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While 'national education' has regularly been invoked by post-1997 Hong Kong administrations, its pursuit has acquired new force and urgency since the introduction in 2020 of a National Security Law. Investigating the role of schooling in this reinvigorated project of thought reform, this article asks how far recent initiatives have merely amplified official identity discourse or marked a qualitative change. It does so primarily by analysing the official curriculum and textbooks for Citizenship and Social Development (CSD), introduced in 2022 to replace Liberal Studies, a subject widely blamed by nationalists for fomenting sedition. Following a comparative overview of the new and old curricula, there is a discussion of changes to the textbook treatment of: the historical framing of identity; the 'One Country, Two Systems' model; culture's significance for Hong Kong's place in China; and civil, legal and constitutional rights and duties. The analysis concludes with reflections on what these changes imply both for China's efforts to re-educate its unruly Hong Kong subjects, and for scholarly efforts to understand and explain such processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the face of the rising tension between Hong Kong and mainland China, Hong Kong's Chief Executive Carrie Lam blamed the city's education system for its inability to develop a sense of 'I am Chinese' national identity and vowed to step up 'national education' from preschool. This article explores how 188 young preschool teachers perceived their national identity and viewed the applicability of national education in Hong Kong preschools. Data were collected using both quantitative and qualitative measures. The findings showed that even though the participants strongly resisted their Chinese identity, they agreed that national education could be introduced in preschools if it would be rendered rational and apolitical. Nevertheless, they suspected that the administration's motive behind national education was political indoctrination. They also noted several pedagogical difficulties. Finally, the implications are discussed against the changing socio-political context, serving as lessons for local and international readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As youth's national identity or adopting the nation as the identity is a public concern, arranging them to study in school and know about national culture and history is a supposed strategy. However, critics contend that the study is boring, unintellectual, and thus detrimental. To resolve the controversy over the study, this empirical study analysed survey data on 617 locally born Chinese youths in Hong Kong, which is a special administrative region of China. Results revealed that studying Chinese culture and history in junior high school and its concomitant knowledge were positively predictive of Chinese identity and self-esteem in the youth. Furthermore, the predictive power of the studying was higher for Chinese identity in the undergraduate than in the senior school student. These predictions follow the integrated model of socialization and life crisis resolution theories. Consequently, studying national culture and history is justifiable for strengthening youth's national identity and self-esteem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a case study on the presence (or absence) of environmental education in history textbooks, this paper examines how Singapore's nationally mandated secondary school history curriculum portrays the relationship between humans and the nonhuman environment. It analyzes all seven government-authored lower-secondary-level history textbooks, published between 1984 and 2015. The results show that history textbooks largely and consistently portray humans in Singapore as isolated from, rather than depending on and entangled with, the environment. We describe and analyze two trends. First, narratives about the nonhuman environment are largely relegated to Singapore's past and disappear almost entirely as textbook narratives approach the present. Second, history narratives represent narrowly utilitarian, negativistic, and dominionistic perspectives of thinking about and relating to the nonhuman environment. We contextualize these results and discuss the implications of teaching such narrow and misleading conceptions of human–environment interactions in official history education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The implementation of moral and national education (MNE) in Hong Kong came to a stand-still when in 2012 anti-MNE student protests triumphantly saw it being shelved. Many perceived MNE as indoctrination and politically motivated by the leadership. Five years have gone by since the demise of the MNE. Ostensibly, the struggle for hegemonic control over the MNE curriculum is lost for the moment. However, this paper argues that the battle for control over the implementation of MNE is not yet over. Simmering politics about the shelved MNE continues to be a point of debate in the media. I frame this argument using “subterfuge hegemony” in conjunction with analysis of news discourse on the MNE debate to demonstrate how hegemonic work is carried out in South China Morning Post. Such a line of inquiry and analyses is significant as it offers the chance