Article 1: Ethnic Integration Policy
Today, eight out of ten Singaporeans live in Housing and
Development Board (HDB) estates. To get the major races mingling and to
pre-empt polarised racial enclaves, the HDB’s Ethnic Integration Policy (EIP)
was introduced in 1989.
Under the EIP, Chinese, Malays, Indians and Eurasians in
Singapore each have a representative quota of homes for them in a housing block
or neighbourhood. Once that limit has been reached, no further sale of HDB
flats to that ethnic group will be allowed. There is no restriction on the sale
and purchase of a HDB flat if the proportion of the buyer's ethnic group is
within the prescribed block and neighbourhood limits.
Every neighbourhood hawker centre, shop, wet market and
school teems with the multicultural life for which Singapore has become known.
Using English, Chinese, Malay or Tamil we gain entrance into each other’s world
of food, festivals or social customs and have come to cherish those
interactions as being purely Singaporean.
Every HDB town’s life can be seen as a thumbnail
representation of Singapore as a whole. Each precinct is built with flats of
different sizes so that households of different income and social profiles live
together. Common spaces and shared facilities such as playgrounds and fitness
corners facilitate interaction among neighbours from different racial and
religious communities.
A few have felt that the EIP policy has become
inconvenient and increasingly irrelevant. For them, the National Development
Minister Mr. Mah Bow Tan has these clarifying thoughts:
"Racial harmony is not a given for Singapore. It's
not a given for any multi-racial society …
the EIP must remain. By maintaining a multi-racial environment in our
housing estates, schools, shops and playgrounds, we maintain social stability,
racial harmony and religious tolerance, and keep Singapore safe, secure and
prosperous for all races”.
Notwithstanding the difficulties faced by those who want
to sell their flats in the secondary market, most Singaporeans accept that the
EIP serves the greater good. There are many object lessons in the world today
of racial tensions and conflicts arising from racially segregated ghettoes and
slums of their cities. When racial enclaves thrive, mistrust and misunderstandings
about each other may rule the minds and hearts of communities.
For the majority of Singaporeans, the HDB’s housing
estates are more than mere spaces for raised flats that shelter us. It is in
these estates that we interact with other Singaporeans from various backgrounds
and communities and enjoy a collective experience of interacting with one
another.
It has been 48 years since the HDB was formed to provide
an urgent need for housing after getting independence from Britain a year
earlier in 1959. Bent on transforming a squatter-filled colony, the HDB has
built more than 900,000 flats since the first blocks were raised. We shaped our
public housing programme to be congruent to our aims for racial harmony and
social cohesion, all the while factoring in the diversity of our population.
This has been critical to Singapore's national development.
Summary In 1989, the HDB introduced a new
policy called the Ethnic integration programme, in which there was a quota for
the number of HDB blocks that the different races could buy, such that when the
limit is reached, no more flats would be awarded to anyone of that race. This
ensures that there will be a mix of races in each block, and that there will be
more opportunities for social interaction between the different ethnic groups.
Also, this program affects the residents’ lifestyles as the residents will also
patronize the same facilities nearby as the are convenient for them. This
creates even more opportunities for the residents to interact. People feel that
the increase of initiatives to promote racial harmony is relevant as Singapore
is a country with a mix of diverse races, thus it is important for them to
understand each other.
My opinion: I feel that the government policy and plan on
creating common living grounds and space for the different races and religions
is ingenious. Singapore being a multi-ethnic society implies that there are
many different races and religions living together. For the country to prosper,
it has to be united as one and this all boils down to living in harmony and
peace together. Having a set quota of different race and religion allows them
to be neighbours with one another. Being neighbours also implies that they will
meet each other when they enter or leave the house and they will greet each
other and will have more opportunities to socialise. Besides basic courtesy of
greeting, they would also exchange a few lines or so, and communicate amongst
themselves and during important festivals for the different races, for example
the chinese new year for the chinese, hari raya for the malays, and deepavali
for the indians. This will allow them to be able to appreciate different
cultural traditions and their differences. With communication and understanding
of the different races, misunderstandings would be lessened as we all have a
mutual understanding of the different cultural traditions, and thus, everyone
would be able to work amicably together and Singapore can prosper
Article 2: “. . .if we were monolingual in
our mother tongues, we would not make a living.
Becoming monolingual in English would have been a setback. We would have
lost our cultural identity, that quiet confidence about ourselves and our place
in the world.” (Lee Kuan Yew, 2000).
Singapore’s bilingual education policy was borne out of
a pragmatic need to operate in the global economy using the English language
while maintaining the Asian languages and values of our respective
cultures.
With English as the main language of instruction in all
the subjects except the mother tongue, every Singaporean student -- by the time
he or she leaves school -- would be able to communicate in at least two
languages. They would be competent and confident enough to use Standard English
wherever they are in the world without feeling their own cultural values and
language crowded out. The aim of the bilingual education policy is to ensure
that while Singapore remained viable economically all over the world,
Singaporeans need not lose their cultural values or identity.
