Post-war Education saw a succession of changes. It would be appropriate to interrupt the chronology of my story. I want to summarise my personal views of the key features in the historical development of Education in Singapore (1916 to 1959) that contributed to the conflicts that characterised the early years of Singapore’s transition from Crown Colony to an independent nation.
The Education System in Singapore: 1916-1959
Singapore, a British Crown Colony, was a component of the Straits Settlements that included Malacca, Penang and Province Wellesley. The other states in the Malay Peninsula were protected states headed by Sultans. The Crown colonies and the Malay Peninsula had similar education systems, but were independent of each other. However, the white expatriate staff appointed by the Colonial Office in London, and the staff of the grant-in-aid Christian Mission schools were transferable between the two. In 1942, when World War II hit the country, the immigrant population of Chinese, Indians and others in Singapore, outnumbered the indigenous Malays. Some 80 percent of the population were ethnic Chinese.
From the onset of British rule in Singapore and the Malaya, the imperial purpose in education was not cultural but instead, centred on the exploitation of the human resources for their own profit. The imperial power needed clerks who were proficient in the English language for the government machinery as well as for commercial organisations, and to serve as teachers in primary and lower secondary classes. Hence, the system provided education in the English language medium for some Asians. I am ignoring Sir Stamford Raffles’ noble and grand cultural aim in founding Raffles Institution, because the Trustees he appointed disregarded it. Some people might argue that the setting up of Malay language primary education was cultural. In my opinion, it was petty concession for the indigenous (Malay) people. The schools that provided English education completely neglected Chinese, Malay and Tamil, which were not taught even as second languages.
In 1942, the profile of schools that provided English medium education in Singapore was as below:
| Government funded schools with English as the medium of learning (did not have any second language) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Pre-primary | 1 | |
| Primary (7 years of education) | 8 | |
| Primary and Secondary Boys’ schools (11 years of education) | 2 (Victoria and Serangoon) | |
| Secondary school, Boys (4 years of education) | 1 (Raffles) | |
| Primary and Secondary Girls’ School (11 years of education) | 1 (Raffles Girls’ School) | |
| Trade school. (Catered for the brightest pupils who failed to gain admission to Secondary school. Training in electrical wiring, plumbing, road construction, car repair). | 1 (Balestier) | |
| Christian Mission Schools (English Medium) that received grants in aid from the Government | ||
| For Boys: Primary and Secondary (11 years) | 4 (Anglo Chinese (Methodist), St. Joseph’s and St Patrick’s (Catholic), St. Andrew’s School (Anglican)) | |
| For Girls: Primary and Secondary | 4 (Methodist, Fairfield, Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus, and St Theresa’s) | |
Government and Grant-in-Aid schools (known as the Aided Schools) prepared pupils for the Cambridge School Leaving Certificate and in post-war years for the Higher School Certificate Examination. Thus, the syllabus in both were identical. However, the Aided Schools also taught Christianity and gave talks at the assembly on Christianity. The subtle aim was to convert students. (I studied for eight years at the Methodist Boys’ School, Kuala Lumpur and very nearly became a Methodist. I would have done so if the Principal had not made it a requirement for employment as a Student Teacher at the school).
The grant-in-aid was a dollar-for-dollar grant from the government for buildings and salaries. However, staff in the Aided schools did not enjoy medical benefits or qualify for pensions. On the other hand, they had a provident fund and were free to engage in private enterprises.
Malay language primary schools provided six years free education to Malay children in their mother tongue while English was a second language starting from Primary 4. Children who showed promise of coping with secondary education were eligible to continue their education, in English Primary schools, or do a two-year crash course in English, prior to admission to English Secondary schools, Sultan Idris College in Tanjong Malim or the Women’s College in Malacca for secondary education in Malay. They would train to become teachers in Malay Primary schools.
English medium education was limited to a small fraction of Singapore’s child population and catered to the requirements of British administration. The majority of children who attended these schools were the progeny of immigrants who had come to Singapore and Malaya for a life better than in their native countries. However, the demand for English education was greater than the supply. Thus, privately-funded English schools that provided academic, commercial and science subjects became popular. Recognising the rising demand, the Government introduced afternoon classes in the existing primary schools and employed both qualified and unqualified temporary teachers, on a fixed salary of $100/ p.m. but did not provide the benefits afforded to permanent teachers. Single women, on getting married, lost their permanent status. Thus, some, like Mangalam, became temporary teachers in afternoon schools. Others who had qualifications at the level of School Certificate or the Junior Cambridge were unemployed.