to deconstruct the differing interests and power relations around a high stake citizenship/civics education. It also throws light on the on-going tensions building up around the clash of “liberal” and “illiberal” ideologies that are embedded in the “One Country, Two Systems” political order in Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various terms have been used to define civic education (CE) in Hong Kong since the colonial era. This has been particularly true since 2011, when CE has been given many names, causing confusion among educators. Mixed methods were employed to examine teachers’ perceptions of different conceptions of CE expressed as moral, civic and national education. The findings indicate that some teachers might not be able to differentiate among moral education, CE and national education. Most teachers contended that national education should be included in CE, while others believed the opposite. Teachers perceived that moral and civic education was more successful than moral and national education in cultivating students to become ‘good citizens’. Teachers’ comprehension of these terms has policy and pedagogical implications. While the study is set within the context of Hong Kong, the findings are valuable to policymakers and educators in other countries seeking to improve CE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical patriotism is an ideal in many liberal Western nations. Few studies, however, explore how teachers understand and teach critical patriotism and the possible tensions arising from its adoption, especially in non-Western contexts. This qualitative case study explores the understandings and practices of two Social Studies teachers from an elite girls’ school in Singapore to understand how they negotiate the tensions that arise when critical thinking and patriotism meet. The findings show that the teachers perceive little contradiction between patriotism and critical thinking and, hence, generally taught in line with democratic citizenship education. They encouraged students to discuss controversial policies, brought in diverse perspectives and challenged the status quo. However, sensitive to the socio-political context in Singapore, they sought consensus instead of contestation, gradual change instead of radical change, in contrast to the spirit of critical patriotism. These findings suggest that in Singapore, where communitarian values are promoted, critical patriotism was expressed differently. Constructive patriotism may be a better term to describe the type of patriotism observed in the teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines student teachers' views on their country and on National Education (NE), with the aim of promoting teachers' understanding of the need for NE. A 40-item survey was administered to 1,650 student teachers, to assess their sense of belonging, protective attitude, perceived right, ethnic tolerance and community and political involvement, as well as their perceptions of the importance and learning outcomes of NE. Significant differences were observed between the genders and between the various programme groups in terms of the student teachers' responses, suggesting the need for a more comprehensive approach to NE in initial teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper discusses the attempts of Israeli education, in a similar fashion to other national educational systems, to shape a territorial identity for the pupils of the new State. The Israeli school used a variety of educational means to shape a person who would be modelled on his new birthplace’s landscape, including the use of textbooks, illustrations, and maps, to aid in the process of creating a desired image of the homeland’s landscape. The hidden curriculum used textbooks employing mathematics questions to learn details about the geographical expanse. Alongside the use of a written curriculum, Israeli education made use of the extra curriculum by becoming physically familiar with a place and creating a local time based on the seasons of the year. Local nature was studied duringmoledet(homeland) lessons, similar to the Weimar Republic of Germany’s Heimatkunde studies, as well as during other subjects, such as nature studies and Bible. These studies integrated national goals and progressive humanistic educational schools of thought which viewed a child’s encounter with nature as a vital part of his or her education. The readers, which were built on a timeline of the seasons and the school celebrating nature festivals, created a natural time frame for the pupils in which they acted and studied. The discussion about the ways territorial identity was structured by the Israeli education system is another chapter in the wider debate about national education and illustrates the schools’ function as one of the State’s national social agents, particularly in its early years. