Fostering Social Cohesion and Cultural Sustainability: Character and Citizenship Education in Singapore

Abstract

This article critically discusses the Singapore state’s endeavor to balance social cohesion and cultural sustainability through the Character and Citizenship Education (CCE) curriculum. This article points out that underpinning the CCE syllabus are the state ideologies of communitarianism and multiracialism. It is argued that the ideology of communitarianism is compatible with and finds support from Confucius’s emphasis on the concept of harmony (he) and his advocacy of values inculcation that progresses from the family to the community and the rest of the world. The article further argues that a key challenge in balancing social cohesion with cultural sustainability in Singapore is to guard against essentializing and stereotyping the various cultural groups through the surface culture approach.