Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed how businesses operate, how people work, and the way people socialize and interact. The changes that needed to be made were significant and did not happen easily. However, the COVID-19 pandemic also presented opportunities for creativity to flourish, innovations to happen, and kindness and magnanimity to be extended to one another. In Singapore, an island-nation city-state, significant changes had to be implemented to ring-fence the spread of infections and ensure the local economy and healthcare system could cope with the impact of the pandemic. At the forefront of some of these changes were the youths. Young people with creative ideas, boundless energy, and a strong sense of social cause and fairness led initiatives that had significant and positive impact on those most vulnerable. In this chapter, the backdrop of the evolution of a values-based education system in Singapore and its impact on the younger generation of Singaporeans is discussed followed by examples of youth-led initiatives in Singapore amidst a COVID-19 landscape.
TopValues-Based Education In Singapore
Not long after Singapore attained independence, the government played an active role in stimulating public discussion on moral and national values that would ensure social cohesion of the new multi-racial and multi-religious city-state. It was alluded that the motive behind this keen interest to articulate and implement a set of shared or common values for the new nation was precipitated by the government’s then concern about activities related to the 1970s “hippie” culture of the west (Murray, 1991, p.8). By the early 1980s, a moral education syllabus was introduced for primary and secondary schools, beginning with the primary school levels in 1981, under the Good Citizen, and Being and Becoming programs. Religious Knowledge (RK) was introduced in all secondary schools in 1984 as a compulsory subject (National Library Board, 2014a), focusing on moral values through the study of a religious or ethical system. However, in 1990, RK was made a non-compulsory or elective subject, as the then Ministry of Education felt that the teaching of religious-based values should be the responsibility of parents and families, and not that of schools.
It is also instructive to recognize that communitarianism forms the basis of values-based education in the Singapore school curricula (Tan, 2013). To elaborate, values education in Singapore is “…commonly underpinned by an ideology of communitarianism that seeks to promote the needs and interests of ‘others’ over the ‘self’”. The focus of a communitarianism approach to values education, is on the greater good, and shaped by equal emphases on moral values, social norms, and cultural attitudes.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Community engagement: Community engagement can be described as a strategic and well-defined process of reaching out to, interacting, and communicating with identified groups of people (whether they are connected by geographic location, special interest, or affiliation) to identify and address issues affecting their well-being.
Social Impact: The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development ( OECD, 2015 , p. 3) has defined social impact with reference to four key elements: (i) value created as a result of someone’s of some entity’s activity; (ii) value experienced by beneficiaries and those affected by the activity; (iii) an impact which includes both positive and negative effects; and (iv) an impact marked against the status quo, if the activity had not taken place.
Singapore Institute of Technology: The third-largest autonomous university (AU) in Singapore, in terms of student enrolment. The university is one of the youngest AUs in Singapore, being only 13 years old at the time of writing. The university is also known as the university of applied learning.
Youths: In Singapore, youths are categorized as individuals between the ages of 15 and 34 years old.
Singapore: A cosmopolitan island-nation in Southeast Asia that is only 57 years old at the time of writing. Being a multi-racial and multi-religious society, Singapore is also a highly connected and well-developed nation where English is the lingua franca and working language, while the mother tongue languages (such as Mandarin, Malay, Tamil, among others) are also learnt in school.
Social Innovation: According to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, 2021 AU34: The in-text citation "OECD, 2021" is not in the reference list. Please correct the citation, add the reference to the list, or delete the citation. ), “Social innovation refers to the design and implementation of new solutions that imply conceptual, process, product, or organizational change, which ultimately aim to improve the welfare and wellbeing of individuals and communities”. There are numerous initiatives and projects undertaken and implemented globally by the social economy and by civil groups, which have proven to be innovative in dealing with socio-economic and environmental problems, while contributing to the economic development of individuals, families, communities and even societies.
Community Leadership: Community leadership is a key aspect of non-profit management. It involves leading and managing a community of individuals, volunteers, supporters, or other stakeholders, who share common goals, objectives, or issues in a specific community that affect members of that community.
Values-Based Education: The incorporation of moral values in the formal school curricula. In the Singapore context, communitarianism forms the basis of values-based education that seeks to promote the needs and interests of ‘others’ over the ‘self’”. The focus of a communitarianism approach to values education, is on the greater good, and shaped by equal emphases on moral values, social norms, and cultural attitudes, taking into consideration Singapore’s multi-racial and multi-religious context.