[lg policy] Singapore: full report of MM Lee on bilingualism and language policy

[Anthea Fraser Gupta]

What never fails to amaze me is how the great successes of the Singapore education system AND of its bilingual program can be presented as failures. No-one reading this speech, or the comments on it, would realise that in Singapore almost everyone is (at least) bilingual and (to varying degrees) biliterate, and that most children grow up as native speakers of the school languages. By any reasonable and imaginable measures, the education system of Singapore has been (and is) A Big Success. Standards are high and have risen steadily since the 1950s. They have risen in both English and Mandarin.

The reason MM Lee sees failure is that he thought he could convert the ethnic Chinese of Singapore into people who spoke 'perfect' English  and 'perfect' Mandarin, equally. What has been produced is a general population who speak both but with (no surprise to sociolinguists) variation. 

As I have written in the past, my own feeling is that the loss engendered by the SUCCESS of the policy has been (a) the attrition of varieties of Chinese other than Mandarin; (b) the decline in people who know 'cross ethnic' languages (e.g. Malays who speak a variety of Chinese, Chinese people who speak Malay).

Anthea

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Anthea Fraser Gupta (Dr)
School of English, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT
<www.leeds.ac.uk/english/staff/afg>
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________________________________________
From: lgpolicy-list-bounces+a.f.gupta=leeds.ac.uk at groups.sas.upenn.edu [lgpolicy-list-bounces+a.f.gupta=leeds.ac.uk at groups.sas.upenn.edu] On Behalf Of Harold Schiffman [hfsclpp at gmail.com]
Sent: 18 November 2009 14:26
To: lp
Subject: [lg policy] Singapore: full report of MM Lee on bilingualism and       language policy

  Insistence on bilingualism in early years of education policy was
wrong: MM Lee
By Hoe Yeen Nie, Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 17 November 2009 2142 hrs


  Insistence on bilingualism in early years of education policy was
wrong: MM Lee

SINGAPORE: 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. 
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