“Successive generations of students paid a heavy price, because of my ignorance, by my insistence on bilingualism.”
MM Lee Kuan Yew
Excerpts from Channelnewsasia report:
Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew said his insistence on bilingualism in the early years of education policy was “wrong”. Instead it caused generations of students to be put off by the Chinese language.
Speaking first in Mandarin and then in English at the official opening of the Singapore Centre for Chinese Language on Tuesday, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew gave a blunt assessment of Singapore’s bilingual policy.
He said: “We started the wrong way. We insisted on ting xie (listening), mo xie (dictation) – madness! We had teachers who were teaching in completely-Chinese schools. And they did not want to use any English to teach English-speaking children Chinese and that turned them off completely.”
Mr Lee added: “At first I thought, you can master two languages. Maybe different intelligence, you master it at different levels.”
But his conclusions now, after over 40 years of learning Mandarin, cannot be more different.
MM Lee said: “Nobody can master two languages at the same level. If (you think) you can, you’re deceiving yourself. My daughter is a neurologist, and late in my life she told me language ability and intelligence are two different things.
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Our Higher Mortals are always right…..unless they tell us that they were mistaken.
Who are we, Lesser Mortals, to challenge
ErniesUrn on November 18th, 2009 3.36 pm
Sorri, not my children learning bahasa. As an ex-Malaysian I got a credit in Malay but can’t even get a government job then when I was in Malaysia. Almost all such jobs are reserved for Malays. Unless I had money, business is out too.
Malay is a relatively easy language as you can see most of our leaders can handle it fluently because unlike the ancient languages like Chinese or Tamil, it’s romanised. Meaning beyond a certain level most of the words are in fact English with a twist spelling (ejaan). Jawi, on the hand is Arab in origin. Its scripting is quite elementary and therefore cannot be used for Science & Maths otherwise Malaysia would have adopted it long ago for originality for its people. Today Jawi is confined to the Islamic religious studies. Moreover, Malay langauge is not an official UN language.
Malays should keep the Malay language with English as the common language in Singapore but it should not be forced upon others because there is no economic value & utility in the langauge at all. It’s a backward step for the others. Anyway, unless Indonesia & Malaysia are serious about the Engish language (and now with people worldwide learning Chinese for advantage) I don’t see how their economies can respond effectively & compete globally.
#42
For someone who critisizes the standard of English and Chinese, you write prettly badly yourself, lol.
I nearly puke out my breakfast this morning lol
Hello, Tie Xie is not listening, it is spelling and Mo Xie is, memorizing and writing it down, not dictation -_______________-”
#53
Thank you very much for your feedback.
Please show me how to write better. Looking forward to learn more and improve.
Speak Chinese is a bluff, ii it chicken backside farting. Write Chinese is a roots to your ancestor tongue. Write Chinese it also help to improve your mentality (words in turning & twisting generate your memory)
How many times have he ever been right? Almost every policy he came out with has been wrong.
Even today, the foreign talents import policy is WRONG! Will he be able to live for another 30 years and then come and tell us that he has been wrong again? While in the mean time, we have to just suffer in silence?
MM Lee, with due respect, you had better tell your son and your ministers that when a top leader makes a serious mistake, many people below suffers not only in one generation but in a few generations to come. Pragmatism without vision is simply experimentation, by trial and error. Anyone with a common sense and an average intelligence can do that.
You were simply experimenting at the expense of the millions of citizens below you. And not even a word of “Sorry” can come out of your mouth. This is arrogance and insolence at the highest.
The success of Singapore during the past 40 years is due to collective efforts, not one man’s effort, not one party’s effort. So, there is nothing great. So, don’t keep claiming credit for this and for that.
