DOES it matter if, as a Sunday Times survey indicated, a good number of Singaporeans could fail a citizenship test on familiarity with national symbols and history? Maybe not. Such a quiz is often less test than formality in the process of acquiring citizenship in countries that require some knowledge of the adoptive land, for easier assimilation. Singapore conducts no such test in the citizenship application process. The nation seeks practical value in applicants, such as skills, ideas, adaptability. A cultural knowledge quiz may be more a test of memory than of knowledge or cultural sensitivity. Degree of difficulty would, in any case, vary depending on how many questions make up the test and how much detail each demands. That was just one problem with the recent dummy quiz set by The Sunday Times. There were only 10 questions, but familiarity was sought on such specifics as what the national flag's crescent moon and five stars meant.

Nevertheless, despite this being an unscientific sampling, the survey serves to raise a topic that Singaporeans discuss occasionally more with individual self-consciousness than in national self-reflection. National icons, defining moments in its history and founding figures are both a starting point and a summation of national identity and consciousness. They matter, but largely as part of a wider knowledge of shared national experience on which to develop values and principles to guide national endeavours. Beginning in lower primary school, children not only raise the flag, sing the anthem and recite the Pledge in civics training, they also learn the meaning of the symbols. As adults they may well forget the symbols' particular details but perhaps not their essential significance.

Since the 1970s, the Singapore Armed Forces has explained to national service recruits the rationale and object of their role. Since 1997, the National Education initiative in schools has sought to remind the post-1965 generation of the struggle for independence and survival. National Education efforts that Nexus coordinates and leads among several organisations now reach soldiers, civil servants and the grassroots as well as students. For those still left out, there is the National Heritage Board website, one click away, offering a national symbol kit and more. In the end, national identity itself is part of a bigger whole. As Singapore matures as a nation, Singaporeans will become confident and cohesive enough to make room within themselves for Asean and other regional identities, if not think of themselves also as global citizens.