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Javier E

In New Textbook, the Story of Singapore Begins 500 Years Earlier - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-begins-500-years-earlier.html

history archaology Singapore ethnic bias culture textbook

shared by Javier E on 13 May 14 - Cached
  • Why did it take 30 years to change the story? “It takes overwhelming evidence to shift the mind-set of a people from one image of its past to another,”
  • Professor Miksic gives credit for the new history lesson to former students who have reached positions of authority in academia and in the Ministry of Education.
  • Professor Heng surmised that one reason it had taken so long to change the narrative may have been the government’s fears of communal conflict in the 1960s and ’70s.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • “If Singapore before 1800 was a sleepy backwater, the Chinese majority could say, ‘We built Singapore; before it was a blank slate,”’ he said.
  • Other factors also may help explain the timing of the rewrite. “Now is a good time,” Professor Heng said. “There’s a need to develop a collective social memory. It’s become a political issue.”
  • “Every generation has to rewrite its history,” he said. While it used to suit Singapore to see itself as a city-state with a British heritage, modern Singapore needs a different interpretation of history to reinforce a more global perspective, he suggested.
  • Professor Miksic goes a step further. “A short history puts a nation on shaky ground; a shallowly rooted place could be overturned quickly,” he said. “If you can show a long cohabitation between the Malays and the Chinese, it proves you have a pretty stable arrangement.”
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