Review: Bilingualism Policy in Singapore

RE: Low Thia Khiang urges Govt to review bilingualism policy

I agree that it is time to review Singapore's bilingualism policy. In fact, the current policy is more of a Mother Tongue policy, than an authentic bilingual policy.

When it first started, the 'bilingualism' policy was meant to:

(i) Learn English
This is to ensure that all ethnicities in Singapore could communicate using the same and a neutral language, i.e. English.

This was decided against backdrop of racial tensions, post-colonial rule, the need for Singapore to plug itself into a very Western world economy etc.

(ii) Learn Mother Tongue
If you were categorised as Malay, you have to learn Bahasa Melayu, if you were categorised as Chinese, you have to learn Mandarin etc. Along with learning of the Mother Tongue, one was imbibed with the respective ethnic values.

Ascribing 1 mother tongue per ethnic group serves to unite the group, while learning a mother tongue (instead of only English) is meant to help to ameliorate concerns that 'western values' would be adopted along with learning the English values.

At the individual level, the compulsory mastering of 2 languages poses a huge problem for those who are either (i) not predisposed to being bilingual, or (ii) grow up in a family which only speaks English.

The inability to achieve a good command of both languages has real consequences, because children are streamed into different education progress tracks based on this, and/or denied access to certain tertiary programmes. Ultimately, the question we ought to be asking is:

Is one's (in)ability to be bilingual an indication of one's (lack of) intelligence?

A lot has been written on the unintended consequences of the current 'bilingualism' policy. Please read up on it.
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Moving forward, let's start over. Let's relook at the issue by re-balancing how influence the individual ought to wield on this issue, while balancing the desired outcomes at the national level.

(A) Learning the Mother Tongue should NOT be compulsory
Personally, I think it is ridiculous to force someone to learn a language as a specified mother tongue based on his ethnic category. In fact, it sounds rather racist, doesn't it?

The earlier argument of 'mother tongue = infusion of values' is no longer valid. These days, an ethnically Chinese person may wish to choose to adopt and practise Christian values, and speak no Mandarin.

If you wish to argue about value-infusion, perhaps it makes more sense for a 'values course', via religious and/or social-philosophy studies classes, to be included.

In any case, it is getting more difficult, to the point of being ludicrous, to determine what one's ethnicity and/or mother tongue ought to be. In the past,  inter-ethnicity marriages were less common. But these days, your father may be Dutch, while your mother is an Indian-Singaporean. Your mother may be Vietnamese, while your father is Chinese-Singaporean. Or just to make the equation even more difficult. Your father is Polish-French, while your mother is Japanese-Chinese.

You, the product of multiple ethnicities, may want a choice. You may not want to only learn your father's mother tongue. You may wish to learn your Singaporean parent's mother tongue. Or you may wish to learn both.  Or you may wish to learn neither, but something else altogether.

(B) Learning a 2nd Language should be a priority
Is it enough to only learn English?

At this point, I'd like to point out that 老李是对的, at least partially.
Just like it is important to encourage the learning of Mathematics, it is important for citizens from a tiny country such as ours to be minimally bilingual, so as to be able to connect with the rest of the world in more ways than one.

Hence, Singapore should unabashedly announced that the bilingual individual is more valuable than the monolingual individual. (This could also be used a criteria to further differentiate amongst PR/Citizenship applicants.)

However, there must be changes to the approach adopted for the learning of the 2nd language:

(i) The 2nd language should NOT be tagged to one's ethnic category.

(ii) The list of 2nd languages offered should NOT be limited to the traditional few languages offered in the P65 Singapore education system, i..e should be tied to ethnicity or origins only.

(iii) Mastering of a 2nd language should NOT be a compulsory criteria for admission to tertiary education.

(iv) Every student in the public school system is required to read a 2nd language for a minimum of 10 consecutive years, starting from Primary 1.

