ABSTRACT
Language education in multilingual contexts is often confronted with complex realities, not least among which is finding the right balance between competing ethnolinguistic representations and urgent educational goals, including optimal human resource development. Multilingual and multicultural Singapore, a city-state republic of 639 km2 with a population of 4 million, has faced this problem head-on and is an illuminating case study of what works and what does not in terms of language education and language management (Gopinathan et al, 1998). Educational practice and language policy have helped Singapore move f from being a Third World to being a First World country, and its experience in language education may have some direct implications for language educators and policy makers elsewhere. Within the country itself, paradoxically, the success that it has achieved has brought about contradictions that have to be managed carefully. Some of this chapter is devoted to raising the issues that will matter for Singapore in the 21st century.
