Mandarin, Malay or Tamil Language is MORE important?
Alright, take your pick - Mandarin, Malay or Tamil?
For starters, this is THE DEBATE of the MOTHER TONGUE LANGUAGE (MTL) and why is it that in their efforts to UPGRADE the Singapore's Education System, MOE have decided to MAKE changes to the weightage of the MTL?
And after all the hype, Education Minister Ng Eng Hen declared no, this was misunderstood and "apologised for confusion".
Ok.
The article No change to Mother Tongue weightage, says PM on Yahoo News have welcomed 86 open comments.
Some of these comments I shall say, IGNORES the interest of the MINORITIES and being too engrossed in their writing, these comments usually end up with a debate over whether Mandarin language and the change in Manadarin weightage.
Hello commentors, I really enjoy reading your take on this issue, but if you are a dilingent commentor, you WOULD have realised that this IS a debate about 3 mother tongue languages.
It amazes me how suddenly commentors talk about "language = culture" and all sorts of theories. IRONIC isn't it because from WHAT we see, Singapore is no longer the CULTURAL country who prioritses the ethnicities of its citizens. Yeah ok, we have chinese,malays,indians and eurasians, but this IS THE 2010 and now we have to include the 101 new ethnicity due to the new foreign talents that we have NOW.
I appreciate that we HAVE to learn to appreciate our culture , race , language but I wonder what does all that COMES DOWN TO at the end of the day? Like I've mentioned before, being BILINGUAL is good, but what KIND of bilingual you are matters alot. (Which 2 language?!)
Singing out loud "we are One Singapore" doesn't help because we know that deep rooted inside us is pickled sourness because we know that each one of us is just DIFFERENT because of the tongues we speak and what MTL grade goes on our Report Books.
Wouldn't it be a greater idea by making students be trilingual instead? English, MTL and 3rd Language. I know MOE has this special programme for kids with excellent language skills to take up on a 3rd Language (Japanese, French, German etc) but why can't we move it towards taking a SINGAPOREAN 3rd Language - ie either Mandarin, Malay or Tamil.
It will be interesting to see if these kids can really benefit in the future by taking on another language that is not of their culture's.
Oh wells, if the government reduces the weightage of MTL, it might affect the Bachelor Degrees Majoring in Languages(Mandarin, Malay, Tamil) and their credibility in the working world.
It's an unhappy world out there. Everyone knows but we just prefer to keep mum and debate endlessly on the internet.
Sigh.
xoxo
thmbln
For starters, this is THE DEBATE of the MOTHER TONGUE LANGUAGE (MTL) and why is it that in their efforts to UPGRADE the Singapore's Education System, MOE have decided to MAKE changes to the weightage of the MTL?
And after all the hype, Education Minister Ng Eng Hen declared no, this was misunderstood and "apologised for confusion".
Ok.
The article No change to Mother Tongue weightage, says PM on Yahoo News have welcomed 86 open comments.
Some of these comments I shall say, IGNORES the interest of the MINORITIES and being too engrossed in their writing, these comments usually end up with a debate over whether Mandarin language and the change in Manadarin weightage.
Hello commentors, I really enjoy reading your take on this issue, but if you are a dilingent commentor, you WOULD have realised that this IS a debate about 3 mother tongue languages.
It amazes me how suddenly commentors talk about "language = culture" and all sorts of theories. IRONIC isn't it because from WHAT we see, Singapore is no longer the CULTURAL country who prioritses the ethnicities of its citizens. Yeah ok, we have chinese,malays,indians and eurasians, but this IS THE 2010 and now we have to include the 101 new ethnicity due to the new foreign talents that we have NOW.
I appreciate that we HAVE to learn to appreciate our culture , race , language but I wonder what does all that COMES DOWN TO at the end of the day? Like I've mentioned before, being BILINGUAL is good, but what KIND of bilingual you are matters alot. (Which 2 language?!)
Singing out loud "we are One Singapore" doesn't help because we know that deep rooted inside us is pickled sourness because we know that each one of us is just DIFFERENT because of the tongues we speak and what MTL grade goes on our Report Books.
Wouldn't it be a greater idea by making students be trilingual instead? English, MTL and 3rd Language. I know MOE has this special programme for kids with excellent language skills to take up on a 3rd Language (Japanese, French, German etc) but why can't we move it towards taking a SINGAPOREAN 3rd Language - ie either Mandarin, Malay or Tamil.
It will be interesting to see if these kids can really benefit in the future by taking on another language that is not of their culture's.
Oh wells, if the government reduces the weightage of MTL, it might affect the Bachelor Degrees Majoring in Languages(Mandarin, Malay, Tamil) and their credibility in the working world.
It's an unhappy world out there. Everyone knows but we just prefer to keep mum and debate endlessly on the internet.
Sigh.
xoxo
thmbln
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I AGREE!!!
ReplyDeleteI’m a Chinese and Mandarin would be the only one I would talk about, since it is the language I was taught in school, not Malay and Tamil. Meaning… what the hell do I know about the other two languages to even comment about them?!
ReplyDeleteI haven’t been paying close attention to this news story, so I’m not sure if the Malays and Indians have said anything about the matter. So the people talking about Mandarin are likely Chinese like I am, and probably think in the same line. And considering that the Chinese is the majority, the noise we make is always going to be much bigger, and get more attention too.
Sadly, it is in this case that the voices of the Malays and Indians are likely to get drowned out.
I agree with you that it's unfair for people who don't have a choice in their second language. Yes, being bilingual is important, but what if I don't use my second language AT ALL? I spend twelve years and thousands of hours studying just for a grade??
ReplyDeleteI don't agree that language alone is enough to preserve culture anyway. Culture isn't static; it can't be frozen. It makes me quite mad when I read reasons that try to emotionally blackmail us into accepting having a mother tongue language by saying that it allows us to communicate with our elders.
WELL. Language isn't the only you can communicate. And my elders don't even speak proper mother tongue!