LKY has no “Roots”, he belived in Science ! He is from outer space. (no parent birth him, he declare). But I read a Book “No Man Is An Island” it mention that he is mix Dutch Blood from one Pansir Panjang Dutchman Bugalow House. I came across a Colonel ,he said he is a Hainanese. LKY he himself declare is a Hakka. So he has no roots. Which is Which (Alien)
no.53, dont comment on others in bad light. I plumber only also can see your sentence construction also not correct leh
As I always said LKY is an “Empty Vessel Make the Most Noise”. Not only this mistake he has done. In the Early Strait Settlement, Sabah & Sarawak (North Borneo) has been given to Singapore. He make a blunder to lost it to Malaysia. This two state with abundant of resources, can make Singapore very Rich. In the 80′s when the Semi-Conductor IC chip first came to Singapore , he rejected it. Later went to Tiawan, and make Taiwan very Rich. He is just a very Idiot. Y Singaporean like to vote 4 them. Suay People. (Severe U Right)
“We started the wrong way. We insisted on ting xie (listening), mo xie (dictation) – madness! We had teachers who were teaching in completely-Chinese schools. And they did not want to use any English to teach English-speaking children Chinese and that turned them off completely.”
MM Lee said: “Nobody can master two languages at the same level. If (you think) you can, you’re deceiving yourself. My daughter is a neurologist, and late in my life she told me language ability and intelligence are two different things.
He said “WE started the wrong way” (Not I started the wrong way = share responsibility)
He said “We had teachers….. and THEY DID NOT WANT TO teach chinese using english.” (put the blame on others)
He did not say “I am sorry”
He based his observation on his family members…. eg his daughter and his grandchildren……..
And he said those who could not master two languages are NOT STUPID….
From REACH:
http://app.reach.gov.sg/reach/YourSay/YourDiscussionCorner/tabid/117/ptid/414/page/1/totrecs/625/threadid/1857/forumtype/posts/Default.aspx
Foolish to advocate the learning of dialects?
By Andy Liew Shiau Min
From REACH :
http://app.reach.gov.sg/reach/YourSay/YourDiscussionCorner/tabid/117/ptid/414/page/63/totrecs/625/threadid/1857/forumtype/posts/Default.aspx
By GuardianAngel
Recently My Dad was hospitalised, I went to see him in the hospital, to my surprise the doctor looking after my dad was unable to speak Dialect at all, he is a chinese, can only speak little bit of mandarin.
I came to notice it because when he saw my dad bed card stated Speak Teochew, he said alamat, than I ask him why?? He told me I cannot understand any dialect, I only can speak English or abit of Mandarin.
I really wonder how come our society getting worst is it, even doctor now cannot speak dialect really like what the doctor said ALAMAT!!!!!
With the consideration of Singapore’s unique position in Asia, English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil must remain a learning language for all Singaporeans. There is no clear advantages in knowing one language over the other. It’s just a matter of whether you want to extend your communication skills outside your comfort zones to people who are natives of these languages. Mandarin is the preferred language for those in China. Malay is the lingua of Southeast Asia (Bahasa) and as Tamil is to India. Once in Singapore, your company of friends reflects your language ability. Nothing is more truthful than this.
Ahh….is he thinking “if my daughter can’t do it, the other people sure can’t do it”
But i totally agree with some of the posters…look at some of the European countries…their citizens master two or more languages…within the same country, different city may use different language..
“Nobody can master two languages at the same level. If (you think) you can, you’re deceiving yourself.”
No, believing in this excuse is then deceiving ourselves…Instead, it is not the ability to master multiple languages that is the issue…it is the emphasis….when so much empasis is place on english, whereby if you fail it, you virtually fail the whole year. while chinese is, if you fail it, it is still ok…of course most people will focus on english as that’s the critical subject…failing english is just like the 0 in multiplication, end result will be zero.
do any of you remember the system? if you pass first language, you only need to pass 2 other subject to get promoted, but if you fail, you have to pass 5 subject to advance….
Why he responsible when there is someone paid to do the Education departmental?
““Nobody can master two languages at the same level….”
I am impressed by this confidence.
I assume he checked and found that no one in the world can?
How about the highest paid Translators?
i ask can or not?
18/11/09
Hi Jane-Good to hear from you and you wrote “:foolish to learn dialect” and I firmly say you are very wrong and to me it is very foolish to learn Mandarin and I have refused to learn Mandarin ie speak and written, and when I travel to China, I only use English ie speak and write, and on the immigration card, I did not write my name in Chinese,
We as Singaporeans, must bring back our various Chinese dialects and slowly do away with Mandarin in our media ie TVs and Radios, and focus solely on English as our English standard has gone worse. Hongkong has done away with Mandarin and all out to bring back the good old days of English ie speaking and written. The percentage of the English world is far bigger than the Mandarin world and even in China, the Chinese are using more English ie spoken and written.
