Reflections

Alvin's Reflections

Having gone through 12 years of government-prescribe national education lessons, where we were constantly exposed to the "Singapore's narrative myth" of a nation not meant to happen. We were always taught these few facts:

1. Singapore was founded in 1819 by Sir Stamford Raffles
2. Singapore has no natural resources
3. There are four races in Singapore
4. We all suffered during the Japanese Occupation
5. Under the leadership of the People's Action Party, Singapore transformed from a third world rural kampong to a first world metropolis.

Being students of the humanities we understood that not all things can be taken at face value, like what Winston Churchill said, " History is written by the victors". Prior to embarking on this heritage trail, I had a very cynical view on the National Heritage Board's efforts in portraying our nation's history. I always believe that heritage refers to historical legacies of the past conserved in some fashion in the present to pass on to future generations. Heritage landscapes are thus the concrete and visible collection of the nation’s common memories and traditions, providing links and continuity between the past, present and future. The selective fixing of history into landscape marks chain of memories and experiences that not only gives form and shape to the nation’s life story, but does so in ways which mask the deception and ideological nature of its content. I expected little from the trail and thought that it was just another outing to have fun and a chance escape from the classroom.

I was humbled by the trail. Through the journey around the civic district, I was able to gain new insights and experience the Singapore story in a whole new way. Understanding the role a monument has in the Singapore story. Being there in person beats reading the textbooks anyday.  If not for the trail, I would have never know about all the other interesting structures in esplanade park and the story behind each of them. One striking information that i found really fascinating was about the burial chambers under the Civilian War memorial, who would have known under the 'chopsticks' were thousands of bodies.

Rather than view it as the narrative myths of Singapore, we need to see the value of the Singapore story. the role it plays in nation building cannot be overstated. Through the trail, it helped me understand the Singapore history is there to be found away from the textbooks. Just by walking around downtown Singapore, with a little imagination you would be able to experience life in colonial Singapore.

As a future history teacher, the trail was invaluable in helping me understand the need for a hands-on approach to learning history. Just teaching in the classroom is not enough for the students. Being able to touch and literal see the evidence would help students appreciate history so much more. I would definitely have field trips as part of my lesson in the future.  

As SG50 approaches us, is not hard to see the Singapore story - how Singapore succeeded against all odds to become a nation, be re-establish with the youth, through its constant portrayal and promotion of a "shared experience" be it the hardships of the Japanese occupation or of the hardships of merger and separation. I believe that this was done to rescue the young from their 'ignorance of history' and resultant lack of the right instincts to bond together as one nation. This would ensure that 'cultural DNA' would be passed from one generation to the next, enabling Singapore to thrive beyond the founding generation.

Bing Han's Reflections

Before the trail, my impression of Singapore history was that it was mainly focused on the Japanese occupation period. However, this trip was an eye-opener for me because i realise that Singapore history is beyond the Japanese occupation, we have the colonial times ( Raffles Statue), philantropist (Tan Kim Seng) and all these monuments also reflect the lifestyle and the social make-up of the society that our ancestors lived in.

After this trail,I personally think that the difference between heritage and history is that heritage is actually part of history that society selects and preserves because it will benefit the current society as well as the future generation. From this heritage trail, we can also see that the monuments (E.g Cenotaph) that were mainly preserved were to reflect the positive deeds of people who played a significant part in the developments of Singapore both socially and politically. Hence, this further emphasizes on the point that the preservation of these tangible monuments are based on the agenda that the state wants to convey to the general public. Therefore, it is almost certain that we will not see monuments erected for the Japanese soldiers, despite the fact that some Japanese soldiers actually treated civilians with care by offering food, because in general, the Japanese occupation is seen in the negative light by the society in Singapore. 

Moving on, I think that the preservation of these heritage also created an identity for Singaporeans. This is especially so since the monuments are erected in the city, where tourists will pass by frequently. Therefore, I think that heritage will not only have internal effects on the local community but it will also play an important role in how tourist or foreigners view us as a community. This is because to understand the local culture of a country, people will usually find out more about the heritage of the country to know more about the history of the nation as well as its culture. For instance, when we visit Beijing, we will most certainly visit the Great Wall of China because it is deemed as the national heritage of China.

Lastly, on a personal level, after this heritage trail, I realised the importance of this heritage for the future generations to understand our past and learn from these experiences. Hence, if given the chance, I will make it a point to bring my students to visit these places and conduct my lesson as we tour these places. 

Bryson's Reflections

This trail has been quite a journey for me. Not just literally (several hours of walking, picture-taking, monkeying around and keeping some noisy member quiet - it was quite an experience, to say the least) but also intellectually and emotionally.

