We Don't Want Philosophy in Our College

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What a sorry end to the educational experiment that was Yale-NUS College in Singapore. Just after the new academic year opened in August, the National University of Singapore (NUS) announced that Yale-NUS College and the University Scholars Program would be merged to form a new college. The merger amounted to a closure of Yale-NUS since the college would cease to exist after the current cohort of freshmen graduate in 2025. Last week NUS announced that the new college will not feature liberal arts subjects in its core curriculum.

Instead of literature, philosophy, and scientific and social inquiry, all part of Yale-NUS College's common curriculum, undergraduates at the new college will be required to take modules with the names of "Thinking and Writing" and "Reasoning with Data." The instrumental view of education in the changes can hardly be clearer, an instrumentalism that is narrowly focused on economically productive "skills," radically stripped of historical critique, and severely starved of intellectual substance. In other words, what the liberal arts set out to combat, but now find themselves utterly routed.

It should come as no surprise that the People's Action Party (PAP) government would reassert its control over free thought on college campuses; authoritarianism is in its genes. (Yesterday was the 59th anniversary of Operation Coldstore, the British security operation urged by Lee Kuan Yew to remove his political opponents.) There is really no hope for change in the party. There may be debate, even dissent, within its ranks, but it has organized itself in such a way that no independent thinking can rise to the top. It is afraid of free thought and so will crush it, especially in the fertile ground of higher  education.

The only remaining question is what Yale-NUS alumni will do with the privileged education that has been given to them. Although there are many problematic aspects to the college, not least the whiff of neocolonialism, the college has nevertheless been a hotbed of intellectual inquiry and the birthplace of much student activism. As of 2021, 626 students have graduated from Yale-NUS, and there will be more by 2025. They are living or will live productive and useful lives as individuals, but together they can do so much more. If the Yale-NUS spirit is to continue to burn strong, isn't it time to organize for transformative social action?
 
Jee Leong Koh
February 3, 2022

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