Description
This is the fifteenth year of the stewardship of the present Government in Singapore. It coincides with the fiftieth birthday of Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, and provides the occasion and the justification for this book.
Very few human collectivities in the world have evolved such a strong sense of independent nationhood in such a brief span of years. In fact, it was even briefer than 15 years, for Singapore as an independent and sovereign political entity. entity came into being only on 9 August 1965.
Brief though our existence as a nation has been, there is little doubt that most Singaporeans today, and especially the younger generation, bear the mark of a distinct nation- hood, if not yet on their brows, at least in their cerebration and in their feelings, as the result of a common existence. in a common territory, with a shared system of secular values and way of life which nurtures them today, and of which they are the direct new offspring. There is even less doubt of the desire and the clear intention to preserve the independence and identity of the island republic, on the basis of secular values, multi-racial policies, and of the economics of rapid modernization.
Our inability to boast a hoary past has its compensations. An orientation to the future is much more evident in our thinking and planning than is the case with more tradition-bound societies. Nonetheless, it is important that the younger generation of Singaporeans should develop a keen and vivid appreciation of the ingredients social, political, economic and educational which went into the making of our nation.
