Concept Of Multiculturalism In Singapore

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Introduction
Since independence in 1965, the People Action Party (PAP) placed education as a common platform in the building of a nation. Educators are habitually faced with the task of supporting diversity, constructing an amalgamated national community, and promoting global perspectives through education. By and large, Singapore is globally recognised model which portrays a fairly good example of multiculturalism at work. Since Singapore embodies multiculturalism, it superficially suggests that we respect each other’s differences. Before we delved in much further, let us now define ‘multiculturalism’. While ‘culture’ refers to a set of values which binds a company of individual together, ‘multiculturalism’ denotes the co-existence of diverse cultures within a particular area. While teachers in Singapore misrecognised multiculturalism as the portrayal of the diverse food and festivals (Berthelsen & Karuppiah, 2011), I beg to differ. Multiculturalism has to encompass differences of languages, gender and socio-economic status on top of the ‘folk’ belief of race and ethnicity. This paper aims to discuss the factors underpinning the writer’s personal concept of multiculturalism of mainly the exogenous outlook of Mother Tongue languages, socialisation of values and gender representation in curriculum, and socio-economic status in meritocracy.
I. Exogenous outlook of Mother Tongue languages
Firstly, the exogenous outlook in search of a suitable model being derived externally

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