One thing that really struck me was how rich and vibrant the stories about our lands were. Oftentimes I felt that some of these things were trivial (the old me would be thinking, "How important can the INA Marker be?"), and I devoted attention and energy to learning the "big stuff". But I learnt that all of these things were real to those who lived in the days, just like how the construction of the two IRs was real to me. (One can imagine that 30 years down the road, Marina Bay Sands would just be another building in Singapore's skyline.) Doing the trail was not just a vicarious following of the footsteps of the old: it was a sincere, heart-to-heart process of unraveling all the experiences an individual lived through; an appreciation of the motions and energies enveloping a certain somebody; an effort to empathise, even though at the end of the day we can only achieve a glimpse into the past, and no more than that.

There might be some truth in breaking down the word "history" into "his-story". Stripping history down into its core, it is really about a person's story. And it is not difficult to imagine how wonderful it is to see through a person's eyes, and to see into a person's eyes.

Nonetheless, to my dismay, this effort of empathising can only go so far. There is no conceivable way of reliving a time, repeating an event or re-knowing an individual. Time is such a game-changer. Like how water corrodes a rock and changes its physical appearance, the passing of time causes each and every story to be moulded and re-moulded. Its surface is altered, its feeling is smoothened, its colour changes, and as it travels down the river, it meets different people who perceive different sides of it and tells different tales based on what they have seen in that flicker of time. And the rock carries on with its merry little life, finally to be eroded into nothing, but start all over again, as a sediment that forms yet another rock in eons to come, awaiting the same process, living the same cycle. It can never be done again. It will always be different.

Such is the beauty of history, that we do not merely retell a seemingly cogent, perfect tale, but review, based on the limitations of being humans bound by time, space, bias and egocentrism, just one segment of the entire process of participating and producing history in its entirety. It is a mammoth, macrocosmic and universal endeavour. Our lack of importance is in that we are one in an almost infinite number of participants, but like how each grain of sand has its role in forming a beach, there lies our importance.

It would be to sentence history to death by constructing it as if it is linear, one-dimensional and lifeless; it is vibrant, active, bursting with life and larger than life. I definitely hope that more of us would arrive at this understanding and not just study history as if it is just another academic field, but view it as a systematic, bird-eyed perception and construction of the passage of time, and all it has to offer, in every nook and cranny. The pointlessness of history is that the truth can almost never be found, yet the whole point of history is that, through the review of dominant narratives, the search of alternatives and the retelling of the stories, we bring ourselves one step closer to the truth.

Noah's Reflections

Heritage is an effective platform for the youth to build discernment into the past. Fundamentally, it is an indubitable provision of truth, if not perhaps an ecosystem of epiphany, insights and values one can meditate on. I too cannot deny that they possess some relevance to our ancestry, and by extension, reverberate common traditions, practices and cultures in the midst of a diverse, multi-ethnic, multi-religious nation. 

But have how much I downloaded into my systems during the civic trail made me appreciate the ineffable achievements of Singapore’s collective past more? Anything more than just an understanding of how Singapore lived through an epoch of a vibrant and bustling port-city, I was contemplating if this trail entrenched or strengthened a distinctive identity between and within us – what otherwise made us proud to be defined as ‘Singaporean’.  

Heritage Conservation and Preservation – undertaken by the National Heritage Board (NHB), Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) and Singapore Tourism Board (STB) – since the 1980s have eased the rampant bulldozing-culture and underpinned the prominent narratives in support of building the state’s ‘heartware’ through nation-building objectives. But behind the veneer of passionately fostering a distinctive sense of national identity and vicariously perpetuating collective sentiments of membership, fraternity and allegiance amongst Singaporeans, this trail re-affirmed my belief that the intrinsic motivation of heritage preservation by the state is to augment Singapore’s commercial viability as a tourism hub and critical imperative as a pluralistic and cosmopolitan city with deep historical roots.

Even if the emergence of these landscapes of war commemoration unambiguously embraces notions of unquestioned patriotism and citizenly cohesion, even if the adaptive reuse of Asian Civilization Museums or Victoria Theatre found in salient historic districts retains the original integrity of urban fabric, even if attempts to depict cultural heterogeneity assuage the ‘bland modernity’ of cityscape, public engagement – including my own — toward these heritage depictions remains ostensibly indifferent.

In fact, this cultural deficit among citizenry can be further manifested in how such depthless, sanitized representations of the past cater solely for the international audience. Far from projecting and forging markers of historic veracity for local consumption, I feel that they are just neat reflections of how history could have been abridged, appropriated and simplified into monuments or beams that are arguably less dynamic. It could also just be a mellifluous echo of the ubiquitous sentiments of local audience, yet reconstructed and re-packaged as a commodity or a commercialised entity in a museum or guided trails to feed the profit-making motive for foreign culture vultures.

