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336 Dilemma and Anguish of the Chinese-Educated HUANG JIANLI The governance of independent Singapore is rooted primarily in a particular form of multiculturalism, which is paradoxically premised upon heightened racial awareness and reinvigorated ethnic roots, and characterised by intra-ethnic differentiation of the Chinese majority population into English and Chinese-speaking subgroups. The Chinese-educated (huaxiaosheng) is an ambiguous category but it commonly refers to those who did not go to English-medium schools but were educated through the Chinese-medium secondary schools and Nanyang University,and view the world through the Chinese cultural lens.They are also differentiated from the majority of the more elderly, less-educated, lower-income, and dialect-speaking Chinese community. Their influence is mainly felt in the cultural and community realms, while national political leadership under the People’s Action Party (PAP) has remained very much the prerogative of the English-educated. The PAP’s educational policy has changed constantly. In 1980, Nanyang University, or Nantah as abbreviated by the Chinese community, was dissolved through a merger with the English-medium University of Singapore to form the National University of Singapore (NUS). By 1987, there was a complete changeover to the “national stream” for secondary schools to teach all their subjects in the English medium, except for isolated lessons on Chinese as a second language. These two events technically marked an end to Chinese ethnic education and the production of a Chinese-educated elite, generating feelings of alienation and marginalisation. A concession was made by the government to provide for a few Special Assistance Plan (SAP) schools, which were selected from historically Chinesemedium institutions to allow them to teach Chinese as the first language and to maintain a more visible Chinese cultural presence. The SAP schools initially gave hope to the Chinese-educated because they appeared to have the potential to produce a new generation of supposedly bilingual students who could still carry the torch of Chinese language and culture and, by straddling the two languages, could perhaps narrow the divide between the Chinese and English-educated. Another 29 DILEMMA AND ANGUISH OF THE CHINESE-EDUCATED 337 glimmer of hope was the PAP’s leaning towards an “Asian values” discourse from the early 1980s to late 1990s, with an emphasis on the importance of Confucianism to fend off the perceived deracination by Western influences. On both fronts, the compensation was less rewarding than expected. Goh Chok Tong entered national politics in 1976, becoming deputy prime minister in 1985 and prime minister on 28 November 1990, before stepping down on 12 August 2004. By the time he became prime minister, the underlying dynamics and contradictions of the socio-linguistic divisions and educational policy changes had surfaced much more prominently . Some issues were in fact creeping towards centre stage, capturing national attention and revealing the dilemma and anguish of being the Chinese-educated in Singapore. Struggling with Chinese Chauvinism and the Language Divide In 1990, Singapore formally established diplomatic relations with China after decades of deliberate delay in order to allay the concerns of its Malay-dominant Southeast Asian neighbours, and purportedly also to constrain the growth of Chinese chauvinism within its own Chinese majority population.1 Ironically, at that time, popular anxiety over that chauvinism was surging towards another peak as a reaction against the PAP’s push towards a set of national ideology called Shared Values. Concerned that young Singaporeans were being more rapidly Westernised than other Asian societies, and becoming more individualistic and self-centred, Goh Chok Tong had suggested crafting an ideology that would promote Asian values. Aware that many Singaporeans were worried that the exercise“might become a subterfuge for imposing Chinese Confucian values”, he eventually settled on a much more vague agenda of promoting nation above community, society above self, family as the basic unit of society, regard and community support for the individual, consensus instead of contention, as well as racial and religious harmony. A January 1991 White Paper spelled out explicitly that a conspiratorial imposition of Confucianism “was never the Government’s intention” and it would not “let the Shared Values lead to Chinese chauvinism”.2 The public backlash over Shared Values vis-à-vis Confucianism made the Chineseeducated uncomfortable and defensive. The thick air of suspicion caused Chinese newspaper columnist Frances Low Pooi Fong to lament that some English-educated Chinese were using the word “chauvinism” too readily and it had become “a very powerful weapon” against the Chinese-educated who were merely engaging...

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