ABSTRACT
Singapore's separation from Malaysia marked the beginning of the path to a ‘Singapore-centric’ history syllabus. History became a servant to the nation-building demands of the Singapore developmental state. As early as 1968, Ong Pang Boon, Singapore Education Minister, in collaboration with Professor Wong Lin Ken, Head of the History Department of the University of Singapore, began developing a ‘Singapore-centric’ syllabus for primary schools that reinforced nation-building. Yet, the demands for a workforce with more technical skills meant that it was dropped from primary schools in the 1970s in favour of science-based subjects. However, Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew intervened and demanded the history of Singapore be the focus of the secondary school history syllabus so that it could be a ‘survival kit’ for a Singapore identity. In 1984, a ‘Singapore-centric’ secondary history syllabus, modelled on historian Mary Turnbull's general history of Singapore, was introduced into schools. Her model of a modern Singapore that begins with Raffles’ founding of the colony in 1819 was substantially revised in 2014 when pre-1819 and precolonial history was given greater emphasis in a last act of ‘decolonization’ of the history syllabus.
