Theme Presentation - Looking back.

Based on the textbook and intended curriculum, many different parts based upon the three different perspectives can be seen, but the perspective which seems to be dominant is that of the Personally Responsible Citizen.

The core assumptions of this perspective are,

“To solve social problems and improve society, citizens must have good character; they must be honest, responsible, and law-abiding members of the community” (Westheimer and Kahne, 2004)

The textbook seems to tell us that citizens have to do their part to ensure that problems do not arise, and that many issues can be prevented/corrected once a correct behaviour has been established.

Examples:

In Theme 3 on Multi-Ethnic Conflict, it seems to tell readers that if citizens practiced tolerance and understanding/acceptance towards each other, many problems could have been avoided. It seeks to tell that although there were historical issues brought forward, the citizens had the power to choose their decisions in pressing situations. As the group which presented this theme had shown, their key takeaway messages seemed to be focusing heavily upon character development, and thus the personal responsibility of citizens to maintain racial harmony.

In Theme 6 of Venice, the key concepts of adaptability and challenges could also be seen as being directed to that of the citizens, as the rise of rich merchants led to a great disparity between social classes and other problems which eventually involved the ruling of Venice. If personally, citizens are unable to understand their individual roles in maintaining responsibility, problems could arise.

I do not see many links to that of community-service, community-oriented activities that might help Singapore progress. This would fall under the Participatory Citizen perspective.

I also do not see the “seeking out and addressing areas of injustice” portion of the Justice-oriented citizen. It seems like the intended curriculum seems to treat readers/students very passively, and their sole purpose is to just ingest the information and not repeat mistakes/toe the line.

With reference to Theme 6, it seems there could possibly be too much emphasis on Singapore being the second Venice should we follow certain strategies which Venice followed at their peak. There seemed to be a 1 to 1 (Venice to Singapore) kind of lesson which the syllabus seems to want us to impart to students. I felt that instead of framing the lesson as such, we could raise the students’ awareness on why certain strategies failed with Venice, and if Singapore had followed certain paths, what would be the possible outcomes. Whether or not the outcomes would be beneficial for Singapore, I would leave that for my students to decide and ponder upon it. It would allow them to understand the ramifications of problems associated with Venice’s decline independently.

The idea here for the students to take home is that, following the footsteps of Venice need not necessarily means that Singapore will decline in the exact same way. The world is now different, but it does not mean that we are immune to the key takeaways like Challenges, Adaptation and Leadership. Following in Venice’s footsteps brings us at a greater risk of decline rather than making it a certainty.