Teaching Japanese students in Singapore, the history of the World War 2 and the role played by the Japanese can be difficult and delicate.
Initially as I was reading the article, I had thought it was our local government who made it compulsory for the Japanese students to learn about the impact of the Japanese Occupation comprehensively. To my surprise, it was the Japanese teachers who had initiated the covering of Singapore and Japanese wartime history to much detail, to the extent of teaching the students about Singapore geography and culture to its economics.
On top of that, the teachers made great efforts to use materials that taught the students about the brutal realities of the war which is a stark contrast to the official textbooks used in Japan. Compared to the materials not officially endorsed by the Japanese education authorities, the war and subsequent Occupation in China, Korea and Southeast Asia only took up a modest two hundred pages in an official history textbook with a careful tone. As expected, the wartime events were stated as a matter-of-factly.
In addition, as I read that students in Japan will learn about the horrors of the atomic bomb denotations in Nagasaki and Hiroshima without understanding why the Americans were pressurized to do so. I cannot help but worry that the Japanese youths will not be able to understand the tension between his or her country and the victimized countries.
Being able to understand that it is difficult to present the brutal side of our forefathers to the younger generation, I would really like to thank the Japanese schools which have gave the Japanese students the privilege to be much more aware about the relations between its home country and China or South Korea.
Thus I really hope that this privilege would also be given to more Japanese citizens, not just in Singapore. :)
posted by mickeymonkey @ 4:25 pm
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