It’s all about the money.

Irony of learning “mother tongue” (8 May 2010)

SINGAPORE’S colonial history, present and future progress have always been based on English language proficiency. Our annual foreign inflow of capital investments worth billions of dollars comes primarily from English-speaking countries or multinational companies (MNCs) that use English as their official language, and whose decisions to do so stem from their ease and confidence in operating and communicating in an internationally accepted language environment which is prevalent here.

With such an open economy, ‘mother tongue’ language has no relevance to one’s race or culture. If parents speak a different language at home other than one from their own culture, it is to be expected that their children will speak that language as well.

As more families use English at home, we need to then approach Chinese language education similar to science and mathematics. We need to do so without being culturally chauvinistic or nationalistic, but in a practical and impersonal manner with the main focus on overall education quality and well-roundedness of students.

Forcing pupils to learn a language they are not familiar with from childbirth or is like forcing pupils in China or India to learn German. If culture is so important, the Government should mandate that all families speak their true ‘mother tongue’ at home. We will then not have this debate as the respective race or culture will know Chinese, Malay, or Tamil well.

It is a well-known fact that education here is stressful for most pupils and a language proficiency requirement that is not important to one’s economic success is not productive at all.

We hear of productivity improvements needed in industry, but we also need to discuss pupil as well as parent productivity, as the amount of time and energy spent by all on mother tongue proficiency does not show any greater return on their investment.

It does make one culturally confident to know one’s mother tongue but then again there are millions of educated Chinese citizens who are economically disadvantaged. They speak Mandarin very well, but Chinese MNCs continue to hire expatriates as the locals do not speak the international language.

Just a reminder before we begin – this entire debate has been about Mother Tongue at the primary level. The whole purpose of primary education is to lay a solid foundation in key intellectual areas and to impart values considered desirable. It appears that a considerable number of Singaporeans neither want even a foundational level of mother tongue knowledge for their children, nor desire to teach them important life lessons like the value of hard work and the importance of working to overcome one’s own inadequacies.

What do we have instead? As this letter shows, an unhealthy emphasis on the monetary value of education.

Before we get to that, however, let us dismantle some of the usual unsound presumptions.

Forcing pupils to learn a language they are not familiar with from childbirth or is like forcing pupils in China or India to learn German.

I would be thoroughly amazed if a child was born who was familiar with any language at all from the moment he or she exited the womb. Horrible phrasing aside, I get the essential point – that making children learn a language with which they have little contact from childhood is akin to pulling teeth. Rephrasing it to make sense doesn’t make it any less of a flawed argument however – because I suppose all children have intimate contact with mathematics and science from early childhood? Don’t children all also have to work hard to pick up the principles of mathematics and science when they get to primary school?

Young minds are malleable. It takes some doing on the part of the author to invert blame and take a potshot at the system when it is parents’ inability or unwillingness to expose their children to two languages from a young age, that makes learning a second language so difficult for their kids. The mother tongue requirement is no secret to anybody who has a child here. Even if a couple is English-speaking, it is surely not too much to ask for them to attempt to expose the child to Mandarin from an early age. There is lots of Chinese-language media out there, lots of Chinese books in the libraries and bookstores, and lots of people who speak Chinese. At least make the effort. Our author apparently does not believe in this and instead thinks it is the system that is flawed. Yes, for sure it is flawed, but the answer is, again, to refine teaching and assessment methods rather than resort to the easy way out of simply cutting the weightage.

If culture is so important, the Government should mandate that all families speak their true ‘mother tongue’ at home.

I fucking wish. I wish that Singaporeans realized culture is important and will stop seeing education as a merely a means towards accumulating financial wealth.

It is a well-known fact that education here is stressful for most pupils and a language proficiency requirement that is not important to one’s economic success is not productive at all.

Alright, she came right out and said it. This is the main point of the letter, succintly expressed. The only purpose of an education is to create economic success. Forget imparting values, forget equipping children with the less tangible skills they inevitably need in order to navigate through life. The only reason anyone should go to school is to learn how to make money, and all the things they learn must be geared towards making money. So much for the well-roundedness our writer spoke of earlier in her letter, eh?

This is a terrible point of view to take. Of course a part of education is to train students to be able to support themselves and the country financially as adults, but it has to be more than that. From schools come morals and the equipping of students with the necessary social and communicative skills to be properly-functioning members of society. And in our diverse society, these skills necessarily require at least foundational knowledge of a language other than English. A very common example would be a doctor here in Singapore – he is likely to encounter a large variety of patients who for instance can only speak Chinese or dialect. If he can only speak English, will this not make life considerably more difficult for him? Won’t it be a lot harder for him to understand and care for his patients?

Knowledge of a second language also makes it much easier to be in contact with society around one. Playing down the importance of this second language gives off the impression that one would rather remain in the monolingual ivory tower, far above the peasants below. Rather than trying to communicate with and understand those who cannot speak English, it appears that people like that would rather form a small, closed cabal of English speakers. That cannot be good for the country, and it is anyway an exceedingly unpleasant attitude to take.

Besides, other than what’s already been covered ad nauseam, what sort of message is this sending the kids? That the main objective in life is to make tons of money? That sure as hell is not what I would ever want my children to learn. There is much more to life and much more to school than just making money and learning to make money. We cannot send such a message of avarice to our younger generation.

Suffice to say that this letter is awful for the very unpleasant message it contains on several levels, and my hope is that this message does not contaminate the minds of our younger generation.

Let parents decide (8 May 2010)

WE HAVE seen so much feedback and negative comments on the proposal to reduce the weighting of mother tongue in the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE), but the solution is simple.

Give parents the choice.

Those who are strongly against the reduction, for their own reasons, can choose for the weighting to maintain at 25 per cent for their children. Those who prefer it reduced, like me, can choose that option.

The curriculum can still remain the same but the decision on percentage value can be made by parents before Primary6, as they will then realise (I hope) their child’s level of understanding of the language.

If parents feel strongly about their mother tongue, they will be inclined to choose to maintain the 25 per cent weighting for the language.

I prefer to follow many others and give my two children the best opportunities possible in their long journey ahead, with minimal restrictions.

Please allow me to choose.

I am disturbed by this letter because its main point is that parents ought to very early on decide what their children are good at, based mainly upon examination results (he doesn’t explicitly say this, but come on) in primary school. Interest does not come into it, and the child’s own views seem not to come into it. I should think by that age the child is old enough to at least give some input and influence the process.

And of course, if it is specifically only for Mother Tongue, that will again leave those who are poor at other subjects out in the cold. It can be a stopgap solution at best but only if parents – and children – are given such a choice for the other PSLE subjects as well. It is important that Mother Tongue should not be singled out unfairly.