Comment on I am Singaporean II: Bilingualism is Bad(?) by guojun i know. Just using the name that others are familiar with. If you write to be understood, you can’t be over-precise… I don’t think that Singlish dulls one who speaks it frequently…after all Singlish does have its own humour and wit…unless you think you are too good for that kind of humour? I think that people should know how to differentiate between when Singlish is okay and when English should be used. It is one thing to say that Singlish is simple (although in what way is it simple?) and another to say that Singlish simplifies thought processes. Very intelligent people who are well-understood do so by expressing their complex thoughts simply. Comment on I am Singaporean IV – Never Good Enough by Weekly Roundup: Week 28 « The Singapore Daily [...] “…see, when society starts to chase Wealth as her only God, the individual becomes devalued. You don’t use society, society uses you. Your happiness never counts, the society’s happiness counts.” The Truth [...] Comment on I am Singaporean IV – Never Good Enough by Daily SG: 6 Jul 2010 « The Singapore Daily [...] up with progress! – Diary of A Singaporean Mind: Beyond Public Transport…. – Die neue Welle: I am Singaporean IV – Never Good Enough – TOC: Singaporeans – never good [...] Comment on I am Singaporean II: Bilingualism is Bad(?) by grunfrosch there is no “indian” language. And certain northern Indian languages ( in the Indo-European language family ) are similar to english in terms of structure. Just to add to your comments which i agree with……one of the downsides of bilingualism in Singapore has been a deplorable standard of English. If you look at razortv , you start to realise that the average singaporean may be able to write english but can barely string a coherent or meaningful sentence together when pressed to do it in an interview or in conversation. Singlish is a very reductive way of speaking that simplifies thought processes and dulls humour and wit. With time, it dulls the person who speaks it frequently. I am Singaporean IV – Never Good Enough Long time no see! Our Labour Chief’s shenanigans (linguistically and, well, politically) have brought me out from my cave of learning. So what did he say? As quoted by CNA, he said… “If you’re the best today, strive to be better. If you’re better today, strive to be ‘betterer’ and if you’re ‘betterer’ today, strive to be ‘betterest’ so that over time, Singapore’s service standards can just keep getting better, ‘betterer’ and ‘betterest’.” So, Singaporeans are never good enough. Of course, no one will ever be good enough. It’s very easy to see it with an analogy. Say you work hard and earn 2 grand a month. Of course it’s not enough, you work harder and try to make 3 grand, etc. Progress functions on not being good enough. Right? Well, yes. But what is it that makes Lim Swee Say’s comment sound so wrong? What is wrong is the very reason why he should not be a politician. Lim Swee Say is a straight-talker – he shoots off his mouth without sending his thoughts through Central Processing. What he has said ia something which everyone actually knows, i.e., that one can always be better, but never wants to hear in cleartext, since it reduces happiness. Especially if it is said by an authority figure like our Labour Chief. Because what he says is probably what our Gahmen wants to tell us. Why? Let me venture a guess. It’s because this good, better, best thing has no longer anything to do with the development of the individual. All it has to do with is bringing in the moolah (see the analogy above.) That means that this so-called “Heartware” is missing. When everything is about dollars and cents, you can be damn sure that your personal worth is going to be measured in dollars and cents. So those of you who want personal development but not in the sense of growing your (or the country’s) financial portfolio, Fuck Off. You guys are parasites and the scum of the society. Probably the official stand which should never ever be put in clear text as well. Now, seeking for personal development in the sense of wisdom, knowledge etc is very good. In that sense, Never Being Good Enough is actually very good for you. That kind of self-knowledge is what keeps science, philosophy and literature alive. Everyone wants to be a better person. But who wants to be a better cash cow? So, once again, here, it’s not about your personal development, you fool. In a Singaporean sense, personal development can be termed “skills upgrading”. Which means, in Singaporetalk, making yourself more useful to