In The News... Review of Chinese Weightage in PSLE

When our Education Minister Ng Eng Hen announced that his ministry was considering lowering the weighting for the mother tongue language at PSLE, it was met with much debate. It reopened the Pandora’s Box that language issues have come to symbolise in Singapore’s complex, multi lingual society. There are 2 groups of camp, one which opposed and the other strongly in favour.

The ‘opposing camp’ is made up of mainly Chinese community leaders and young bilingual professionals. This group voiced concern that reducing the weighting will cause the already abysmally low standards in the language to decline further. It is also an emotional subject for some who feared the further erosion of Chinese language and culture here. Some supporters of this group included the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and the Industry and leaders of Chinese clan Associations.

Advocates of a cut in the weighting for Chinese are mainly from English speaking families who are not just ethnic Chinese but also those from mixed race families. They feel that the current system penalizes pupils who excelled in other subjects other than Chinese. This group also complained that they spent an inordinate amount of time on the language.

For practical reasons, bilingualism was introduced in schools so as to better equipped our students in the globalizing world, be in English when dealing the our western counterparts or Chinese as China is touted to be one of the fastest growing trade partners. Multilingualism encourages openness to a new language and provides access to unfamiliar society and its value. It enables us to better appreciate the history and culture behind it. It is common to find many other countries introducing multilingualism. Our bilingual system has survived for many years and it would be appallingly to see all the efforts reduced to waste, if we reached a point where people disregard the importance of Chinese.

In my opinion, I feel that the learning of Chinese plays an important role in shaping our culture and learning about our roots. As the Chinese saying goes, “ying shui si yuan’ , we must always remember the source of our traditions, culture and heritage. My grandparents are from China Swatow and they have inculcated many Chinese values in me. Occasionally, they will introduce Chinese literature and great Chinese poets and their work to me. To me, not only do I gain learning the Chinese culture and values, I also spent fulfilling bonding time with them. I do not profess to be very good in Chinese. Both my parents are English educated and we communicated mainly in English. I also spent immense amount of time in my Chinese Language and although it was really difficult during my PSLE, I persevered. I was elated to get into HCI, a SAP school with strong emphasis in Chinese. Although Chinese is still my weakest subject in school, I never harbor the thought to drop the subject. Infact it is a very beautiful subject and through it I can feel the culture and value, something that I will not be able to appreciate if I had conveniently given up the subject.

Thus I feel that the MOE must find a balance whereby a fair weighting is given to mother tongue and at the same time, do not erode the importance of the lauguage. The Chinese lauguage should and must continue to be relevant in Singapore.