From moral adaptation to ethical criticism: Analyzing developments in Singapore’s character education programme

ABSTRACTIn an age of hyper-globalization, ethical criticism has become vital in tackling the bombardment of information across networked societies. This paper begins by exploring the historical emergence of ethical criticism, its dominant approaches (relational, analytical and historical), and potential for character education. Next, we focus on character education in Singapore. Utilizing a comparative case study analysis, we compared older and recent character education syllabi and applied ethical criticism as an analytical lens. Findings show a discernible shift from moral adaptation to some evidence of ethical criticism where more emphasis is placed on the relational and less on analytical and historical aspects. We then examine the opportunities and tensions for ethical criticism in Singapore’s character education programme. These tensions arise from the simultaneous objectives of empowering citizens to handle the challenges of multicultural engagements alongside the limits placed on critical-ethical thinking when applied to analyzing politics and systemic structures of power.KEYWORDS: Character educationethical criticismpoststructuralismvalues educationSingapore Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University [OER 08/21 SCSL].Notes on contributorsSuzanne S. ChooSuzanne S. Choo is Associate Professor at the English Language and Literature Academic Group at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Her research has been published in Harvard Educational Review, Reading Research Quarterly, British Journal of Educational Studies, Research in the Teaching of English, among others. Her research is in the areas of global and cosmopolitan education, ethical criticism, and literature pedagogy.Deborah ChuaDeborah Chua is Research Fellow at National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Deborah has published in Journal of Linguistics, Language and Cognition, and English Language and Linguistics, among others.