Daily Lessons from Life 13 May 2010 - Minister reassures mother tongue teachers

"Minister reassures mother tongue teachers - Thu, May 13, 2010 The Straits Times

ON THE day he announced there would be no change to the weighting system for mother tongue language (MTL) at primary school level, Education Minister Ng Eng Hen also wrote to every mother tongue teacher in Singapore.


In his letter, he not only emphasised the importance of the bilingual policy, but also reassured them that they were much appreciated for all that they did to teach children their mother tongue."

This is an emotional issue for many people. In fact, the PM appeared with Mr. Ng at the press conference to 'apologize' for causing misunderstanding that the weightage is to be lowered or mis-communicating this message.

Lessons for me are:

1. many parents are concerned that their kids are no longer proficient in their mother tongue language. This include Chinese, Malay and Tamil parents. Of course, there are many parents who are WORRIED that the Mother Tongue Language will diminish their kids' PSLE results and hence entrance to their 'choice' secondary schools.

Here lie the divide. One if short term while the other is long term. It will be a real tragedy IF the children grow up to feel that there is NOTHING wrong with not being able to speak the Mother Tongue. A big part of being who you are will be missing.

Mr. Ng apparently was mistaken to be the parents who go for short term - get my kid into my choice secondary school if that means lowering the weightage of the Mother Tongue language!;

2. the fact that the PM has to appear at the press conference naturally raised the concerns that national policy like this may not have gone through a robust debate internally before 'leaks' being made. Or that the decision was a consensus one except it got changed to the very vocal protests by the parents last Sunday at the Speakers Corner?? If it is the latter, it is good as the people in power do consider the feeling of the people they governed! If it is the former, it is not well as harmony within the ruling party is critical selling point for Singapore!;

3. The learning of Mother Tongue can be difficult for some students. The Ministry of Education had started reviewing the teaching of it and was surprised that the rumour was so strong that the weightage will be reduced that solicited strong negative responses by many parents that the PM and Minister of Education had to hold a press conference to clarify. Let's let the 'review' be done in due course and the recommendation be implemented based on the possible root causes of why students find it so hard to learn their own Mother Tongue!

May we look for improvement in Mother Tongue learning by all the young students. When the going gets tough, the tough gets going!! Happy learning...