Take a look at Malaysia which has reverted the teaching of science and mathematics back into Malay and Mandarin and they are sure to fail very badly (this is political for survival for the ruling BN-UMNO and the opposition PR, they need the votes of their respective races. I just read on the net, its Deputy Education Minister Puad who hails from Johor state, in his press conference asking all Malaysians to speak Bahasa Malaysia. This must never happens in Singapore when one day we wake up and all of us must speak Mandarin (never be allowed)
Regards
Andrew Chuah
Root cause of problem? Only yes men and women. If you stand-up to him and disagree, you are purged.
Mass immigration will also surface as a mistake because no one in the government and civil service dare to oppose.
Pride and Arrogance => Pain
“”Learning Chinese the fun way”" is an excuse.
“”Learning Chinese the fun way”" cannot stand the test.
I once used computer and animation to teach Chinese to a child.
At first he liked it. So he asked his father to get him a computer. Later he indulged incomputer games.
Even during Chinses lessons, he was distrcted by his “computer game”.
He was beyond repair. He failed his Chinese badly and he will never learn Chinese in his life time.
Too bad. I had also given up on him.
Lesson learned. I will never used computer to teach Chinese using so-call “the fun way”.
Now many of my students are very successul in their Chinese Exam.
Quite a number of them who failed badly in the past were able to get “B” in their PLSE.
Use your brain. Don’t just believe wholesale what others tell you.
Regardless of whether China is getting richer or poorer, as a Chinese, one needs to know his own mother tongue. The problem with learning Chinese here is the perception that English is superior and has better economic value. I believe Michael Jackson has the same perception of the whites before he completely bleached himself. A Chinese can reject the learning of his own language or even reject the whole idea of being Chinese. But in the eye of the westerners, a Chinese is still a Chinese. And worst, some caucasians even snob at the idea of being a “Banana”.
Back to the issue again, if parents, authorities, and society at large continue to worship everything from the West blindly, there can never be a place for Chinese in Singapore. Look at the state of our Chinese dialects here. They have been stripped till nothing, even though they are essential elements of the Chinese culture.
MM Lee said: “Nobody can master two languages at the same level. If (you think) you can, you’re deceiving yourself….”
————————————————————————————————————
Then how come he could pick up Japanese so fast, at a level good enough to be an “interpreter” during WW2?
LKY AND HIS CRONIES MUST PAY FOR THEIR POLITICAL CRIMES AGAINST SINGAPORE!!!
http://fashionablefacistdictator.wordpress.com/
Did ANY People Representative voiced up on :
“Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew said his insistence on bilingualism in the early years of education policy was “wrong”. ”
?
I met some young PRC ladies who speak fluent mandarin and fluent English American slang and all.
So some can do it.
72) SpongeBoob
Wise words indeed. May I add – colonial hangover
72) SpongeBoob
Like someone here posting proudly that he refuses to speak Mandarin, a Chinese trying to be angmo, will at most succeed to be a pseudo angmo, only serving to feed to the real angmo’s ego and becoming their plaything to laugh and mock at.
your example of MJ trying to be white is so apt. And ironically, he sang “it don’t matter if you’re black or white”
more colonial hangover
http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&rls=com.microsoft:en-sg:IE-ContextMenu&rlz=1I7SUNA_en&q=racist%20songs%20about%20asians&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wv#
18/11/09
Hi Sponge Boobe-K noted your posting and I am glad that you agreed with me. I have refused to speak and write Mandarin but I speak fulent dialects ie Hokkien and Cantonese and look at the Hongkis who have got rid of Mandarin early this year and now focus on English ie both spoken and written and they have big balls to do this despite Hongkong being a Special Administrative Region (SAR)
Regards
Andrew Chuah
The man indeed has great foresight.
I remember in the 70s then MM predicted the rise of China as a great power by the turn of the century and thus encouraged Chinese students to do Chinese as a second language.
But all the Chinese teachers then were schooled in rote learning in a monolingual context themselves. They simply carried out the order to teach Chinese in a way they knew best – rote learning. Like father like son context.
There was no cross fertilisation or pollination of pedagogies between the different languages. English taught in parallel wasn’t taught in rote. The twain thus never met in learning within the classroom. Only the brightest however could manage and master both the languages.
