Issue 1_ Exploring Citzenship and Governance

Exploring Citizenship and Governance Social Studies

Table of contents What does it mean to be a citizen of my country?01 How can we work for the good of society?03 How do we decide what is good for society?02 Sample Essays 04

What does it mean for me to be a citizen of my country? 01 Legal status, sense of identity, participating in public affairs

How to be a citizen in Singapore? By descent Any child born to a Singapore citizen By marriage A person married to a Singapore citizen + lived in Singapore for at least two years By naturalization PRs for 2-6 years can apply for citizenship

Being a citizen, gives a person legal rights, duties and responsibilities in a country Examples of such in Singapore are free speech (Art.14 of the Constitution), freedom of religion (Art 15), rights in respect of education (Art 16)

Comes from a shared belief that we all come from the same country + share aspects of a common way of life + common practices Work towards bettering Singapore and involvement in common spaces and build civic consciousness Sense of identity Participating in public affairs

How do we decide what is good for society? 02 Legal status, sense of identity, participating in public affairs

Challenges in deciding what is good for society? Differing needs and interests Different people hold different things important e.g: those with no cars who care about public transport vs those with cars who care about road networks Differing priorities Different people have different priorities e.g: Citizens can’t agree on what the government should worry about more, healthcare/education Unequal sharing of costs Some groups may have to bear a higher cost than others e.g: By building more expressways to create a better transport system, ppl are bothered by the construction noise

TLDR; Having limited resources makes it hard to implement changes Singapore is one of the smallest countries in the world + small population + few monetary and natural resources

Not In My Backyard Syndrome When local citizens self-organise themselves to prevent the building of what they see as an undesirable project near their homes