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Thinking Slowly About Education in Singapore

This story originally appeared in The Huffington Post.

This year I was honored to be appointed the CJ Koh Visiting Professor at Singapore's National Institute of Education. In my research on how different nations define the competencies that young people need to thrive in the 21st century, Singapore occupies a central place because of the comprehensive and balanced nature of the goals that guide the education system, anchored in values and ethics and focused on the development of competencies for life, work and citizenship. I had previously visited Singapore and the NIE, when the cross-national research collaborative I lead, the Global Education Innovation Initiative, held one of our meetings in Singapore. The CJ Koh Professorship, however, provided me a unique and different opportunity for scholarly exchange and learning without the pressure of producing results that marks the regular meetings of my research group. This appointment was an opportunity to see Singapore with new eyes, and to think slow, rather than fast. It was not as if my good colleagues at the NIE had not planned an agenda for my visit, there were plans and plenty of meetings, conversations, colloquia, and lectures, but the pace was just right to observe, beneath the surface, and to think slow about what I was observing.

I travelled to Singapore in May of 2015. On my arrival, on a weekend, I took a long walk from my hotel to the National Museum of Singapore, where I had the opportunity to visit an exhibit celebrating the life and legacy of former Primer Minister Lee Kuan Yew, who had recently passed away. Seeing the exhibit, and reflecting on the history of the young nation, was a very good way to start this visit. It helped me frame and understand how the same impetus that led Lee Kuan Yew to invest in the design of beautiful gardens, so people could be proud of living in a beautiful city, had led him and others to invest in education, as a way to help shape the character of the Singaporean people. Nations are narratives, and national identity encompasses the stories we tell ourselves and others about who we are...

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