The primary social education curricula in Hong Kong and Singapore: A comparative study

In the face of the challenges of globalization, nation-states would try to reinvigorate their traditional or national values and local identities as a kind of counter-consciousness to globalizing influences. Hence, the social and citizenship education across nations in Asia takes a number of forms with certain distinctive varieties in terms of policies, practices and values in alignment with national priorities and multiple modernities. Based on these premises, this paper aims to compare and contrast the primary social education curricula in Hong Kong and Singapore (the two former British colonies) in order to trace the differences and similarities in the responses of these two Asian city-states to external impact and internal impulse at the turn of the century. This paper will also shed light on the tensions and contradictions in policies and practices in social and citizenship education as a result of the interaction of global and local perspectives.