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article deals with the topic of female soldiers teaching in Israeli primary schools in immigrant communities in the periphery in the 1950s and 1960s. At that time there was a great shortage of teachers, owing to the enormous increase in the number of pupils in the education system, in the wake of the great waves of immigration. Ben-Gurion decided that the army must forgo this quality labour force, suitable for service as officers, to meet the education needs of the outlying areas. The soldier-teachers were young girls, most of them born in the country, who had gone through the Hebrew education system, had 12-14 years of schooling and perceived their teaching in immigrant settlements as voluntary pioneering work. They were the representatives of the two main socializing agents of the new state - the army and the education system. The IDF considered them to be soldiers, lent out to perform civilian tasks, and paid their salaries and was responsible for their living conditions, including their lodging, while the Ministry of Education perceived them as bearers of knowledge, teaching children living in the periphery. However, the female soldier-teachers, living within the immigrant communities, also functioned in other capacities, such as advising their pupils' older sisters and assisting the families in various ways. Some of the schoolgirls also saw them as examples of educated independent women. Through their activity, these soldier-teachers actually embodied the multifaceted formative ethos of Israeli society: Jewish sovereignty, intermingling of exiles and immigrant absorption (the melting pot version), formal gender equality (military service for women), and commitment by the modern state to provide basic education for all its citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Education (NE) programme was set up in Singapore schools in 1997 to inculcate a national identity and values in the younger generation. Teachers in schools are given the important role of developing a shared sense of nationhood among their students. However, no study has yet examined the motivations for teaching NE in schools. The purpose of this study was to examine pre-service teachers' motivations, perceptions of NE, perceived competence to teach NE and feelings on the NE programme provided in their teacher training course, using the cluster analysis method. The study involved 4242 pre-service teachers (1229 males, 2986 females, 27 missing information) from the National Institute of Education (NIE) in Singapore. The results showed that 15.6% of the teachers belonged to a “high amotivation” cluster, 38.0% formed a “high externally regulated” cluster, 19.9% made up a cluster labelled as “low externally regulated”, and the rest (26.5%) had an “intrinsically regulated” profile. The four clusters showed significant gender and programme differences. In summary, the results from the cluster analysis supported the concurrent validity of the clusters in terms of pre-service teachers' perceptions of their involvement in NE activities, its importance, NE as government propaganda, competence to teach NE and satisfaction with the NE programme provided in their teacher training course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

社会主义核心价值体系是社会主义意识形态的本质体现， 是中国特色社会主义理论体系 的重要内容， 是中国特色社会主义道路的思想基础,是全面推进中国社会主义发展的精神旗 帜。建设社会主义核心价值体系， 教育至关重要。 The system of socialist core values represents the essence of socialist ideology, an important part of the theoretical system of socialism with Chinese characteristics, the theoretical basis of the road of socialism with Chinese characteristics and the spiritual banner for promoting all-round socialist development in China. Education has an especially important role to play in building up the system of socialist core values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses how the media and schools are used as disciplinary apparatuses to resist and work against globalisation in Singapore. Aihwa Ong calls the deployment of state ideological apparatuses, such as the media and schools, acts of ‘reassemblage’, when technocrats resort to assemble institutions, diverse Government practice and political values to engage in citizenship production. The National Education curriculum package introduced to Singapore schools is one example of ‘reassemblage’, which aims to reinvent subject‐citizens who are perceived as lacking cultural mooring and a national identity. I argue that in the context of globalisation, this cultural experimentation of constructing a national identity and creating a sense of belonging is fraught with ruptures, as ‘youthscapes’ and new communication technologies are potentially the liminal spaces where other sources of identities are up for grabs. These liminal spaces further allow youths to perform ‘elective belonging’ rather than a sense of belonging bound by the ‘national’ and ‘local’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I am proposing a post-structuralist treatment of some concepts central to a pedagogical agenda. These are concepts of territorial implications, such as democracy, nationality, patriotism and the foreign, concepts closely linked to The Enlightenment and to education. I am proposing this because these might be the times, for academics in the field of education, to revitalise reflections around such concepts in order to question the legitimisation and motivations for our actions on new grounds. A deconstruction of the opposition between duty and pleasure, and a possible necessary parricide is suggested in order to question hegemonic ideologies and overcome what might be described as an academic paralysis. I am making use of perspectives expressed by John Dewey, Richard Rorty, James Joyce and Jacques Derrida. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]