PS2249: Government and Politics of Singapore

Sem: AY18/19 Semester 1

Lecturer: A/P Bilveer Singh

Overview: Took this mod because I’ve heard a lot of good things about it but I guess it didn’t exactly meet my expectations? If you’re someone that expects more structure when it comes to teaching and content (like I did), this mod might not be the best for you, as Prof Singh loves to share about his experiences to a point where he ends up deviating from the lecture topic. Very often, I came to class not knowing what notes to write and there were times when my word doc would just comprise of 1-2 lines. It didn’t help that lectures were at 8am and almost everyone (prof included) wasn’t fully awake yet. Slides were also kinda messy (poor colour coordination – Windows 2003 anyone?) but at least they did help keep me on track with the points that prof was intending to make for lecture that week.

That said, Prof Singh does try to keep the workload for this mod as low as possible. The reading list are just suggested readings. In fact, much of the lecture content is directly based off his book Understanding Singapore Politics, so if you feel kinda lost in lectures and want more solid content, just get his book and read based on the topic for that week (tip: each weekly topic roughly corresponds to the title of each chapter in the book – I learnt about this early on in the mod and it was a hugeee lifesaver!!). Depending on the sem, Prof Singh might also arrange for dialogues with top political leaders in Singapore. For us, we got to interact with K Shanmugam and Chee Hong Tat to get a glimpse of socio-political issues from the ministerial perspective. Just a word of caution though: if you're an aspiring PS major in your first sem, this mod is more of a history/ current affairs mod, where the workload and content might not be an accurate reflection of other PS mods. Would recommend that you take mods such as PS2237 or PS2240 to get a better sense of what PS mods feel like.

Assessment:

Class Participation (20%): We had to do a short presentation for one of the tutorial sessions based on the topic for that week (mine was on Singapore’s trade unions), before moving on to discussions about said topic. I think my grade suffered due to this component, as my tutor at that time (not Prof Singh) wasn’t very good at facilitating discussions and ended up allowing a few very outspoken ones to dominate the conversation. It didn’t help that he graded us based on the frequency of our contributions. But I heard that tutorials under Prof Singh are a lot more chill as one is only expected to speak during their presentation…

Book Review (10%): For my sem, we had to write a 1000-word book review on Prof Singh’s newly launched book Critical Issues in Asset Building in Singapore’s Development. However, I heard that this component was removed for subsequent iterations of the mod so this might not be very applicable to you.

Term Essay of 2k Words (20%): Prof Singh releases the term essay questions right in the beginning of the sem, so one has nearly the entire sem to complete the essay. In fact, more adventurous ones might even consider reading ahead and starting on the essay early, as the essay topics tend to be based on very recent events which are only marginally related to the topics covered in the module. Starting early also gives you ample time to consult your tutors to ensure you are on the right track, and might possibly save you some of the stress associated with the final weeks of the sem.

Final Exam (50%): While the 50% weightage might seem intimidating to some, finals were actually pretty chill for my batch. The format was 3-choose-2 essay questions, and Prof Singh pretty much told us 2 of the questions that he has set, so I simply wrote out full essays for these questions and memorised them LOL. It helped that one of these exam questions was very similar to that of the term essay, which meant that all I had to do was to replicate my term essay. Do note that this might vary across semesters, as I’ve heard of friends in subsequent semesters who didn’t get exam tips, so beware.