Education : Teaching Of The Mother Tongue Is Irrelevant

Presently, it is compulsory for all Singaporean students to take up the Mother Tongue Language. However, I feel that the Mother Tongue language is becoming useless in Singapore.

To start, in today’s world, English has become the universal language used in communication in business, politics, the workplace and more. The international companies like Microsoft employ the use of English and even the Chinese President, in his speeches televised worldwide, speaks in English. Nowadays, the Chinese are learning English to keep themselves abreast with the world. Singapore should start doing that too – she must realize that English is more relevant in today’s world than the Mother Tongue. The Mother Tongue should be taught as a means to retain cultural identities but not so much emphasis should be given to it such as in the ruling to pass Mother Tongue in junior college in order to proceed to university.

Moving on, the content to be learnt in the Mother Tongue is too much. Chinese students have to memorise over 1000 characters by Primary 6 as said in the article. Malay students are required to memorise over 80 idioms in the O level examinations, out of which only 5 were tested. Considering that the Mother Tongue language is relatively not as important as the English language, this is asking a lot from the students and places a considerable burden on them during examinations when they should be focusing on their other subjects.

Last but not least, the belief that every student has his or her own second language that they converse in at home is not entirely true in Singapore. There is a small but significant minority racial group in Singapore called the Eurasians whom the government has recently given its attention to and even Prime Minister Lee has visited the Eurasian Association. They are mixed in terms of their race. For instance, I am a Eurasian and am mixed of Indian and Portuguese. Well, they generally converse in English and have no mother tongue of their own. When they are asked to take up a Mother Tongue language in schools, they are in a dilemma as they have no background in any Mother Tongue language unlike their Tamil, Malay or Chinese friends. Thus, the compulsory ruling to take up a Mother Tongue language is disadvantageous to the Eurasians.