Anyway, that is not the main point of this post... I just read the headlines on The Sunday Times: Okay to use English to teach Chinese..
Although I never read the whole article (I have not touched newspaper for 2weeks.. =X), based on the title, I feel that this policy is just not right... And I do want to express myself on my blog...
I believe that this policy does not fix the problem that children of English-speaking families do not do well in Chinese. It does not remove the root of the problem.. But probably 'watered' the burning issue to make it less obvious to the society.. Or even made it more obvious to those who do care...
Chinese(mother tongue) provides a medium for us students to learn important values such us honesty, integrity, etc. It also teaches us the beauty of our history where our forefathers fought hard to bring this society to where it is now.
While English helps Singaporeans to have a better standing in this globalised society where most businesses require us to communicate in the English language. Not saying that english does not provide us with moral values, but no matter what it relates to us lesser as it did not originate from where our forefathers lived in.
Since both languages has it's own uses, they should be treated equally as it is important that a country prosper both economically and socially... Therefore, by using english to teach chinese, we are not showing the younger generation the importance of our mother tongue, but instead just changing the way we teach the language so that they will 'like' it..
Such a policy may only work if students start to develop interest in the language and see it as what it is. However, this may require a long time before we can see the results and it may not even work.
In a nutshell, I believe that our policy-maker should further discuss this problem and try to find a better solution as I truly believe that the current one would not be much of a help.
TA DA... I spent the whole afternoon(with many little breaks) typing this.. Haha.. I doubt I made it a very convincing post... Oh well.. I am just expressing my feelings.. Haha..
