 1965 was identified by the PAP, in govemment for forty-five years, as the social group that they had to win over, a small group of students were invited to meet the newly appointed 42-year-old minister of state for education, a first term member of Parliament, and chair of a comrnittee to review the national education programme introduced to schools since 1997. Through social studies and other subjects, especially history, the programme aimed to foster a sense of national identity and help students understand the challenges facing Singapore. A year earlier, the subject of history had been headline news when some students chose Hitler as their team name and icon during a school camp. The minister of education said firmly that it was a mistake for students to think that Hitlerwas ‘cool' out of their ignorance of history. The students concerned were made to research on Hitler's crimes against humanity. The press went on with ana1yses on how history lessons were regarded as drudgery and needed to be taught in a way that would appeal to students' minds and have an emphasis on historical interpretation and inquiry skills. An educationi哎's survey was cited as conc1uding that the national education messages conveyed through Singapore history c1asses were seen as govemment propaganda by 40 percent of pupils.1 The students who met the minister of state bore out this observation. They unceremoniously reiterated to him that ‘National Education is boring. It is propaganda' .That such a statement was a front-page news item was an indication that the govemment recognised that they had to respond to this trend. ST thus saw the latter's reply that 'It is the truth - to a certain extent' as a concession of sorts Singapore history taught in the national education framework had in fact alerted students to the fact that there had to be another side to the Story. As one of them told the minister, 232 Conclusion sides to the Si月apore Story' such as ‘the version ofhi日tory from Barisan Socialis activists and communists . . . the sides of the story that don't often see daylight in our textbooks though these are momentous occasions in our history crucial to nation-building'.2 The version of Singapore history that the state has prescribed thus may well have outlived its usefulness, raising as it has questions even among school students of the PAP as the only righteous political actor in the mass politics of decolonisation. The publication of a tribute to Lim Chin Siong in 2001 showed how much respect and reverence the foremost member of the PAP Left who became the Barisan Socialis leader still has among his former comrades, and made him known to Singaporeans who would have hitherto heard of him only as a 由reat to Singapore's nationhood. In addition, the volume contains the study by Tim Harper, based on recently decIassified British Public Records Office documents which argued that Lim spoke for a local radical tradition that pitted the popular will against colonial power and that the evidence from the available records were inconcIusive on the question of whether Lim was a communist or not.3 This question has become central for sceptics of 由e Singapore Story, for 由e PAP has justified the political detentions of the Left, which eliminated its leadership as political force, on grounds that they were in a united front with, if not actually members of the illegal communist party. The Singapore Story has been structured by such a rationality, which does not admit of altemative possibilities, nor thus of innocent victims. The unprecedented public forum in February 2006 at which two former political detainees reiterated that they were not communists, but left-wing union activists, and had suffered treatment meted out to them to ‘demean, humiliate and dehumanise' political prisoners,4 was perhaps permitted as a gauge to see if Singaporeans were concemed at all about the detentions. As Tan Jing Quee told the forum, he was 缸Tested the night before he planned to stage a protest against a government move to de-register left-wing trade unions.5 The morality on which the PAP govemment cIaim日 its legitimacy is based on the economic prosperity that it has produced for the general populace, and this in turn had been made possible in the...