Don't impose mother tongue as 2nd language

By Laurel Teo

ONCE a non-negotiable, the mother tongue has now been all but written off as a visa into the three universities here. Aspiring undergraduates must still muster a pass in the subject, but no longer need to count their grade for it as part of their admission scores.

The writing has been on the wall for some time. With this latest change, it came in bold print: the crumbling of the hardline stance of the mother tongue policy.

The softening started in January, with the Mother Tongue B option being opened to students at Secondary 1 instead of Secondary 3.

New methods of teaching Chinese were rolled out, even as a new panel of linguists and education officers reviews how Chinese is taught here.

These concessions, not surprisingly, are causing some conservative Chinese language stalwarts to lose sleep. They worry over how, without a restraining yoke, a stampede of students may switch to the easier B classes, resulting in standards crashing eventually.

So far, such worries have proven unfounded. Recent surveys show that most students still prefer to stick with the tougher options, though whether that trend will persist remains to be seen.

Nonetheless, why not relax completely the mother tongue policy?

For too long, the main gripe of those who have lashed out most bitterly against mother tongue - particularly Chinese - classes, has been what they see as the cultural imposition on them.

They resent the assumption that they would have a 'natural affinity' for a mother tongue which, as it turns out, isn't their native tongue. If anything, dialect, not Mandarin, deserves that place, so the argument goes.

And thus we have the irony of it all. Far from rooting them firmly to the great cultural womb of their forebears, the mother tongue policy has driven them to run helter skelter from their 'heritage', and in extreme cases, to nurse a deep-seated grudge against the language itself, as so many letters published in this paper have shown.

To those who still feel that some grasp of the language, however tenuous, is better than none, consider this: Since classes have ended for this aggrieved group, how much Chinese do they remember? Realistically, how much of the 'culture' or 'values' have they imbibed, and kept?

For them, it is out of school, out of mind.

I'm not advocating that we do away with the bilingual policy completely. In fact, go tri- or poly-lingual if you can. To sceptics who argue that English alone is enough, here's some food for thought.

In a globalised world, English may get you anywhere, but it certainly won't endear you everywhere. To do that, you need to banter in the native lingo.

Even in the United States, whose people are notorious for overlooking everything non-American, top universities such as Yale, Princeton and Harvard recognise the value of multi-lingualism. All require their undergraduates to attain proficiency in a foreign language.

So, make sure Singapore students learn another tongue, but it need not be a 'dictated' mother tongue.

There are plenty on offer: Malay, Tamil, Chinese, even Hindi and Gujarati - pick whichever strikes your taste.

For those who envision a scenario of hordes of students gleefully dropping a language labelled difficult, like Chinese, have more confidence.

The bulk of parents - and students - will still pick a language identified most closely with themselves. With the rise of China and the job hunt getting keener now, few would want their precious offspring to lose out on any front.

Lifting the mother-tongue yoke will rid language learning of its emotional baggage.

That way, the bilingual requirement will be just another emphasis on giving students here a well-rounded education. Because just as it's important to get a solid grounding in the sciences and humanities, so it is to have one in languages.

The education system doesn't have to impose a cultural order on you, but there's nothing to stop you from feeling a cultural affinity either.

For whatever reasons you learn the language, you choose.

The writer is with The Straits Times Political Desk.