Singapore's Aesthetic Education Policy: Ideological Formation, Institutional Support, and Practical Boundaries

Abstract

Singapore's aesthetic education policy is not merely a reform of school art courses; it is a policy practice formed across school education, public cultural services, and everyday life in a multiethnic society. Taking aesthetic education, multicultural education, and public cultural services as analytical references, this paper examines the conceptual formation, institutional support, and practical pathways of Singapore's aesthetic education policy. The study argues that Singapore does not confine arts education to skill training for a small group of students. Instead, it links aesthetic experience with cultural understanding, personality development, and public communication through curricula, teacher professional development, museum education, community arts, and family cultural experience. However, Singapore's experience depends on specific institutional conditions, including its city-state scale, public housing arrangements, and strong interdepartmental coordination. For China, the more relevant lesson is not to replicate individual projects, but to build stable connections among school curricula, local cultural resources, and public cultural services.