Text Selection for the Singaporean Classroom

Selecting texts is a difficult process. It demands a cognizance of multiple factors to be taken into consideration, such as our learning objectives for students, as well as their needs, abilities and interests. One particular question I would raise concerns the applicability of texts for the Singaporean classroom: how would our students develop their knowledge and understanding given local classroom environments and socio-political contexts? To explore this question, I focus on The Giver (1993) by Lois Lowry (YA novel), Telltale: 11 Stories (2010) edited by Gwee Li Sui (MOE-recommended text), and The Teenage Workbook (1989) by Adrian Tan (a book that I would certainly not usually read – but which I found unexpectedly riveting).

The Giver (1993) by Lois Lowry

Narrated from the perspective of Jonas, a twelve-year-old boy, the novel presents an ostensibly utopian society. This is a brave new world in which pain and strife—but also individual choice and sensory intensity—have been eradicated through the policy of ‘Sameness’. Under this policy, citizens are assigned compatible spouses and paired with exactly two children, who are not borne by them but by Birthmothers whose only task is to give birth to a baby each year for the benefit of the community. Infants then spend their first year at a Nurturing Center, before living with their assigned ‘parents’.  Once the children have grown up, family units are dissolved. Living together as Childless Adults, individuals work until old age obliges them to enter the House of the Old, from where they will eventually be ‘released’. It is in this dystopia that Jonas is born. At a coming-of-age event called the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas is appointed to inherit the highly honoured position of the Receiver of Memory, the sole guardian of the community’s collective memories before the age of Sameness. Jonas develops a close relationship with the Giver, a wise and kindly sage who imparts his repository of memories to him. Eventually though, Jonas learns the horrifying truth lurking out of the community’s sight: ‘release’ is really a euphemism for death, and the price of a painless state of harmony and tranquility is the inevitable loss of genuine emotional depth. Disillusioned with a society in which the absence of hunger and terror translates to a bland, numbing and vacuous existence, Jonas struggles with the burden of his inheritance before escaping from the community, seeking a richer and more meaningful future fraught with danger and risk but also marked by passion, excitement, and personal empowerment.

Awarded the Newbery Medal in 1994, Lowry’s novel is a modern classic of young adult literature, and a staple on many middle school reading lists in the US, Canada and Australia. Would the text be as engaging for our students here in Singapore as for their counterparts in the West? From a reader-response point of view, one observes faint parallels between the strictly regulated, rule-governed society of the novel and the policies of social engineering, attempted eugenics, and central planning in states like Singapore. Perhaps students might identify with the character of Jonas, who yearns to experience the thrilling possibilities of life beyond the staid routines of his mundane reality. The downside to using the text in the classroom, though, is that certain aspects of the plot may not stand up to close critical analysis: it might be difficult to suspend disbelief for some chapters (is it plausible that during Jonas’s escape attempt, he just so happens to find a sled waiting for him on top of a hill covered with snow, just like the sled that he had previously dreamt about?). Nevertheless, the direct simplicity of Lowry’s prose does not detract from the weightiness of the issues she raises: the delicate and difficult balance between freedom and security, or the circumscription of language as a means of restricting thought (for instance, Jonas is forbidden from declaring that he was ‘starving’ when he was merely hungry – the refusal to permit hyperbole exposes fears about the power of language that runs counter to established and accepted truths, e.g. that no one starves in their society). The Giver, overall, might thus be apt as an introductory text for our students, to expose them to deeply provocative issues that demand close scrutiny.

Telltale: 11 Stories (2010), edited by Gwee Li Sui

In this anthology, eleven short stories by six writers from Singapore (Alfian Sa’at, Wena Poon, Jeffrey Lim, Tan Mei Ching, Claire Tham, and Dave Chua) present—with unremitting attention to detail—narrative universes that remain spellbinding, dazzling and yet heartbreaking. These gritty stories are unafraid to confront sensitive topics (such as xenophobia, racism, and the death penalty), sharing an impulse to problematize stereotypes and prescriptive ideals, while encoding tacit insights through various narrative strategies. The tales of Wena Poon and Alfian Sa’at (who each have three stories in the anthology) especially illustrate this. In “The Man Who Was Afraid of ATMs”, the protagonist is a Chinese-speaking Singaporean retiree called Chang, who lives with his son’s family in Canada (where they have emigrated to). When in Singapore, Chang used to refer to foreigners contemptuously as ‘these people’—until one day in Canada, he finds himself the target of snide remarks by a white man (due to his lack of English proficiency at an ATM). The irony is clear – Chang receives his comeuppance, as a perpetrator-turned-victim of social stigmatization. In contrast, Alfian’s stories explore different kinds of tensions. While ‘Birthday’ and ‘Video’ highlight the dynamics of changing social relations in two different Malay families, ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Hanging’ (the title is of course a conspicuous nod to Wallace Stevens) presents a fresh perspective about the dwindling hours of a death-row inmate. In their own ways, these stories offer a platform for the reader to question deep-seated assumptions and explore the divide between societal expectations and political realities.

