Essay - In a Post Colonial Culture it is Relatively Easy to...

In a post colonial culture it is relatively easy to find the vestiges of the colonial influence upon the culture's of the colonized nations. There are few exceptions, even in the cases were the nation was not colonized but simply associated somehow with a trade rout for an English speak*****g nation. The challenges of resuscitating the past, *****d eradicating ***** potentially negative influences ***** the often racially driven ***** thought process, ***** substantial and in many ways this eradication must begin with children. Children ***** witness the devaluation of their culture, through social discrepancies that repeatedly demonstrate one races superiority over another but there is no greater affront when the official sources of ***** education also demonstrate ********** principles. During the Victorian era the emphasis on white racial ***** as well as the social and economic superiority of the English lifestyle, was pervasive and clearly crept into children's literature all over the "developing" colonial world, as the colonizers became educators in the newly developing systems ***** infr*****tructure for "progress." This work will address the impact of *****ism on Singapore through a looking glass view ***** Victorian ***** literature ***** how it reflected and or rejected the indigenous cultures of ***** nation. ***** w*****k ***** look at the historical syllabus of the nation, ***** the Victorian period and then attempt to demonstrate the cultural biases that were present in the, ********** and unofficially available children's books of the period.

It is a commonly accepted parable that the vic*****r writes ***** h*****tory of the battle, and ***** the case of education ***** victor wrote the history and developed the education system to meet his own needs. ("Looking at History through" 77) Through ***** "establishment" ***** definitive ***** systems the ***** speaking ***** of colonial power created a confusing web of individuals who in word praised the queen and in deed *****ten went home to squalor and depravity of *****ism. Singapore is no exception with its colonial

The acquisition and settlement of ***** is a story of competing empires. Purch*****sed by Stam*****d Raffles of ***** British East India Company for 1000 Spanish pounds in 1819 after he had installed a preferred and illegal *****ir as ruler of the Johor sultanate, Singapore's 'discovery' enabled the British to wrest the highly lucrative Far ***** trade monopoly from the Dutch. Singapore achieved a limited autonomy ***** the British ***** government in 1959, and in 1963 joined the federation ***** Malaysia before seceding in 1965 (Chua, 1998, pp. 28-29; Hart, Fernandez,

(Sidhu 46)

In places such ***** Singapore the tradition of assimilating English *****'s literature from the Victorian era, often stocked full of ***** racially ***** concepts ***** the time as a result of reduced written language sources in native languages still confronts educators today. Short of outright censorship ***** goal is to reduce these biased works and ********** the availability ***** ***** that teach language but do not insult the culture. In the modern ***** the removal of "classic" literature from ***** shelves is often the