MM’s message was somewhat prophetic and the intention was good. As an astute politician, he foresaw and knew what was coming in the horizon then. He left the rest to the so-called “professionals” , the Chinese educationists who taught the subject as if they were teaching Chinese as the main subject to students starting out right from Primary 1 in Chinese.
Yes. Hindsight . . . . . The casualty rate was high. I myself was one of the casualties. On a lighter note the Chinese serial on Channel 8 has over the years helped me understand and converse in the langauge (which is not an easy especially in its written form).
Well, it’s not to late for change. “Change” says Obama. Yes. Better late than never. We’ll all change the pedagogies for easy learning of this 5 thousand year old language.
Who knows? With our ingenuity, foreigners wishing to learn Chinese these days with ease can then come to Singapore and contribute to Singapore’s earnings as well.
Contrary to what he said,
me, my siblings and my friends all speak fluent English and Mandarin.
I cannot understand why he said that.
Andrew Chuah
“Hongkis who have got rid of Mandarin early this year and now focus on English ie both spoken and written and they have big balls to do this despite Hongkong being a Special Administrative Region.”
No that is not true. I don’t belive you ahve been to HK of late or at all. My sister married a Hong Konger. I’m a frequent traveller to HK.
Putonghua (Chianese) is taught in almost all schools now. Kiasu parents are sending their children for such tuition. Even their singers like Andy, Arron, etc., are singing in Mandarin as well. Even their once only Cantonese TV programmes have begun to incorporate the Mandarin element in compering, singing, etc. Slowly HK is making the inevitable shift for what? Survival.
You must be darn stupid to ignore the 1.3 billion job market and opportunites right at your doorstep? Hong Kong has no choice. It can’t dictate. It has to follow the tide to survive and not go against it.
We don’t need a primary schoolboy to tell us this.
MM Lee said : nobody can master two languages at the same level, if (you think )you can, you are deceiving yourself. But, i think he is deceiving himself, he should study from Australia PM before he say that, there are still a lot of e.g.
I remembered some years back ,I read an article in the MSM where someone claim that a normal person can master or capable of speaking more than 5 or 6 languages or something to that effect.It had somehow motivated me to learn more languages.I am thankful to him.
It’s funny how so much of the media needs SM Lee’s permission to say he’s wrong. Suddenly everyone is going, of course you’re right, MM Lee, you’re wrong.
trying to earn cheap sympathy votes, LKY.
sad state of affairs
“Learning Chinese in a fun way” is just an excuse.
If u do not want to learn, so be it.
How can u make learning more fun than computer games?
Impossible!!!
I have tried, and had given up.
Nowadays the Chinese stanadrd is so low. If u want to learn, and u are prepared to put in a little bit of effort, it is so easy to score “A”.
It is so easy until the “A” also got no value.
This hav been proven by many students.
If you have mastered 2 languages, think of those people brought up by english educated people and have spent their whole lives surrounded in the society which speaks english at work and in school, think about how difficult it is for them to pick up a second language without it being appealing.
So before you go around claiming many people have mastered 2 languages, think about the increasing amount of people who are now suffering from the system of the past.
Nowdays, many things sound AMBIGUOUS in my interpretation.
What is the scientific behind the believe that no one can master?
The only way to learn languages is through immersion. If you grow up ard people speaking foreign languages, you will pick it up faster. Likewise, exposed to Singlish, speak Slnglish,. Our mistake is we did not fix the basic foundation for English and try to impose 2 different languages from a young age, thereby resulting in confusion and neither languages being mastered proficiently. It will take another generation to undo the damage, not just for Chinese but English as well. By then the mainland Chinese/Koreans/Japanese will beat us by leaps and bounds, S’poreans can then cursed the old man for his stubborness and all those balls lickers who did not tell him he is naked.
I wrote a long blog post on this article. If you like to read my views on why I think MM Lee got it wrong, please visit
http://urbanrant.blogspot.com/2009/11/why-i-think-mm-lee-is-wrong-about.html
or
http://bit.ly/1qZBz1
Since the PAP government is totalitarian in nature, the mistakes made by the PAP government is dire and its consequences is far reaching because it affects many people. The “bi-lingual” policy is such an example. I am sure there is more than one way to learn a language. “fun-way”, rigorous methods, “watch TV way”, etc.
