Basic Education In Singapore To The Balance Of Diversity And Integration

Elementary education is the foundation of national education and plays an important role in constructing a harmonious society. It is also vital to a country's modernization and a nation's great revival. China has always attached importance to the development of elementary education, but still, there exists much dissatisfaction.By taking a bird's view of the world's elementary education, Singapore is among the world's best. Its rapid progress and social harmony amaze the world and earn its name in international community, which owes much to the successful elementary education. China and Singapore belong to the eastern culture shaped largely by the Confucianism, and share similar modern history. With hope to improve ours, I try to do research on the elementary education of Singapore.This dissertation begins with tortuous historical development and special national condition; demonstrates its multi-culture background and the complicated ethnic relations. Influenced by the multi-culture condition, elementary education melts diverse culture, languages, etc, which strengthens national cohesion, harmonizes the race relations, and provides plenty of talents of different levels for the rapid economical development. Therefore, Singapore gives a shining example for Chinese elementary education.The part of preface is about the reasons of doing this research and introduces the present research, contents, train of thought and research methods of this thesis. The part of body consists of five parts.The first part gives a brief introduction of Singapore, and dates back to the development of two centuries and presents economic prosperity, which is fundamental to the following discussion.The second part introduces the background of elementary education development in Singapore in three aspects: the unique social features and politics; the conflict between diverse cultures; integrity of multi-culture to modernization.The third illustrates the history of elementary education. During the colonial period, different kinds of elementary education system coexist. After Singapore became independent, four reforms have been done in the structure and direction of elementary education, according to four transitions in economy. The fourth part points out the key of success of elementary education through the analysis of unique national situation and historical development of elementary education in Singapore: the integrity of multi-culture and tradition.The fifth part puts forward some valuable thoughts and inspiration of elementary education from Singapore to Chinese present elementary education reform.The point of this paper lies in showing the important role elementary education plays in multi-cultural integrity through the three unique features in elementary education in Singapore. But differences exist in national situation between China and Singapore; therefore, more problems have to be further discussed.