The problem about solving the Mother Tongue problem

Our beloved Minister of Education. Mr Ng Eng Hen, has come up with a canny way of assisting many students go around the problem of dealing with learning this very 'difficult' Chinese language. And he felt it so apt to find the easy way out by merely reducing the weightage on the assessment criteria for this particular subject. He is such a genius! Instant answer to the dwindling support for learning this language from a culture with more than 5000 years.

During the Speak Mandarin Campaign 30th Anniversary launch in March 2009 at the NTUC Centre, our very own Minister Mentor, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, had this to say, "I understand the strong emotional ties to one's mother tongue. However, the trend is clear. In two generations, Mandarin will become our mother tongue". MM Lee further added that he has received 'innumerable' e-mails from China-based Singaporeans thanking him for making Mandarin compulsory for them.

Perhaps the main gist of the problem here is about root, and the acceptance of it. Singapore comprises slightly more than 74% Singaporean Chinese (of various linguistic groups). Since 1979, the government has stopped all radio and TV in Singapore from broadcasting programs in dialect.

The Speak Mandarin Campaign was launched slightly more than 30 years ago and the emphasis of educating our children to be bilingual cannot be overly-emphaised. This measure seems to be very successful so much so that our kids today hardly understand their own dialect, let alone speak them. Minister Mentor has ferociously uphold this policy over the years but of late lamented that apart from his only granddaughter, his six grandsons all dislike speaking Mandarin.

This incident has sparked off very lively responses from those who are entrenched in the root of their 'mother tongue' against those who felt that their children's chances of progressing into better schools are compromised. Then there is also a school of thought who just simply bo-chap about the whole issue.

Personally, I feel that the minister has taken a wrong decision if the weightage were to indeed be reduced. The rationale behind his reasoning is flawed, totally wrong. I opine this as a betrayal of his root. How can one learn the rich culture legacied by noble ancestors. How can we really understand Confucius' Lunyu, Da Xue and Dao Te Jing etc etc.

Yes, we are Singaporeans per se (and not Chinese) but we cannot deny the fact that our forefathers come from the land where our very government is courting to take a piece of the economic pie from.

It now leaves us to wait for the outcome of the review by the ministry.