Thursday, 19 November 2009, 12:36 am | 688 views
Amnesty International Press
Release:
“If Singapore has pretensions to being an international commercial
center, especially in the age of the internet, its legislature must
immediately act to bring the country in line with commonly accepted
concepts of free expression and media activity.” (Read the full
release on TOC
Facebook.)
Andrew Loh
When I was in primary and secondary school, Chinese class was
always a struggle. I absolutely hated the classes. And when there
was a test on a particular day, I would dread going to school. I
could never understand why I was expected to learn those strange,
difficult-to-write and impossible-to-read characters of the Chinese
language. Even though Singapore adopted the “jian pi zi”
(short-form) Chinese language characters, they still made no sense
to me.
In class, my teacher would purposely pick on those who were
worst at the language, to read out loud from the textbooks. It was
nerve-wrecking and a torture. I would perspire spontaneously and
dip my head behind my classmate seated in my front of me, all in
the hope that I could be invisible.
I remember once when, to my terror, I was called upon to read a
passage from the textbook. I think I was in primary four and I
could only read very basic, simple words like “wo” (me), “ni”
(you), “mei you” (none), etc. I stood up, picked up the textbook
and opened my mouth – but nothing came out as I didn’t know how to
read the very first word of that passage.
The teacher, bless her for being so patient, had to help me.
After another three words, I was stumped again. More help from the
teacher. And it went on like this for a while. I could sense my
classmates turning impatient and I hoped that I would be relieved
of my embarrassment.
It was the same in secondary school, so much so that when I was
to sit for my O Levels exams, I decided to skip it entirely. I
stayed home and studied my other subjects. Needless to say, I
received an F9 for my Chinese O Levels exams. However, I never felt
bad about this. I was just glad all those years of misery were
over.
All my brothers and sisters (eleven of them)
struggled with their second language and none, as far as I know,
were any good in it, even now. I see the same thing happening with
my nieces and nephews who are in school presently.
I was fortunate that the English
language was more manageable for me. I never really had any
problems with it in school. In fact, it was a joy to breeze through
English language lessons. I do not know why I had such an affinity
with the language, given that my family spoke Teochew at home and
hardly any English at all.
To be honest, despite my
experiences with the Chinese language in school, I still feel it is
good if one could be proficient in more than one language. However,
I also feel we should not impose this on everyone. While I am
ambivalent about how my personal experiences may have affected my
self-confidence in my younger years, I would hate for others –
children, especially – to go through what I went through.
The bilingual policy needs to be tweaked – and I am glad the
Ministry of Education had looked into this. For some of us it may
have come too late, way too late, but it is good that someone like
the Minister Mentor has realised the shortcomings of the policy. I
would not discard the bilingual policy, but I would want to make it
optional. Only those with the ability to master the language should
volunteer for bilingual education.
If the Minister Mentor indeed feels he has
made a mistake with the policy, then perhaps he should also look
into these other issues which have resulted from the policy as
well. Language streamlining for example, led to dialects being
banned from schools, television, and radio programmes. The
resulting communication barrier between the older dialect-speaking
generation and the younger generation brought up in an English plus
mother tongue environment is an issue we should worry about.
MM Lee’s admission at this time gives us an opportunity to take
a more comprehensive look at the policy. We should see how we could
fine-tune it, and look more closely at how it has affected society
as a whole.
Source: The Online Citizen