The vast majority of Chinese and Tamil children went to private schools that had Chinese or Tamil as the medium of education. These private schools were mostly sub-standard in terms of amenities and staffing, and were conducted for profit. Thus, the greater portion of the population remained segregated in their different communities.
I estimate that only about 100,000 children had the benefit of government-sponsored education. About 700,000 Chinese and 70,000 Indian children attended private vernacular schools organised on a profit-taking basis. To execerbate this situation, they were taught by many unqualified and poorly paid teachers, in buildings that were unfit for teaching.
The afternoon classes were aimed at curbing the growing discontent among unemployed English-educated persons. However, the government did not realise that it produced even more unemployed persons with English-medium education and it ignored or marginalised the aspirations of the large section of Chinese school graduates. It was inevitable that the communists would infiltrate Chinese schools and turn the minds of pupils towards communism.
I will not elaborate on the introduction of tertiary education except as provided in the table below, and each landmark was in response to local demand.
| Selected milestones in the development of tertiary education | |
|---|---|
| 1905 | Medical School in Singapore in 1905 to license local doctors to work as subordinates to expatriates. |
| 1920s | Technical College in Kuala Lumpur to produce technical assistants for the Postal and Railway services |
| 1928 | Raffles College to train teachers for secondary schools |
| 1952 | Teacher Training College (2 year full time course) |
| 1949 | University of Malaya (formed by merging the Medical School and Raffles College) widened the scope of tertiary education to give Degrees in Arts, Science, Medicine, Dentistry, Engineering and Social Science. |
1947. Proposal for a 10-Year Programme.
Immediately after Britain re-occupied Singapore, the Government appointed an Advisory Council. The Advisory Council included 10 Singapore citizens, and with input from the Director of Education adopted on 7th August 1947 a “10 Year Programme as a basis for future educational development in the Colony of Singapore.” It did not include a timeframe. However, the plan to build schools and train teachers for English education commenced immediately. The Programme required English be introduced as a second language in vernacular[1] schools, but vernacular education was to remain as a private enterprise and vernacular languages were disregarded in English schools. The Advisory Council must have assumed that colonial rule would continue and the preponderantly Chinese population would remain docile!
Other key features of the new Policy.
The aim of Education was to foster and extend capacity for self-government and promote the ideal of civic loyalty and responsibility.
Key features of the Plan included,
- Equal educational opportunity regardless of gender and ethnicity.
- Six years of free, universal co-educational primary education in Chinese, Malay, Tamil or English.
- Introduction of English as a subject from Year 3 onwards in vernacular school.
- No provision for compulsory education.
- Organisation of schools on a regional basis rather than based on the language medium of education, and the intermingling of children of all races was encouraged.
The six-year, free primary education aimed to provide a foundation for post-primary education, to suit to local needs. Key features of post-primary (secondary) education included,
- Fee paying, although free places would be reserved for selected meritorious primary school students,
- Admission only to pupils who reached the prescribed standard of attainment,
- Introduction of a Higher School Certificate Course of 12 to 18 months duration to prepare pupils for admission to local tertiary colleges,
- Establishment of Commercial schools and Vocational evening classes for adults.
- The Teacher Training College would prepare teachers for the Primary and Middle English (meaning lower secondary classes) and Vernacular schools.
Teachers for secondary and Higher School classes would be recruited from Raffles College graduates who would attend a post-graduate teacher-training course.
[1] Vernacular refers to Malay, Chinese and Tamil medium schools.
My opinion of the 10-Year Proposal
In my opinion, the Proposal was highly relevant to lay a good foundation for a cosmopolitan nation. However, it was shortsighted in not recognising the need to give Chinese education an equal status with English. The Proposal did not anticipate that Singapore would become independent in less than 20 years. It allowed post-primary education to continue in separate language streams. This contradicted the aim of making education the means of “fostering and extending the capacity for self-government and the ideal of civic loyalty and responsibility.”
I believe firmly it was essential to have a regional system of schools in which all the four languages were taught. It would need a single type of teacher training college for all language streams and similarly, a university that kept all the communities together during their education. This would be ideal to meld the multi-racial, multi-language and multi religious society into one nation.