society. It sounds great. But is it good for the person? You see, when society starts to chase Wealth as her only God, the individual becomes devalued. You don’t use society, society uses you. Your happiness never counts, the society’s happiness counts. The only worth you have in society’s eyes is that of how useful you are materially to society. Are you a businessman? Welcome to Singapore! Are you a table-tennis player from China? Welcome too! Are you an entrepreneur? Welcome! Biomedical scientist? Sure! Are you poorly-educated, unwilling to integrate but are willing to produce babies and work here for a good pay? Yes! In short, Can We Milk You For Cash/Prestige/Survival? Historian? Uh-uh (you may find out the dark truth, so you are not only useless, but dangerous). Author? Will anyone read your books? Philosopher? No! DANGER! How about filmmaker? Well, depends on what films you intend to make. Linguistic researcher? Singapore’s not a zoo! These jobs are not so materially useful to our little island economy, but they are useful in that they make people think and they contribute to what constitutes Heart Ware, namely, identity. Fortunately, Singaporean identity is bigger than the identity of The Party, which tends to see itself as being equivalent to Singapore. And, it should be clear that the Party, which seems to be obsessed with numbers, has no place for you, the person wanting to be a simple good human. Because you are reducible to digits and numbers. And here comes the shocker: Digits and numbers have no inherent meaning. The Party thinks that they have a meaning, because “much” is understood as “good”, “more” is easily understood as “better”, etc. On the other hand, “happiness” is a term overflowing with meaning. If you put your mind to it, you could write books about Happiness. Can you write a 2,000 word essay about digits and numbers and what they mean in the everyday world? Two worlds collide and are perhaps, for now, co-existing in a precarious balance. Want more meaning? Then maybe the digits have to lose some ground. And oh, by the way, Mr Lim, “best” is a superlative. “Better” is a comparative. I think what you really wanted to say was “better than best.” THAT is grammatical correctness. You get an A for your linguistic creativity, although i strongly suggest you leave that word out in your next GP essay. Comment on Reading the Forum… by evineleremorp sdfsdfsdf Comment on I am Singaporean XXIV – Education. by experimentality I totally agree. the purpose of school is no longer education, but getting an A1 all the time, which is rrly annoying for me as a student :p Comment on Raus mit der Wahrheit! by Carol Soon Dear blogger of Die Neue Welle, I apologise for leaving my request as a comment as there is no other way for me to reach you. I am a PhD candidate from the Communications and New Media programme at the National University of Singapore, and my research examines political blogging and activism. “Die Neue Welle” came up in my sampling process and I am writing to you to seek your valued participation in a survey. WHAT is this study about? Without saying too much to bias your responses, my study concerns bloggers’ online usage, their social networks and their participation/non-participation in activism. Whether you have participated or have not participated in any activism activity, your responses will be vital in helping me gather empirical evidence on blogging and its effects. WHY should you help? There has been much talk in the media and in the parliament on the rise of blogging and online discourse. But do blogging really impact civic participation? How does it do so? Your responses to the simple survey will go a long way in contributing to the nascent field of research on blogging in Singapore. HOW can you help? The survey involves easy-to-answer questions (e.g. Yes/No, ratings of “1” to “5”) and will take only about 20 minutes of your time. Based on your preference, I can conduct the survey via email (or any other ways you prefer). Just reply to this email and I will send you the survey form. Please help! Bearing in mind the potential difficulties in getting an adequate sample for such a study, I would like to stress that every single participation counts. In addition, this study has been approved by the NUS Ethical Review Committee. You have my complete assurance that all your responses will be kept strictly confidential and your identity anonymous. I have attached a Participation Information Sheet for more information. Do visit http://www.fas.nus.edu.sg/cnm/research%20students/2006_grad_carol.htm for a brief write-up