Chinese education in Singapore: As you sow, so will you reap
November 26th, 2009 | 
Author: By Lim Mun Fah from Sin Chew Daily
Singapore used to be a Chinese educational bastion for Southeast Asia with the most comprehensive Chinese-language educational system. But the deviation of its educational policy had changed everything in just two to three decades. Nanyang University, a leading Chinese university in Southeast Asia for 25 years, became part of the history in 1980. As nearly 100% of students were enrolled in English stream primary schools, English became the first language for all primary and secondary schools in Singapore. Since then, Chinese education had basically disappeared from Singapore, leaving only Chinese language teaching.
Under such a circumstances, the Chinese language standard of the new generation of Chinese Singaporeans is low, it is not surprising even to hear some of them saying: “I hate Chinese.”
However, the Singapore government has carried out many reforms in Chinese language teaching over the past 40 years. A Chinese speaking campaign has also been carried out with the hope to change the habit of speaking dialects in Chinese families and make Chinese a common language for them.
However, just as Singaporean scholar Lee Guan Kin said: “The closures of Chinese primary and secondary schools, as well as the Nanyang University, together with the deviations of the bilingual educational system had rapidly deteriorated the soil quality of Chinese language and culture in Singapore, causing a significant cultural gap phenomenon.”
Therefore, a few decades after the Chinese speaking campaign was launched, even though the country is now having fewer Chinese Singaporeans who speak dialects, Chinese is still unable to replace dialects as the communication language in Chinese families. Instead, there is a rapid increase in the number of Chinese students speaking English at home. The latest data shows that the number of students who speak English at home has increased to the current 60% from 10% in 1980.
What are the far-reaching impact when Chinese families are no longer the mainstream? An editorial from Zaobao said that Singapore may someday become a single English society.
Singapore’s Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew is aware of the seriousness of the crisis, he said that they should start from the actual situation of the students, including to teach Chinese in English and having more creative Chinese teaching methods to enhance student’s interest in Chinese language.
Standing on the opposite shore, we are watching the decline of Chinese education in Singapore. We always think that the fundamental factor that causes the problem is the status of Chinese language in the country. Although the rapid rise of China has made the Singapore government to encourage its people to learn Chinese and improve their Chinese teaching methods, it is worth pondering whether it is correct to learn Chinese based on the motive of economic interests instead of emphasising the language’s cultural value and meaning.
The Singapore government had neglected Chinese while the Malaysia government had neglected English over the past few decades and clearly, they had paid a heavy price for their educational policies. This is what we called “it is easy to damage but it is hard to build” and “as you sow, so will you reap”! – mysinchew.com
Republished from Sin Chew Daily on 25 November 2009
Posted in Snippets
4 Responses to “Chinese education in Singapore: As you sow, so will you reap”
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It is difficult to justify learning Mandarin from the cultural point of view because many of us are descendants of southern Chinese who speaks a myriad of different, so called, dialects, which linguists said is the wrong classification. Languages like Cantonese, Hokkeins, Teochews, Hakkas, Hainaneses are really languages which got surpressed. So from a cultural point of view, we should learn our southern mother tongue instead of Mandarin.
Mandarin should be learn for economic reasons and no more.
I’m not Chinese but I would like to speak about the article. It’s also a problem in our country wherein most of the people could not speak well/fluent in their mother tongue. It may be because of English. It has been used already by many countries in the world. English is the language of the world. If one knows how to speak or converse in English, he/she will be able to compete…I got your point when you say that Chinese Education is deteriorating…However,it is still important to learn and improve Chinese as national language, very important..this way, a citizen has shown love for his/her country…and appreciated his/her culture.
I totally agree that Chinese had to be taught differently especially since kids these days are being raised in English speaking environment and also that they are to speak english at all times unless they are having chinese period.
During my time (primary school), I took Chinese as a first language and I totally enjoyed the lessons. I remembered in primary 1 and 2, we will write xi zi and every word, we will write a full page. During primary 3, we had to learn han yu pin yin and i love it, we were taught which alphabet to place the biao dian fu hao on through a song which i can still remember. Moreover, the test papers and assessment papers we do will always contain a section of gai zheng chuo zi, and I think this helps as we are able to distinguish the actual chinese words to be used in the sentence. I remembered that bookshops used to sell some chinese moral story books which contain some comprehension questions behind to check our understanding and it also contains explanation of some difficult words but I can’t find such story books anymore which is a pity as I wanted to purchase them for my children.
Perhaps we should stop just tinkering with teaching Chinese as a second language in our schools but seriously consider bringing back Chinese schools into our Education system. Let the parents have their choice.
This will truly raise the standard of Chinese in these schools and bring about excellence in the students proficiency, instead of the high level of mediocrity in the current system.
Without sacrificing their proficiency in Engliah to try to improve on their Chinese in the current school system, those students who are weak in Chinese can also excel in English.
Whilst it is important to know Chinese to trade and do business with the Chinese, there would be those who may not have to use the language at all in their business if they are trading with non Asian countries.
If the need arises, I am sure those not speaking the language will learn it. See the number of caucasians in China who can speak Mandarin far better than many Singaporeans now.