Unfortunately, the proposals adopted by the Advisory Council for the most part, lay in cold storage under Colonial administration, and during the subsequent administrations under the David Marshall and Lim Yew Hock. The exceptions were:
- the 10-year plan to build schools and train teachers,
- English to be taught as a second language in the vernacular schools.
These decisions contributed to the civil unrest described in the next section of this chapter.
Context of civil society the post-war years and the decade of the 1950s. (Editor’s note)
The years that followed the end of World War II were turbulent throughout East and South-east Asia. Nationalistic, anti-imperial fervour blended, and competed with communist ideology that swept through the region. Communism took dominance in China, North Korea and North Vietnam. In Vietnam, communist soldiers fought and defeated the French colonial powers and the Americans, to unite the divided North and South parts of the country. In Korea, the Americans fought the communist forces of the North in the Korean War to prevent the takeover of South Korea. Among the western powers, a ‘domino’ theory predicted that communism would sweep through Southeast Asia from Vietnam through Thailand, Malaya, Singapore and Indonesia.
MIn Malaya and Singapore, while colonial powers prepared the ground to grant independence to their former colonies, communist-inspired domestic insurgencies battled to gain control of the soon-to-be independent nations. In Malaya, the struggle was in the form of an armed guerrilla warfare between the predominantly ethnic Chinese-Malayan communist forces and the British. In Singapore, it was a battle for control of the emerging trade unions, and the hearts and minds of the youth, particularly the students in the Chinese medium schools.
The Singapore context
Singapore experienced much turmoil in civil society, as it travelled the path from a British Colony to an Independent nation. Key milestones and the related personalities that provide a context for the autobiography and are listed below:
Japanese surrender
British Military Administration ruled Singapore.
Appointment of Governor Sir Franklin Gimson to head the British Colonial civil administration.
“much of the infrastructure had been destroyed, including electricity and water supply systems, telephone services, as well as the harbour facilities at the Port of Singapore.[5] There was also a shortage of food including rice, and this led to malnutrition, disease, and rampant crimes and violence. Unemployment, high food prices, and workers’ discontent culminated in a series of strikes in 1947 causing massive stoppages in public transport and other services.” Wikipedia
Appointment of the First Legislative Council with 19 of the 25 members appointed by the Governor and the others selected through a very limited election.
Kenny Byrne, a Singaporean who joined the colonial civil service, was appointed clerk of the Legislative Council. (In subsequent years, Byrne became one of the nine Singaporeans appointed to senior managerial positions during the early stages of Malayanisation. He resigned in 1958 to join the PAP, won a seat the 1959 general elections, and became Minister of Labour).
Sir John Nicoll appointed as Governor of Singapore.
Nicol appointed the Rundel commission to review the constitution of Singapore and propose changes towards self-government. A key proposal was the establishment of an elected Legislative Assembly and a cabinet chaired by the Governor, which would be the chief, policy-making body. It had a majority of elected members.
First elected Legislative Assembly with 32 seats. 25 seats through general election and sevenappointed by Governor.
David Marshall Chief Minister because his Labour Front party won the largest number of seats. (Lee Kuan Yew as leader of the People’ Action Party (PAP) fielded very few candidates in the election and had the most seats in the opposition.)
Hock Lee Bus riots
The riots followed a strike organised by the trade union. During the riots, four people died and 31 were injured. Curfew was imposed to restore internal security and calm. The Government placed the blame for the riots on “irresponsible political leaders and Chinese students”. Students from the Chinese High School and Chung Cheng High School were alleged to have participated in the riots.
In the aftermath of the riots, an All Party Committee made a comprehensive review of the problems. A key recommendation was that the Government look into the problems of Chinese education before taking action against students.
David Marshall resigned when his party lost the move to gain union with Malaya and achieve independence.
Lim Yew Hock Chief Minister also from the Labour Front, took over from Marshall.
First general election: PAP won a landslide victory
Lee Kuan Yew Prime Minister.
The Post war years
The political changes during the post-war period, had a profound impact on the education system in Singapore, as well as on the lives of Singapore residents. The next thee chapters recount the experiences in my domestic life (Chapter 15), the rehabilitation and restoration of Raffles Institution (Chapter 16), and the struggles of the organisations representing teachers to improve the education service Chapter 17). All of these experiences occurred simultaneously and influenced each other.