of my profile (please cut and paste if the link doesn’t work). Being a student with no funding support, I am bearing all research costs and appealing to your goodwill (and hopefully curiosity?) to take part in this study. I look forward to hearing positively from you soon. Thank you for reading this email and giving my request your due consideration. Best regards, Carol Soon (Emails: wtsoon@nus.edu.sg and carol_soon@yahoo.com.sg) Comment on I am Singaporean III – The Importance of a Good Memory by guojun SM say one. PM never say anything about election…alert can liao mah. Comment on I am Singaporean III – The Importance of a Good Memory by xingrencha To Alan Wong. U shld believe PM of cos! Comment on I am Singaporean III – The Importance of a Good Memory by MIW=scums It is absolutely crucial lesser mortals stay together, move ahead and leave the bloody Men In White behind. This can be achieved by collectively voting for any opposition. Anything less will be a disaster because my instinct tells me lesser mortals may never have another chance, not with Scums of the Earth. Comment on I am Singaporean III – The Importance of a Good Memory by Alan Wong Someone working in the civil service mentioned that elections will be held in March after this year’s budget but our PM said it won’t be so soon. Which one should we believe ? Comment on I am Singaporean III – The Importance of a Good Memory by George Voters should cast their ballot with a sickle in hand to remove all the ruling party’s lallang roots and all. Only then can we have replant the ground with carpet grass. Comment on I am Singaporean III – The Importance of a Good Memory by The Singapore Daily » Blog Archive » Daily SG: 29 Jan 2010 [...] Road to Election – Die neue Welle: I am Singaporean III – The Importance of a Good Memory [...] Comment on I am Singaporean III – The Importance of a Good Memory by Singazine Linked under, ‘Politics’. Thanks. Comment on I am Singaporean II: Bilingualism is Bad(?) by I am Singaporean III – The Importance of a Good Memory « Die neue Welle [...] policy was a mistake only turned out to be a mistake in implementation, not in theory (see my other post on this topic), not the catastrophe MM makes it out to be, and I am pretty sure too that yet [...] I am Singaporean III – The Importance of a Good Memory Elections are coming! In spite of what our politicians are telling you, the signs are clear (as is the incongruence in what different politicians from the same party tell us): SM Goh says we should not speculate on when the elections are coming. Lee the Younger steals the Reform Party’s limelight and says that we should improve on productivity, not just by importing foreign talents. Lee Senior makes more promises about stemming the tide of foreigners which are not necessary for Singapore’s progress. At the same time, Lee Senior starts using veiled threats, especially about the whole thing about our ever-popular Mah Bow Tan – don’t be daft! But at the same time, since all this talk is a pretty sure sign that the elections are around the corner, it would be appropraite to call to mind everything that has transpired in the past PAP term.  Did we have to Pay And Pay more? Did we Stay Together, and Move Ahead? (You can refer to the PAP’s 2006 manifesto here.) More importantly, dare we give the PAP carte blanche for another 5 years? One huge thing which went wrong was this “Stay Together, Move Ahead” thing. It certainly doesn’t seem that Singapore has stayed together and moved ahead. The richer are richer, and the poorer are poorer than ever. 36% of our population aren’t Singaporeans, and companies, which are focused on profit and survival, are hiring these foreigners en masse, simply because they ask for less money. Richer foreigners, those who can afford a roof over their heads, are artificially inflating the HDB market, so that Singaporeans feel that they are rapidly becoming 2nd class citizens in their own country. Instead of staying together, we have drifted apart. As for moving ahead – a lot of people are getting ahead in Singapore, but are many Singaporeans getting ahead? Secondly, we have to consider how responsible our Gahmen has been when times have been tough. Have they been responsible? Have they admitted their mistakes to the people? MM’s admission that the bilingual policy was a mistake only turned out to be a mistake in implementation, not in theory (see my other post on this topic), not the catastrophe MM makes it out to be, and I am pretty sure too that yet another change in implementation (teaching Chinese in English..?!), the way MM sees