We are back at Square 1

PM Lee has announced that the Mother Tongue Weighting will NOT change. MOE will attempt to review how Mother Tongue is taught in school.

So, after all that hooha about We love Mother Tongue and the PSLE Weighting cha-cha... It seems everyone is back at Square 1.

Huh? Same spot? How come? Surely all those emotions/energy/ love of mother tongue must translate to something?

I think it's a most ridiculous situation, where people get caught up in an unnecessary whirlpool of emotions, totally missing the point.

The Mother Tongue Environment Triangle
The necessary ingredients to make or break the adoption of the Mother Tongue and its all-encompassing culture are Family, Community & Government. You need 3 core stakeholders to be working together, and not just the Government doing the work alone, dragging along unwilling participants who resist and dig their nails into the ground whenever they have to learn 听写.

In fact, Family and Community play more important roles than the Government. Each group has to work with the other to reinforce the environment conducive for learning and using the Mother Tongue.

And if you look at the diagram which summarises the bigger picture, you'd realise that the MT PSLE Weighting is really a very very small piece of this huge puzzle.

FAMILY

Those who are fighting for status quo are those who are better at MT (Chinese). They want to maintain their edge in the current PSLE system. But some of the petitioners are unmarried/gay and do not have children or offsprings who will be affected by any changes in PSLE. So, they will argue that PSLE is not the only bone of contention. These activists, along with many grey-haired petitioners, claim that the maintaining MT PSLE Weighting helps to incubate and preserve the love for the Chinese culture.

How much does MT PSLE Weighting have to do with improving the adoption/absorption of Chinese language/culture at the family level?

Even if this 'Keep MT PSLE Weighting = Incubate/preserve love for Chinese Culture' assumption holds true, are we really expecting that this heated episode and its status quo outcome will result in say a bunch of kids will sit up tomorrow and become really interested in the Chinese language?

Or that parents who have not been speaking Mandarin to their children because their Mandarin suck will get off their arses to go learn Mandarin properly so that they can create a Mandarin-speaking environment for their kids?

Rather, even at the more realistic level, that Chinese language tuition centres would see a spike in enrolment?

Let's not kid ourselves. If the parents have no self-discipline when it comes to learning the Chinese language, it is a huge discount off the probability that the kids will learn the language well.

Nothing has changed at the family level. Nothing.

COMMUNITY
If the family is not helping the situation, what about the community in which the kid is immersed in?

The point is, despite a small percentage of people making a lot of noise, there is no material change to way Chinese is promoted and used in Singapore. Should the responsibility of promoting the MTs only rest on the shoulders of the Government?

If a community really loves its culture and is intellectually-honest, it will examine how much/little effort it has put into helping create a Chinese culture-friendly environment. (I can feel the defensiveness even as I write this. 做么? 做么? 你算哪根葱? 敢批评我?!)

For example, how much have the Chinese clan associations done to pass down and preserve the traditions? I think the efforts are fragmented. Some clan associations have highly rationalised programmes and function like extra curricula enrichment centres, while others have not done much beyond its membership.

And what about the Chinese Teachers' Union?
Yes, they made noise this time round. But is it gonna change how Chinese language will henceforth be taught in schools? Will it be in the same moralistic and rote learning fashion? Does including more 'fun' ways to learn Chinese really lead to a higher level of proficiency?

Or perhaps, the real problem is with the image of the Chinese teacher, i.e. less accessible to the average student than other teachers? Afterall, these Chinese teachers/ 'community leaders' are the spokesperson of the Chinese Language. If the problem is with them, it has to be fixed pronto. And yes, in my opinion, this is the toughest group to reshape.

Lastly, those in the Chinese media. These are the bunch of people with the potentially largest influence on the Chinese community. They have significant influence over the production of Chinese popular culture, ranging from TV drama, films, plays, music, visual arts, classical arts, new media, mainstream media/news, Speak Mandarin campaigns etc.

Polarised in terms of 'quality', the Chinese media's creations are mainly either overly intellectually-purist or of intellectually-insulting quality. What then is filling up that huge in-between gap? The highly-accessible English popular culture. To cement 'Chinese culture' in the hearts and minds of the Chinese audience, the Community needs to regain this huge in-between space.

There has been some efforts such as mypaper, omy.sg... but I see major areas in critical need for improvement, e.g. TV drama production. It's all about being accessible. It's not about lowering standard of Chinese language used so that people will read your papers/websites... It's about the content and how you market your content. Case in point: If many Singaporeans are voluntarily taking up Korean language classes because of the Korean Wave, it speaks volume of how powerful popular culture is.

BE CONSTRUCTIVE
I see the recent interaction between Community and Government as a great opportunity for these 2 groups to work together, and not just a talk, complain, petition session. This is the best time to ask the government for resources/support to develop efforts for promotion of the Mother Tongue. The Community has to take ownership of its Mother Tongue/Culture. I hope those who have made a lot of noise this time round will prove their worth by doing more than just a petition.

What's the objective and how do we know that we have arrived?
In the modern world, we have arrived when majority of the Chinese community smses and/or instant messages one another in Chinese.