The Management of Globalization in Singapore: Twentieth Century ...

The Management of Globalization in Singapore: Twentieth Century Lessons for theEarly Decades of the New Centurybudgets of the crisis years and after have recognized the newimportance of education with increased funding.One of the best ways of achieving that is to catch themyoung -- before the mind becomes too set. While many adulteducation programmes are going on around the country toinduct the older generation into the world of computers andthe Internet, the biggest and most productive effort is beingchanneled into the education system. In fact, a slogan hasbeen coined by the government to reflect this focus: ThinkingSchools, Learning Nation. Though some might wonder if itshould not be the other way round, the government is keento make "learning schools" -- which is perhaps a traditionalway of thinking of schools --into "thinking schools" -- whichis perhaps what many have criticized Singapore schools ofnot being! Singapore has taken specific and sustainablesteps to align the education system to meet the challenges ofthe new century. The master plan for IT in Education, drawnup in 1997 by the Ministry of Education (MOE), set out cleargoals and specific milestones for the schools. The goalsinclude enhancing creative thinking, lifelong learning, andsocial responsibility. The milestones include completing corecomputer training for teachers in every school by the year2000, and achieving a 2:1 ratio between pupils andcomputers in schools, with 30 per cent of curriculum timedevoted to IT-based learning by 2002 (Tay, 2001).In addition to providing hardware and softwareinfrastructure to transform the education system, the MOEis also focusing on the more important aspect of curriculumdevelopment and teaching. Information technology is seen asa means to expand and enrich the learning process itself.School children are now routinely doing project work thatnecessitates surfing the net and looking for materials thatare normally not available within Singapore itself. They arealso exposed to different technological possibilities inassembling and presenting these materials in ways neverbefore done. In the process, they are not only learningdifferent things but also learning things differently. There arealso virtual classrooms now whereby pupils may remain intheir respective homes but join their classmates incyberspace with the teacher conducting lessons through thecomputer or a nifty hand-held device called Edupad. Several994