it anyway, will be a turn for the worse. But leaving that aside, what about the other shenanigans? Did our Dear Leaders show that they were ready to take responsibility, or were they only responsible for progress? In Singapore, they say that “talk is cheap”, but when it comes to the failings of the system, our Gahmen loves to use talk, instead of action – the status quo, so it is thought, has worked up to now – so why tweak it? Thus, apologies from the Gahmen are hardly forthcoming – bad things are normally accompanied by exhortations to “accept it and move on.” Pragmatically, that is the right way to look at things – i don’t deny that – but for a Gahmen to say that would mean that this particular government is either really inept when it comes to governing or that it has nothing to fear from the population. What the population has to do is to forgive, but not forget. True, we have to work ourselves out of this problem, but we should NEVER EVER forget what has happened, nor should we let ourselves be blinded by handouts and promises of lift upgrading. Having a good memory is the only way you can effect change – it’s like remembering that the last time you ate something bad, you had a really bad tummyache, and so you avoid stuff which smells bad. You don’t continue buying food which smells bad, because it is a lot cheaper, or because the mama shop around the corner stocks it, when you could go to NTUC for non-bad-smelling food. So yes, were they responsible? Mas Selamat’s Great Escape was swept swiftly under the rug, and Lee Junior said “we should move on.” Lee Senior accused the population of “complacency”, i.e. it’s not our fault, it’s YOURS for being complacent, but we are willing to work with you and solve the problem. The financial crisis was blamed on “global circumstances” (which is partly true), but the massive losses by GIC and Temasek were never explained. Instead, Ho Ching took a sabbatical (maybe to take some heat off her), an ang mor put on the board, only to have him leave due to “strategic differences”. So essentially, the status quo remains. Our Law Minister told us (without proof nor logic) that foreigners don’t make our lives more difficult, or more inaffordable. But then, PM Lee said that “the Government actually has no control over HDB resale prices”, thus absolving the Gahmen of all blame. Remember the old “Stop at Two” policy? Now, the Gahmen is trying to plug the leaks – by importing foreigners. It seems that the Gahmen has no sense of how to deal with its population – it wants a fast and effective solution, but a solution which may not be tenable in the long run (unless the various political conspiracies online are to be believed). The distrust against citizens (“if we give you welfare, you will become lazy”) shows how much the Government is reliant on its citizenry, but also how much the Government believes that they are better than the citizens. The benevolent dictator has forgotten what it means to be benevolent. The same dubious kinds of “talk” are also present in the above signs that the elections are coming. Not speculating on when the elections are coming means that you can actually forget that the elections are coming, so you will be surprised by a nice Gahmen handout and you will vote for them. Lee Junior’s intellectual theft can be explained as integrating the thoughts of others into their own, thus making the PAP seem more progressive than before. As for Lee Senior’s promises and threats…you have to ask yourself whether they will come to fruition. So, how do we make sure that we have better leaders who will take care of us? An Opposition is good, because, in the words of PM Lee, in the course of “fixing” each other, the population benefits. A strengthened, more outspoken Opposition can act as a conscience against the ruling party, as a form of checks and balances. The impotence of our current opposition politicians is not based on personal incompetence, but on the fact that no one has their backs. Strengthen the Opposition, and you strengthen the possibility that Gahmen failings and problems are actually discussed (and not mentioned and applauded) in Parliament, and that all parties, PAP and Opposition, will turn a more acute ear to the common man, if only to garner more support. Want to get rid of insensitive elitists? Then you have to change the balance of power. But to do that, you need a really good memory to dredge up everything that has transpired in the last 5 years. Make an informed decision! Comment on 7: Logical Thinking? by The Singapore Daily » Blog Archive » Weekly Roundup: Week 04 [...] – Blowin’ In The Wind: Singapore residents down from 81% to 75% since 2000 – Die neue Welle: Logical Thinking? [Recommended] – Singaporean Skeptic: Naive report in the Straits Times – Musings From the Lion [...] Comment on 7: Logical Thinking? by The Singapore Daily » Blog Archive » Daily SG: 21 Jan 2009 [...] in a Strange Land – Die neue Welle: Logical Thinking? – Singaporean Skeptic: Naive report in the Straits Times – Musings From the Lion City: Impose No [...] 