It is little wonder, then, that the anthology is an MOE-recommended text, considering the tales’ literary merits, and their localized setting which students are likely to identify with. (One of the stories, ‘Haze Day’ by Jeffrey Lim, revolves around an environmental phenomenon that has become all too recognizable to Singaporeans in recent years.) Complex and enigmatic characters populate the tales, while themes ranging from the importance of family to the difficulty of human relationships will resonate with young readers here. The study guide by Dr Gwee Li Sui (featuring a series of guiding questions for each story, added as an appendix at the end of the book) and the study companion by Dr Dennis Yeo further provide excellent preparatory material for classroom purposes, addressing any concerns about a lack of critical sources. Noticeably, all six short story writers were born after independence in 1965—they constitute a new generation of raconteurs whose writings reveal a searing honesty rarely observed in a country famed for its political correctness. Their narratives traverse a gamut of diverse and colourful experiences, all while maintaining vocal registers infused with humour and pathos—this is quality literature that deserves pride of place not just on the bookshelves but in our classrooms.

The Teenage Workbook (1989) by Adrian Tan

First, an admission: this is certainly a book that I would typically not have read—not least because it seemed at first sight to be merely trite and trivial (and I only read it after a former teacher gave a copy to me as a gift). Yet I was to be pleasantly surprised by the sheer charm of its wit and its sparkling risibility. Adrian Tan’s The Teenage Workbook (1989), sequel to his bestselling The Teenage Textbook (1988), is an unexpurgated, uproarious excursion into the home, school, and love lives of various students at the fictional Paya Lebar Junior College. This is a narrative of madcap moments, replete with sudden twists that are as volatile and whimsical as the weather in April (which explains the book’s sub-title: ‘the passing of an April shower’). Brimming with puns and wisecracks, the novel presents a hilarious and boldly irreverent depiction of life and love. The protagonist is Lee Mui Ee, a quiet but resolutely independent girl who faces familial pressures to stop seeing her easygoing boyfriend Yeo Chung Kai, a kind and genial fellow (but ‘not terribly bright’). Supporting characters include Loo Kok Sean, the Chocolate Boy (‘he’s rich, nutty and sticks to women’s lips’) with narcissistic tendencies (‘he treats no man as an equal, and every girl is a sequel’), and Sissy Song, a ‘singularly pretty’ girl who is also ‘pretty single’, pursued only for flings and wild affairs when she merely seeks a stable relationship. And of course, there is the indubitable Dr E Sopramaniam, MA (East Anglia), PhD (Calcutta), the JC principal and ‘an unusually humble man (it’s unusual when he’s humble)’. The dramatic interplay between these characters provides for a jaunty tale of unpredictable twists, while offering an adolescent’s companion to navigating the menacing seas of education, friendship, and first love.

While the novel would not be (and was never intended to be) suitable as a set text for the classroom (this is clearly meant more as leisure reading), the comedy and localized setting of the narrative means that the use of specific excerpts might be used to illustrate ideas and concepts in an engaging fashion. Consider if one were to offer an example of a meta-fictional moment by referring to the occasion in the novel when a student during school assembly waves his copy of The Teenage Workbook to shield his eyes from the sun, declaring that he ‘just can’t put it down’—which leads the narrator to comment facetiously that he had just used ‘a phrase no reviewer had ever employed in describing this particular work’. Such self-deprecating humour is perhaps why the book was a clear bestseller (in fact, the royalties enabled the author to pay his university fees for four years). The more serious point that Tan makes, though, is that the answers presented in textbooks and workbooks can often be wholly unreliable, and young readers need to learn to distinguish between fact and fiction, opinion and judgment. Even more than two decades after publication, the book offers a reading experience both informative and enjoyable. Perhaps more works like these are needed for a new generation of Singaporean students, who deserve the joy of reading Singaporean authors writing about Singaporeans.