Another example is the the “stop at two”, makes Singapore having one of the lowest birth-rate in the world.
The govt. through the EDB determines what industries to support. At one time it was wafer fab factories, but this was a big failure. S’pore is governed much like a Marxist country with a planned economy. Small and medium enterprises (SME) can hardly survive because the PAP govenment have acquired much land and made them very expensive.
The PAP government is getting far too big and is dominated by one man and his familee. Their policies have not been working e.g. importing cheap labour, selling Singapore citizenship at a cheap price, losing billions of $$$$ from the foreign reserves.
What we badly need is competition in the political arena. Vote in more opposition MP’s
Singaporeans especially the young ought to know that LKY also destroyed a major part of Singapore which is Chinese. Like the old boys associations of Chinese Middle School like Chung Cheng. Like the Chinese clan, musical and cultural associations.Like Nantah. All for what ? LKY suspected them of being controlled by leftish elements and hence they must be abolished or infiltrated and change. So it is kind of ironic that LKY is now sucking up so dearly to the mainland Communist Chinese. When I see LKY wearing the old styled chinese jacket, I could not stop myself laughing. If he cannot oppressed to stay on top, he has the ability to change his colour to do so.
the main object to promoted chinese language by Mr Lee is more a polictical motive to win the heart of chinese educated voter in the early 80s.
For Singaporean, the working language is English.Chinese is just a language for casual conversations.
Not saying that the “admission of mistake” is of any use, the point about the difficulty of mastering two or more languages up to the same level is not wrong. It is the part about nobody being able to do it that is wrong.
The truth is, it takes a lot of hard work and dedication to “master” even just one language. Not everyone can be writers or speech makers. You don’t expect everybody to be a Maths/Arts/Sports whiz, so how can it be that everybody is a Language whiz?
MM Lee had pushed through, with a sledgehammer, campaigns on language education and eugenic population policies (smart parents = smart kids), despite being non-expert in these fields. I wish he’d used a lighter touch on things he had little technical expertise about.
Where were our investigative journalists in the ST? In the past two decades there have been more articles on how our bilingual policy was a success and a model for others, how Mr Lee is praiseworthy for his foresight in this matter. What a slap in the face this admission must be.
People learn different languages in different ways, at different speeds. Theories abound relating this learning to the two hemispheres of the brain. Also to the environment, education techniques, the language itself, etc. Some people learn roman-alphabetical languages better than ideographic ones. Some learn better through rote, others through use. The jury is still out.
To say now that it cannot be done, in such an absolute way, is probably as wrong as thinking that it can absolutely be done, in the past. Maybe I am deceiving myself, as advised – hallucinating, seeing polyglots in our midst.
It is puzzling that he began by saying “We started the wrong way” and then went on to conclude that “Nobody can master two languages at the same level.” Is it impossible , or did he go about it the wrong way ?
Which is it?
To lose a language is also to get shut out from the wisdom and knowledge and culture embedded in that language. It is not merely a 40 year-long experiment with a bunch of chimps and bananas.
The point to note is not that he was wrong. Everyone makes mistakes. The lesson to learn is that finesse, and not brute force, is sometimes required get something done. They should at the very least be consultative in the implementation of these light-touch policies, unless they are positioned to suffer their consequences with us. And a consultative government is one where the people have a real and effective “NO” button to push, to stop the government from doing what they do not want.
58) Political SalesMaN on November 18th, 2009 6.18 pm ,
i hv the same thing u mentioned but not sure whether is real. another thing, if he is hainanese, that’s confirmed why Marboro Tan is relative to him. well, who knows?
19/11/09
Hi Jackie-Good to hear from you, I go to Hongkong very frequently and last trip was in Sep09 and will be going month end as I am working for a boutique advisory company and deals with big banks there and I have many classmates there. Tell me what so good about Mandarin-all crap and you take a good look in Southern China, majority speak Cantonese. Let us look at a much bigger picture (the Chinese are speaking more English than us Singaporeans today).
Regards
Andrew Chuah
I subscribe to Starhub’s TVBJ Contonese paid channel.
Today, the HK channel has begun to incorporate Mandarin elements like CCTV programmes, Mandarin compereing, conversations, fashion shows, etc.
I do believe the tide is changing and HK people are the quickest to seize on change and survive.