7: Logical Thinking? According to PAP logic, we’re casting foreigners as villians. And we shouldn’t do that, says our Law Minister. But isn’t law something which goes by logic? Then why is it that he is giving us such illogical statements? Many netizens (like Lucky Tan etc.) don’t see the logic…so let’s see what is not logical in what the States Times and what our Minister said… So, first, the report: MIDWAY through a 11/2-hour dialogue with Law Minister K. Shanmugam on Sunday, 58-year-old Wee Kai Fatt stood up and gave voice to the claims of many coffee shop pundits here. The senior engineer complained about the foreigner-fuelled population boom, saying he was shocked when he heard there were five million people living in Singapore. This influx of foreigners, he added, had caused HDB home prices to rocket. Taking it all in, Mr Shanmugam took pains to clarify what he said were several misconceptions in Mr Wee’s statement. The Law Minister’s key message: Do not cast foreigners as the villains driving up the prices of HDB flats. Speaking at the end of his three-hour visit to Yew Tee constituency in Hong Kah GRC, he said: ‘The first misconception is that somehow there are five million people and that is putting pressure on all of us. It doesn’t.’ Firstly, i would like to ask what pains Mr Shanmugam took to clarify these “misconceptions.” Is it trying to use his Man in White logic to convince someone with ordinary logic? For example, Man in White logic often tells us that we SHOULD accept what is happening, i.e. welcome foreigners with open arms, be cheaper, better, faster, etc. Or maybe that the influx of foreigners has absolutely no role in pushing home prices up, when this obviously flies in the face of basic supply-and-demand. More demand, less supply, means that prices increase. (Of course, I’m not an economist, but that’s not what this is about now. This is about what the layperson thinks, not about what the economist says.) Logic doesn’t operate on “should”, it operates on “is”. Then why are HDB prices rising? MIW logic would probably say that it is a sign that our economy is picking up again and use it to tell us that we have MORE GOOD YEARS ahead of us. But that is not the case, well, not in reality at least (see, for example, this). Which is why i sometimes suspect that the Men in White live in another dimension, since sometimes their interpretation of happenings is so different from ours. Again, interpretation is also something which is not strictly logical. If it was strictly logical, the interpretation of how things are would convince anyone. But no one is convinced. There’s also the argument from an unfounded premiss, e.g.: “The first misconception is that somehow there are five million people and that is putting pressure on all of us. It doesn’t.” How does Mr. Shanmugam know that it is a misconception? Does have have contrary proof? Can he explain his position? Or is he just relying on his status as Law Minister (“as a minister, i know what’s going on and you don’t?”) Relying on superior status to make what you say more valid is another sign of bad logic, or of an illogical argument trying to be logical. Authority tends to make people argue illogically. The second unfounded argument is based on using statistics to make a statement appear empricially sound: Of the five million, 3.2 million are citizens and roughly 500,000 are permanent residents (PRs). The remaining 1.3 million are here on temporary work permits and they ‘impose no burden’ on the public housing system. What does it mean that “the remaining 1.3 million are here on temporary work permits and they ‘impose no burden’ on the public housing system”? It is probably a weak attempt at explaining away the problem. Just feed them some numbers and they’ll bite, hook, line and sinker. Are you sure, for example, that all of these 1.3 million people are staying in workers’ accomodations? Or maybe they are all Malaysians? Statistics which don’t exactly explain why they are solutions to the problem shouldn’t exactly be used. Lastly, there is argument based on an assumption: ‘Let me pose a question back to you – ‘What do you think is the solution if we can’t get Singaporeans who all speak English? Then we have to get foreigners. Where do you think we can get them from, and can we educate all of them in English?’ Therefore, if you are given a choice, either there is someone there to serve you, which is Singapore’s style, or like in many Western countries, you do self-service. I suspect…most Singaporeans will say ‘OK, never mind, even if he can’t speak English, I will prefer that to a self-service situation’. Is the assumption true? I would prefer self-service, actually. I don’t see the point in ballooning our population by 1.3 million people, so that they will have to come and serve us.  Actually, it’s also a veiled threat – “want less people? Then get ready to serve yourselves.” Another false assumption – are we so scared of serving ourselves? Don’t we do that at McDonald’s? What was he thinking? Comment on I am Singaporean II: Bilingualism is Bad(?) by jeremysng very insightful views! Comment on I am Singaporean II: Bilingualism is Bad(?) by potus chinese educated singaporeans have a distinct disadvantage when living in singapore http://fashionablefacistdictator.wordpress.com/ Comment on I am Singaporean II: Bilingualism is Bad(?) by The Singapore Daily » Blog Archive » Weekly Roundup: Week 47 [...] “The biggest mistake is not putting an educator as the head of MOE, but a politician, or a surgeon, or a Rear-Admiral.” The Truth [...] Comment on I am Singaporean II: Bilingualism is Bad(?) by The Truth I confess the errors of my ways! Thanks for the correction. Comment on I am Singaporean II: Bilingualism is Bad(?) by ahkow Nitpick – Sanskrit is Indo-European like English is, but Tamil is clearly Dravidian and from a historical linguistics point of view, unrelated to Sanskrit (other than loanwords, influencing each other’s sound systems etc). Comment on I am Singaporean II: Bilingualism is Bad(?) by guojun George: Agreed, third language courses are on the highway to hell too. They are reducing exposure while keeping the amount of hours the same, although there is 1 hour of e-Learning now. How to learn a language like that? Like i said, bureaucracy rules the day. As long as it looks the same on paper they don’t really care how it’s done. Comment on I am Singaporean II: Bilingualism is Bad(?) by j good article. Comment on I am Singaporean II: Bilingualism is Bad(?) by George An acquantance, Chinese educated, and Chinese HOD in a school, related how he was thumped down by senior MOE officials when he tried to point out the exponential jump in level of difficulty for students in a proposed new curriculum for Chinese at primary level. It happened when Lim Siong Guan was PS MOE and at a discussion/meeting in his presence. My friend became so demoralised by such a blatant disregard for the students’ interest in that encounter that from that time on he preferred to, in his words: ‘Even when they ask me to jump when I am having my food, I had to!”. The bureaucrats in MOE is the reason why for a long time they are referred to as ‘monsters’. Comment on I am Singaporean II: Bilingualism is Bad(?) by The Singapore Daily » Blog Archive » Daily SG: 19 Nov 2009 [...] to Bi – TOC: MM Lee’s admission – a good time for govt to reflect on policy – Die neue Welle: I am Singaporean II: Bilingualism is Bad(?) – Urbanrant: Why I think MM Lee is wrong about the learning of the Chinese language – Gerald [...] I am Singaporean II: Bilingualism is Bad(?) So our favourite octagenarian has decided to come and tell us his insistence on bilingualism in the education system was wrong. What was he thinking, saying such a thing?! In fact, his insistence on bilingualism was one of the things he actually got right, in my humble opinion.  Just that it was poorly put into practice.  VERY POORLY.  I mean, you can’t have a cultural cleansing first (i.e. shutting down Chinese schools and Nantah, enforcing a common curriculum where language of instruction is fixed) and THEN try to encourage bilingualism!  It’s a good example of what happens when politicians, who aren’t teachers, try to set an education programme to follow certain pragmatic political goals. In doing so, Chinese was effectively removed as the language of instruction in schools, excepting a select few subjects.  Everything else is in English, save the compulsory 2nd mother tongue, and Higher mother tongue (what is higher anyway?) if one can make it.  If not, everything else is in English.  That managed to ensure conformity in curricular planning, but it effectively destroyed the possibility of true bilingualism for those growing up in a monolingual environment.  