Ultimately, this trail was informative, but I do not think that this trail has accentuated the importance of Nation Building in me. It is surreal that such locus of social memories conveying elements of antiquity can be so distant, even though I am territorially situated in close proximity to these heritage sites. I do not mean that symbolisms of these monuments and structures were compromised or have eroded, but rather they yield a dearth of emotional authenticity, which might have explained why I found it challenging to relate to. As I have mentioned earlier in one of my observations in the Asian Civilization Museum, many tourists would simply walk past the artefacts found in Singapore River without a firm understanding of what they have seen. It occurred to me that this museum was more of an avenue of visual satisfaction, than a provision and dispensary of learning experience. Whether or not this museum is appealing to them is open to debate, but I believe there must be a purpose for putting artefacts in the museum. If I (as a local) cannot identity elements of Nation Building in this heritage trail, how far can a foreigner, with no knowledge background of our nation's historic past, share the sentiments of Singapore's challenging, arduous period of nation building?

At best, some of these heritage sites could just be ‘cromulent’ or a re-enactment – artificially weaved into urban landscapes to portray greater cultural depths. It might be a valuable reference point to espouse unspoken aspects of History, but surely not a pedagogical cradle of historic complexities of Singapore. More essentially, I feel that heritage is only one part of a more complex equation elucidating Nation Building: Beyond these Heritage trail, one should consider examining other substantial resources or archival materials such as newspapers, articles, speeches or debates to ameliorate our understanding of the objectives of Nation Building. It re-affirmed my role as an Educator in future to encourage and develop students to have a sense of ownership in our Singapore's collective past. I want them to be interested, to be encouraged and to be humble that our past was a challenging phase and we should not just appreciate what we have today, but build on what we have in the past - to establish a better tomorrow.

The past cannot be a chapter that rests in our pioneer generation, but the lessons learnt from our collective past should thrive in perpetuity amongst our current and future generation. 

Zoe's Reflections

Singapore’s history can be summed up by four main points. First, the island began as a fishing village. Second, Sir Stanford Raffles was the founder of Singapore. Thirdly, our forefathers shared a common past, where majority of them suffered during the Japanese Occupation. Lastly, upon independence, Singapore has always been under the lead and rule of the People’s Action Party. All of these have always been my impression of Singapore's history as I grew up as a citizen living in Singapore.

My knowledge and understanding of our heritage and culture was based on what I was exposed to as I grew up: School textbooks. Looking back, I realized that I never questioned about what was taught about Singapore's history. I merely took whatever that was presented to me as a fact. It did not even come across my mind to question what mt teachers taught.  Back then, the content given was equivalent to Singapore's history and cultural heritage.

It is only through this assignment that I came to know about the Civic District Trail in Singapore. Sadly, this is a reflection of my lack of awareness and knowledge regarding Singapore's history and cultural heritage. Thankfully, after taking this course, I began to question about Singapore’s “history” that was being preached to us in schools. It was too simplistic of me to treat what was taught in schools as final and absolutely accurate. In addition, it was clear that as my group and I embarked on the heritage trail, there were many other valuable stories of the past that played a significant role in our country but were not given due credit and quickly brushed aside, or worse, not mentioned at all in the textbooks.

One of the sites in the trail was the Tan Kim Seng Fountain. Who is Tan Kim Seng and what were his contributions? He must have been an important man to have a fountain built for him. Yet, how many of us know him? Another example, the Civillian War Memorial. While many of us probably know it as the “chopsticks” in Singapore, I wonder how many know its symbolism, that the four pillars represent the Chinese, Malays, Indians and Eurasians who died in the war. This made me consider other people who did not study History as a subject. How much do they know about their own homeland? Are they even interested to find out more?

One thing's for sure is that I do. Now, knowing that there is more than what it seems to be about Singapore's history, I want to discover more of  the unheard stories of Singapore's past. During the trail, I was fascinated by the long history of the buildings and it prompted me to think of how it was like in the past and what would it feel like to live back then.

As a history teacher-to-be, I feel that there is definitely a void that needs to be filled; A void between us as Singaporeans and our history and heritage. Perhaps, the trail is an attempt by the National Heritage Board (NHB) to reconcile the past and the present and I am glad to have gone for this trail. It definitely was an eye opener for me and I am glad that I managed to find out more about my country’s past. In the future, I would like to bring my students on such trails and let them discover more about Singapore, beyond what the textbooks have to offer.