While the Malay Language is the National Language of
Singapore, English has been the main medium of instruction in schools since
1987. Singapore’s education system promotes and stipulates bilingualism as its
core policy so that children pick up at least two languages in schools --
English and their mother tongue. English is the language of commerce,
technology and administration while Chinese, Malay or Tamil, enables the
children from the different main races to keep in touch with their heritage and
cultural values.
English would also be the language that would serve as
the lingua franca for Singaporeans of different races to bond with one
another. Chinese, Malays, Indian and
Eurasians can use English as the common vehicle for communication and enter each
other’s worlds to understand and appreciate one another.
When Singapore became independent from Britain in 1959,
we could have easily gone the way of some former colonies and consigned the
language of the former rulers to disuse or mangled it into pidgin. The founding
fathers of modern Singapore refused to jettison what would serve us well.
In 1966 when the bilingual education policy was adopted,
Singapore’s First Cabinet foresaw that the future of science and technology
would be mostly written in English. Singapore’s first Prime Minister, Mr. Lee
Kuan Yew knew that competency in the English language from a young age was
vital: “If a student is unable to understand a language, then he is unable to
receive information or knowledge in that language. It is therefore crucial that a breakthrough
must be made in the English Language as early in life as possible.” (Lee Kuan
Yew, 1982).
That foresight has been paying dividends for
Singaporeans. When they go abroad to study in English-speaking countries they have
no difficulties following lectures or writing their essays. Singapore’s
students also excel in international Maths and Science tests conducted in
English, faring comparably with their counterparts from many of the
English-speaking countries.
In 1979, Mr. Lee launched the Speak Mandarin Campaign to
steer Chinese Singaporeans to using a common Chinese language to interact with
one another. This would unite the different Chinese dialect groups instead of
keeping them compartmentalised and separate. The other racial communities do
not have this problem of a common script sounding unfamiliar due to regional or
dialectal differences.
The Government has continued to place the priority on
all the races being able to get along with one another and there could be no
trade- off on that. In the 1991 opening
of the Speak Mandarin Campaign, then Prime Minister Mr.Goh Chok Tong stressed
this as the cornerstone for nationhood. He said that while the Chinese
community should be “tightly knit”, it must also be “tolerant and appreciative
of other communities’ heritage, able to communicate with them in English, and
work with them for a common future…”
In the years since the bilingual policy was introduced,
generations of Singaporeans have felt confident to engage the world and their
fellow Singaporeans of different races using English, while being firmly
grounded in their own cultural values through their mother tongues.
Summary: The Bilingual policy is a
double-edged sword that is aimed at allowing SIngaporeans to learn the English
language, which is the language used globally. However, the policy does not
neglect the cultural roots of Singaporeans, as it also allows Singaporeans to
study their mother tongue simultaneously. Allowing Singaporeans to study
English will let them be able to communicate more effectively and confidently
when they go overseas to work when they become adults, without feeling that
their own culture and language are being crowded out. Also, the english
language ensures that all SIngaporeans have a common language to serve as a
platform of communication, so that they will be able to bond and have easier
understanding amongst themselves.
My opinion: I feel that the bilingual
policy is rather tactful. This policy does not disrupt each races’ language or
culture, but it provides a common ground to bridge different races together
with a common language: English. Unlike other countries, Singapore has provided
a common language and made a common language which allows alongside with it the
different mother tongue languages of the different races. Being able to speak
and learn their mother tongue languages in their education level allows their
moral values, cultural beliefs and cultural traditions of the different races
to be imparted to them through generations. On the other hand, English acts as
a vehicle for communication and work whereby no race has an advantage over
another. This ensures democracy in the country while fostering good
communication and the understanding of different cultural backgrounds and
traditions, thus allowing the different races to be able to work together to
ensure that Singapore prospers as a multi-ethnic society.
CONCLUSION: In conclusion, it is very
important that racial harmony is maintained in Singapore to avoid misunderstandings
between the citizens of Singapore. If citizens are not bonded enough, problems
could surface easily and blow up into very big crises such as the Maria Hertogh
riots in Singapore. The government has definitely done a good job by
implementing simple yet effective measures that have managed to ensure that
racial harmony is maintained in Singapore.
-Teo Weihern , Kuan Jiankai (302)
Since Singapore gained independence in 1965, the Singapore government has implemented many programmes and policies that ensure that racial harmony in Singapore is maintained. This creates an atmosphere where ethnic diversity is celebrated. These policies are reviewed periodically and changed to ensure they meet the current and future needs of the population. In dealing with recurrent internal and external threats, we need to constantly manage and practice racial and religious tolerance and harmony.
