By
suhaila tahoney
This is source tells me about how vernacular education was like during the Japanese Occupation. The source states that "Most Malay and Tamil schools continued to operate during the Japanese Occupation of Singapore, though with lower enrolment numbers compared to just before the war. Some Chinese schools remained open, but attendance at these schools was drastically lower than before. In 1943, there were 4,572 students attending Malay schools, 787 attending Indian or Tamil schools, and approximately 3,000 attending Chinese schools." which shows that during the Japanese Occupation, most teenagers and students went to Japanese schools where Japanese was taught as the main language.
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This source is the recount of a person's mother's schooling experience during the Japanese Occupation. I chose this source as it is effective in telling me the education related difficulties and struggles teenagers faced during the occupation period. The source states that "When the Japanese Occupation started in February 1942, she had to stop school. After that, for the three years of the Japanese Occupation, she attended a Japanese school, had to learn Japanese, but could not remember after that what she had learnt. She attributes it to not wanting to remember anything associated with the Japanese." It shows how the Japanese made it compulsory for every student to learn their language and despite that, there were still students adamant in learning Japanese.
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This source is a picture taken during the Japanese Occupation showing how the classroom environment was like during the occupation and how the teaching was conducted. In the source, it shows a teacher writing something on the blackboard in what appears as Japanese. The other teacher is holding a paper fan and is dressed in Japanese cultural clothing. It seems that the students are being taught the Japanese language and Japan's culture. I chose this source as it is effective in telling me about what the atmosphere and the content taught in schools during the occupation was.
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This source is a transcript of an interview with Dr Tan Ban Cheng, a survivor of the Japanese Occupation from 1942 - 1945. The transcript includes him sharing his schooling experience during the occupation. I chose this source because it tells me of how the Japanese conducted education during their reign and how it impacted the students in that time. "TBC: On the whole, I think the study was not as serious as before. We were rather lax partly because the teachers themselves did not know how they were supposed to teach. They themselves were not very proficient in the teaching of the language. And because of that I think the pace was very slow." This shows that education was greatly impacted in the sense that the students and teachers no longer took it seriously on the account that the Japanese were significantly less concerned with the studies of the people. The Japanese also took away certain subjects like English and English Literature, but kept subjects like Geography and Mathematics. They also taught Japanese, however, even some of the teaching staff were not fully proficient at Japanese themselves therefore the teaching was not as effective.
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