By SETH MYDANS

SINGAPORE - It was like a college social event, a classroom full of young men and women seeking the secrets of romance.
They had assembled for the first class of “Love Relations for Life: A Journey of Romance, Love and Sexuality.”
There was giggling and banter among the students, but that was all part of the course as their teacher, Suki Tong, led them into the basics of dating, falling in love and staying together.
The course, in its second year at two polytechnic institutes, is the latest of many, mostly futile, campaigns by Singapore’s government to get its citizens to mate and multiply. Its popularity last year has led to talk of its expansion through the higher education system.
Last year Singapore’s fertility rate fell to a record low of 1.24 children per woman of childbearing age, one of the lowest in the world. It was the 28th year in a row Singapore had stayed below the rate of 2.5 children needed to maintain the population.
But even a replacement-level rate would not be enough for today’s planners. The government recently announced that it was aiming to increase the population by more than 40 percent over the next half-century, to 6.5 million from the current 4.5 million.
“Teaching our youth in school how to fall in love” is a good solution, wrote Andy Ho, a senior writer at The Straits Times, a government-friendly newspaper .
In 1991, for example, when the government began offering cash bonuses to couples with more than two children, the newspaper printed tips for having sex in the back seat of a car, including directions to some of the “darkest, most secluded and most romantic spots” for parking. It suggested covering the windows with newspapers for privacy.
Singapore is known for its campaigns of self-improvement, including efforts to get residents to be polite, to smile, to be tidy, to speak proper English and to not chew gum.
In 1984, the country’s master planner, Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, declared that too few of the country’s most eligible women, those with college degrees, were marrying and having children. He set up the Social Development Unit to address the problem, and since then the government has been the country’s principal matchmaker.
Singaporeans quite seriously describe their society as being driven by a local concept called kiasu, a desire not so much to get ahead as to not lose out. This singlemindedness seems to leave little room for romance or procreation.
It is a lot to ask of a college course to break attitudes like this. One 20-year-old graduate of last year’s inaugural course at Singapore Polytechnic still seemed imbued more with kiasu than romance.
“I am not interested now in love relations because I want to continue my studies,” said Kamal Prakash, who hopes to be a lecturer in mathematics. “If I concentrate on love relations, I won’t be able to concentrate on my studies.”