Jon's Reflections

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Reflections :

a) Initially, when I heard about the heritage trail I was in dismay. Singapore to me, at that point of time, was just a small country without much culture and even less heritage.  To spend one full afternoon going to “random” sites of Singapore supposed history was unbearable to me.  This was because I felt that Singapore History had little to do with me. The heritage trail changed my thinking completely, allowing me to better appreciate our forefathers who helped Singapore become what it is today, in the process teaching me that Singapore history is highly relevant to me.

Tan Kim Seng fountain was particularly instrumental to me in changing my perspective on Singapore history and culture heritage. The fountain was built was to celebrate the man’s contribution in constructing Singapore’s first public water works.  This made me come to the conclusion  that I have taken the many amenities that Singapore has for granted, not realizing how much effort was put in to build them. This made me understand that  we - as individuals- cannot separate ourselves from the history of Singapore as our comfortable life now is an accumulation of the contributions of people such as Tan Kim Seng.

All in all, the heritage trail has opened up my eyes to the relevance of Singapore History in my life. More importantly as a teacher to be, it made me realize that I need to prevent my future students from falling into the same trap I did. This is in particularly so in this age of globalisation where many will take things for granted.

b) Throughout the trail, I realized that the Singapore government has set out to preserve many of these important sites. Renovating the buildings as well as giving them landmark status are ways they did this. With these efforts, the  government  has indeed accomplish physically preserving our heritage .

However, it also made me ponder if physical preservation is really enough to keep our heritage intact.  While the government has indeed done it's part in the physical preservation aspect, Singaporeans have little regard towards these sites, having little or no emotional ties to these places.  With many of these sites also being tourist attractions, it makes me wonder if the preservation was really to highlight our unique heritage or just another way to keep the nation economically competitive, by making us much more than just another modern city.

More importantly ,many Singaporeans are ignorant of the cultural significance of these buildings  to our history. This is best illustrated in the vandalism case a few years back on the Cenotaph.  This complete disrespect to the site made me realize that physical preservation is indeed not enough and future generations need to be able to draw an emotional connection to ensure our heritage does not go extinct.

I feel that we as future history teachers are in the best position to do this as we will be educating many future generations. If we are not careful, these areas could become nothing more than hollowed out areas , which are little more than tourist attraction ..