Invest in literature education for our young

The National Schools Literature Festival was held on 12 July 2014 at Dunman High School. Altogether about 85 schools, 15000 students turned up. The image on the right involve members of the organizing committee.

Here are some of the wonderful comments we received:

 "Large turn out of students and teachers. Great. Fantastic gathering of people with an interest in literature. Confident students on duty. Open to many schools to participate."

"The events—educational yet fun—really rekindled the passion for many of the students I observed, and in fact made me go home with a renewed appreciation for what literature can do in my classroom."

"The different activities enhanced students' learning especially the debates; provided students with other valuable perspectives and hone their skills of analysis."

"They realised Literature was a lot more fun and interesting, especially when they saw their peers in action."

"They recognised that literature is fun, and not just a subject to study for exams."


"I think my students got to experience Lit in an engaging and exciting way that no classroom environment could provide. The sheer size of the Lit Fest was also exhilarating for the students."

For more info on the festival, visit: http://nationalschoolslitfest.wikispaces.com/

The following is a post I wrote that was published in the forum page of Straits Times on July 23, 2014. I wrote this after the National Schools Literature Festival which coincided at the time with NLB's censoring of books. 

OVER a week ago, the National Schools Literature Festival celebrated its 10th anniversary. More than 150 teachers and 1,500 students from 76 secondary schools participated in this annual event to celebrate literature.

Unfortunately, public attention was centred on the National Library Board controversy and the event was largely overlooked.

Besides the censorship of books, another issue that should be addressed is the role of literature education in Singapore.


Figures released last year revealed that the number of students taking pure literature at the O levels fell from 48 per cent of the Secondary 4 cohort in 1992 to 22 per cent in 2001, and 9 per cent in 2012.

The main reason that students now have more subjects to choose from does not excuse the need for a more concerted effort to revive this subject.

One fundamental role that literature education can play is the cultivation of a critical reading public that must begin with our young.

This was observed during the festival, where students debated a diversity of issues dealing with relativity in Jean Tay's Everything But The Brain, social perspectives of women's roles in Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband, and the extent to which violence in books, such as William Golding's Lord Of The Flies, is unsuitable for younger readers.

Literature education equips students to critically read texts. It teaches them how to negotiate diverse and competing values and beliefs, not through acts of censorship but through dialogue and fostering dispositions of empathy and hospitality towards those from different and marginalised communities in our society and in the world.

While attending the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the man who orchestrated the transportation of Jews and other groups to Auschwitz and other concentration camps during World War II, philosopher Hannah Arendt described him as having "the inability to think from the standpoint of somebody else". She partly attributed this to his reluctance to read anything except Nazi-controlled newspapers and party propaganda.

Arendt provides an important reminder that in our globally interconnected world, we cannot afford to adopt a protectionist stance and need to be more intentional in cultivating among our young the critical-ethical reasoning capacity to engage with a range of literature from around the world, including those that provide perspectives from minority and foreign communities.