(v) Students are given a choice of language difficulty, i.e. Basic, Intermediate and Advanced, at   the start of Year 1, at the start of Year 4, and at the start of Year 7.

(vii) To encourage the pursuit of a high standard of mastery of the 2nd language, weighting is applied to the 2nd language at the major exams, i.e. PSLE and 'O' levels.
Simply put, achieving an 'A' for 2nd language at Advanced level is worth say 100% more than an 'A' at Basic level, or 50% more than an 'A' at Intermediate level.

(viii) To make possible for an individual to take up a 3rd language from Year 1.

(ix) To encourage study of 2nd language at post-10 year level, i.e. at junior college and tertiary levels.

(C) Which languages to be offered as 2nd Language?
If one takes a utilitarian view on languages, i.e. learning more languages = better plugged into our world, then let's look at which are the top languages used by the largest number of people in the world.

International Platform
Mandarin Chinese: (845 million to 1.12 billion speakers)
English: (328 million to 480 million speakers)
Spanish: (300 million to 329 million speakers)
Arabic: (around 221 million speakers)
Hindi: (182 million to 250 million speakers)
Russian: (144 million to 285 million speakers)
See source

Regional Platform (not in order of no. of speakers)
Mandarin Chinese: (845 million to 1.12 billion speakers)
English: (328 million to 480 million speakers)
Hindi: (182 million to 250 million speakers)
Japanese: (122 million to 133 million speakers)
Bahasa Indonesian
Bahasa Melayu

Of course, we do not simply adopt to the top few. It is important to study whether these populations and their economies have been and would be expanding in the longer run, because this is after all the essence of adopting the utilitarian view.

Also, one can adopt the affectual view that the mother tongues of the various ethnic groups ought to be offered as 2nd language too.

Of course, the list of 2nd languages cannot be go on forever. Neither should this list be static.

A vid of Russians speaking in Bahasa Melayu.

I've always wondered why I cannot speak Bahasa Melayu.

(D) Learning the 2nd Language as a Subject
The teaching of the 2nd Language must be a departure from the current way which Mother Tongue is taught, i.e. moving away from preaching of ethnic values through the teaching of the language, simply because more people would be now learning the language from a utilitarian point of view, and not simply for the sake of preservation of ethnic values.

Instead, introduce general knowledge features such as history of the language, the type of speakers around the world, contrast the language with its dialects, contrast the language with English and/or other languages, cultural immersion programmes etc.

Also, I believe that it is important for the 2nd language to be applied to the rest of the student's school curriculum. E.g. Create opportunities for the students to translate passages from their science, history, geography, literature text books, reading stories/legends from other languages and cultures etc, using the 2nd language. This is to seek a balance between the student's ability to interpret the same content using both languages, and the vocabulary for both languages.

(E) Learning Languages as a Family
Recently, Mr Lee Kuan Yew encouraged Chinese families to speak Mandarin to their kids at home, while the kids pick up English in the public school system via lessons and interaction with teachers and schoolmates. Of course, quite a few less or non-Mandarin speaking Chinese-Singaporeans got defensive upon reading his advice, and wrote to the newspaper forums to air their displeasure.

The fact is 老李是对的. For the kid to master any language(s), he has to be constantly steeped in an environment where he has to use the language(s) consistently. Currently, the kid uses English most of the time, but has significantly reduced opportunities to speak in his mother tongue. Sending a kid for 2 hours worth of mother tongue tuition every week and hoping that it will help is merely wishful thinking on the part of consumerist parents.

Hence, to complement the child's learning journey, Parent-Child learning of the language(s) ought to be encouraged. Schools (or private entities) can provide Parents only and/or Parent-Child enrichment classes in tandem with the child's language syllabus. It's important to realise that if the child sees how seriously the Parent is about language-learning, the child is likely to monkey-see monkey-do. And with such exposure from a young age, perhaps the kid will be able to surpass the language proficiency of his parents'.