I mean, mother tongue lessons are just one out of seven, maybe up to ten subjects which are taught in English.  There is hardly any exposure to the second mother tongue, neither at home nor at school.  So how on Earth do you expect bilingualism to be possible, given the circumstances? MM speaks like someone who has learn Chinese as a foreign language.  Well, let’s remember that MM is monolingual first, okay?  And he tells us that it’s impossible for one to master two languages at the same level of proficiency, so we should not coddle ourselves?  My Chinese is definitely not reduced to saying 你好！ 华语酷！ 我要去厕所！, okay?  My friends from China and Taiwan understand me perfectly well, and I certainly don’t have a problem with calling myself multilingual.  His problem is that he started learning Chinese LATE – for him, it is inevitable that he should not be proficient in Chinese.  Bilingualism is something which children can be taught, especially if they are exposed to the languages in question.  But politically and economically at the time, English was seen as much more important.  So many parents decided to teach their children English as their first language, avoiding Chinese and making it a foreign language to them. And by the way, who made him a neurologist now?  If he would bother to do some research before distributing his brand of wisdom, he would have insisted that parents be bilingual and for both languages to be used parallel to each other at home.  You don’t even have to send your kids to school for them to be effectively bilingual.  Starting late means that the brain’s language center has already developed such that it will be able to process information in the dominant language much better, at the cost of easily acquiring other languages.  MM’s trials and tribulations are the views of one who has been taught Chinese, who didn’t acquire Chinese from exposure to the language.  English and Chinese are two very different languages – so how to do you expect students to be able to learn them effectively, even if Chinese was taught in English? Speaking of which, English is very dissimilar to Malay as well, and is only slightly hardly related to Indian (Proto-German, the ancestor of English would be more related to Sanskrit, the ancestor of modern Tamil) *I stand corrected – Comment 5*.  So the subtle encouragement of a monolingual environment for kids which was partly caused by the balance of powers then and the perception of Chinese as evilly Communist (now, MM had a hand in this in shutting down the institutions where children could get a lot of exposure to Chinese) has resulted in the situation today, where most people would like to believe they were bilingual, but are not.  And educational policy has not helped in restricting Chinese to Chinese lessons, effectively producing a generation of parents who were mostly English-monolingual, who ridiculed “cheenapoks” because they couldn’t understand them. But no, the perception is that more learning is the right way ahead.  Parents have to understand that language acquisition is partly their job as well.  You can’t send your kids to school and hope they can come home and speak Chinese fluently, unless you have taken the effort to speak to your toddler in Chinese.  Instead, we have Chinese for pre-schoolers now!  Children from 3 to 6 should learn Chinese!  I wonder how that will work.  Imagine that you only speak English at home.  Then your toddler goes to kindergarten and learns Chinese, but who is he going to speak it with at home?  What’s the point in that?  Already the principle is wrong.  I only managed to become fluent in German (not perfect) when I had German lessons every single day in JC and when German was actually spoken.  Rote learning can’t give you what exposure does.  But in Singapore, everything is kept separate from each other.  NO CHINESE EXCEPT DURING CHINESE LESSONS, right? The biggest mistake is not putting an educator as the head of MOE, but a politician, or a surgeon, or a Rear-Admiral. So that there is “positive criticism” (heh i like that term since it sounds so contradictory), I would suggest looking at the system of Luxembourg.  Children who go to school are schooled first in German, then after they are 12, the language of instruction for the entire syllabus changes gradually from German to French.  How’s that sound?  Of course, the second language is taught in school as well.  But what is needed is exposure, and a complete language change should probably do the trick. By the way, did I miss the word “sorry” in the story?