Demystifying character education for the Singapore context

ABSTRACT

Amidst global uncertainty, character education has become increasingly important. Yet, academic discourse surrounding the field remains obfuscated. This paper has two aims: First, to provide a broad toolkit to demystify the field of character education, consisting of (i) a basic conceptual GPS for terms like ‘virtue’, ‘character’, ‘morals’ and ‘character education’; and (ii) a lay-of-the-land overview of character education approaches. Second, equipped with this toolkit, we analyse Singapore’s Character and Citizenship Education (CCE) syllabi of 2014 and 2021. Situated within a ‘survivalist’ rhetoric and communitarian tradition, CCE is characterised as a pragmatic, nation-centric amalgamation of various approaches, striving towards a society-oriented goal of maintaining social harmony and cohesion. We identify several tensions in the CCE syllabi, such as its integration of character education and citizenship education, philosophical foundations, curricular content and pedagogical approaches. We argue that elements of neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics offer theoretical scaffolding to address some of these tensions.

KEYWORDS:

• Aristotelian virtues ethics
• character education
• citizenship education
• moral education
• Singapore

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jasmine B.-Y. Sim

Jasmine B.-Y. Sim is an Associate Professor in the Policy, Curriculum and Leadership Academic Group and the Singapore Centre for Character and Citizenship Education in the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University. She researches in civics and citizenship education, character education, social studies education and school-based curriculum development.

Philip H.-H. Tham

Philip H.-H. Tham is an undergraduate student in the Dual Degree programme between Sciences Po Paris and Columbia University, USA majoring in political science and cognitive science. He is currently in his third year of undergraduate studies in Columbia University.