This book seeks to show that ‘the history of citizenship education in Singapore is essentially the history of crisis management in the context of a developmental state’ (p. 10). It argues that ‘the Singapore “developmental state” maintained its hegemony and legitimacy’ (p. 180) through reforms and recalibrations of its educational policies in response to perceived crises of nation-building. Other than an introduction and a concluding reflection chapter, the book is divided into six chapters framed around each set of crises — the ‘Crisis of Merdeka’, the ‘Crisis of national survival’, the ‘Crisis of “deculturalisation”’, the ‘Crises of legitimacy, national identity and Asian values’, the ‘Crisis of historical amnesia’ and the ‘Crisis of national security and social cohesion’. Each crisis forms the explanatory context for a major citizenship education programme which the Singapore government introduced between the 1950s and the present day.

The book will resonate with young Singaporeans like myself who experienced and encountered many of these policies and pedagogical materials. Its strength is Chia's rich and detailed use of documents such as policy reports and curriculum materials to demonstrate how the Singapore government's educational objectives translated into the introduction and revision of programmes and curriculum materials aimed at the inculcation of a common consciousness, and a common set of values and ideals, among Singapore's young. This contribution will help students and scholars unfamiliar with Singapore to understand the central role the national education system plays in nation-building and state-formation through ‘socializing students into their roles as future citizens in Singapore’ (p. 1). They will also gain an awareness of the cultural challenges and social problems Singapore faced throughout its post-1945 history that motivated this long-standing and ongoing use of citizenship education to forge a national identity. A history of Singapore's education system, as this book shows, is partly a history of how Singaporeans are brought up to not just be well-skilled participants in economic development, but also morally-upright, cohesive and patriotic citizens.

In other respects, the book's arguments and observations are more provocative and insightful for a non-Singaporean academic audience than a Singaporean one. While Chia neatly brings together the extensive literature written on the topic before 2010, the engagement of more recent scholarship produced in the last few years might warrant reconsideration of some observations, for instance, that ‘the post 1965 history of Singapore is only just beginning to be written’ (p. 20). While he convincingly shows that citizenship education has been a constant objective of Singapore's educational policies, his argument that the latter allowed the government to maintain its hegemony and legitimacy is less compelling. In the first place, ‘hegemony’ and ‘legitimacy’ are different concepts that would have been more illuminating for Singapore's case had they been treated discretely instead of interchangeably in this examination. Chia's own evidence and observations suggest that these policies may have achieved a degree of ideological consensus among Singaporeans with regards to some values and ideals, for example multiculturalism and meritocracy, without discouraging or retarding the vocal criticism of the government that has risen in recent decades. The conundrum that Chia has to address is this: the PAP's overwhelming electoral support before the 1980s came from an adult population who did not go through these citizenship education programmes, whereas the post-1965 Singaporeans who were on the receiving end of this socialisation became the more vocal, and more articulate and demanding electorate that the PAP government has had to reckon with more recently.

Chia could have been more cautious and critical with his reliance on the concept of a developmental state, ‘which derives its legitimacy from promoting and sustaining economic development’ (p. 4), to frame the book. It does not appear particularly helpful for his purpose and arguments, and distracts from the complex and nuanced motivations behind Singapore's education policies that the book actually suggest. More explanation and substantiation of how these curricular changes contributed to the maintenance of the developmental state would be helpful. Assertions like ‘through the active manipulation of cultural values such as Confucianism and Asian values, the developmental state reinforced its legitimacy through the articulation of the desired moral and civic values that were ultimately beneficial to the cause [sic] economic development’ (p. 95) in chapter 4 are made without really being explicated or proven. Instead, his evidence suggests that Singapore's cultural and education policies were often aimed at insulating its youth from the perceived social ills and harms of being a state only focused on economic development and material advancement — materialism, individualism, moral deficiencies and the lack of national identity.