Youth in the Army

Author: Leong Choon Cheong
Publisher: Federal Publications, 1978
Condition: Softcover, foxing on a few pages, yellowed edges, interior generally clean
The hopes of a society – the future it promises– rest on its youths. To know some of these youths, to enter the worlds they move in, even if we see only etched outlines, is to gain a glimpse of and possibly a basis from which we can shape the direction the society will take. This book is an attempt to provide some of that knowledge that will place the reader within the framework of the Singapore youth's outlook, preoccupations, moral sense and values and awareness of his environment and the world outside.
The focus of the author's attention is on youths in the Singapore Army. Indeed, the bulk of this book is a collection of case studies and sketches of army boys: of the ordinary foot soldiers, the officer-cadets, and the problem soldiers and soldiers fallen into drug-taking. There is also a succinct discussion of military life – of the adjustment or maladjustment of youths just initiated into the military regime, of their attitudes towards the Army at various stages of their national service stint, of their motivation and performance as soldiers. Included here, too, are the army slang words that they use or are exposed to.
But the interest of the materials and the discussion goes beyond the confines of the military. In fact, the initial desire behind the preparation of the portraitures and sketches was to obtain some indications about some of the Singapore youths' ways of thinking and their ways of appraising people and things around them, and at the same time to gather some ideas about causal antecedents that make them what they are. Hence each of the case studies gives the subject's biographical background, home environment, educational and occupational history, self-perceptions, prejudices, beliefs and ideals. Receiving full attention, too, are some of the general ideas immanent in the materials of the case studies - ideas relating to the spirit of endeavour, the acquisition of morality, the role of religion in society, etc.