Contemporary Educational Issues in Multicultural Immigrant Societies

Abstract

Education was an extremely important focus of Tan Kah Kee’s many philanthropic activities that spanned China and the Nanyang. Indeed, his biographer has identified as first among his three legacies his contribution to a “model of modernization through the promotion of education and industrial and technological development” (Yong 1987 355). He established schools in his home village of Cheng Mei and a university in Amoy. In Singapore, where he spent the major part of his life, he made similar important contributions funding numerous Chinese language schools, including Chinese High School, as well as establishing a Chinese language teacher training college just prior to the Japanese invasion of Singapore. But Tan did not take a narrow view of educational needs as he also was a major contributor to the Anglo-Chinese School and Raffles College-both highly important English-language educational institutions. Tan made these contributions as an immigrant in a society characterized by great ethnic diversity, a society that today we would easily recognize as being, at least in demographic terms, “multicultural.”