Recently, there has been quite a hoo-hah over new probable changes into the policies of Mother Tongue Education. In a previous post, I had given my general look of the situation, and this is merely a post to add upon it, as well as speaking about the new policy direction of seemingly, marginalizing the subject in today's Education.

Recent news articles have described much about the next few steps that the ministry is looking towards for the language. I shall quote directly from a MOE Press release. HERE.

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8- The goal is to evolve a curriculum framework and develop effective pedagogies that will engage the interest and maximise the learning of MTLs across three broad groups of students—the majority of children who come from EL-speaking homes, those with the ability and interest to do Higher MTL, and those with limited home language exposure and face difficulties in learning the language.

9- For the majority, the objective is to cultivate an interest in MTL, and to develop effective communication skills and confidence in using the MTL. For students who have the ability, MOE will help them develop fluency in all four language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) and an understanding of the history and culture. For students with limited home exposure and face difficulties in learning the language, MOE will help them to acquire competency in oral communication for daily living.

10- As recommendations of the Review Committees will take time to be implemented, MOE will be making some intermediate changes over the next few years, to better align MTL teaching to the broad approach that will be adopted. The following outlines the intermediate changes to the learning and teaching of CL. The same principles will apply to ML and TL with due consideration to the specific context of each language.

- "Strengthening Language Skills to Prepare Our Students Well for the Future." - 10 March 2010

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We first have to realize, that the goal of this reform, at least from the MOE's point of view, is Differenciated Approaches. They are looking towards a milder form of 'streaming' for the students in terms of their Language abilities. Its not about making the required standards of Chinese lower for everyone, but about allowing every student to learn at their most comfortable pace. (Of course, this done to the best of the MOE's abilities, to say that every student would receive different treatments is still a thing of the future.)

That's of course, a reasonable goal for a policy. Average and stronger students are allowed to continue to learn in the traditional pace, and weaker students could be introduced into a slower pace and perhaps even different syllabuses catered to their abilities. Everybody would get the same, if not more, from their education.

However, I believe that whilst the overall direction of the reform is sound, there are 1 issue, and 1 act that the ministry MUST look solve and NOT commit respectively, before they can proceed.

Firstly, the issue, is of how the students will be streamed according to their abilities. I'm not just talking about HCL, CL, CL'B'. These are streams that already exist today. We would require much further streaming within the groups, especially for CL, where students can range from a step from HCL or a step above CL'B'.

Will it be written tests? Oral Tests? A personal suggestion would be more towards written for the higher levels, and more towards oral towards the lower levels. But that will be for Chinese Language (CL) Review Committe to decide.

However, the issue is, without clear differentiation between students in terms of streams, it is IMPOSSIBLE for there to be differentiated approaches for the students. Also, the test that differentiates must also be similar, if not identical, throughout schools around the whole of Singapore. We must ensure that the streams first contain the right students before we can even plan their syllabus.

Now, the act. There is one important act that the ministry is very close to doing, in which they should NEVER even consider threading over. That is that whatever policies that the government is looking towards, it should NEVER marginalize one important subject compared to others.

The system in Singapore has already marginalized many subjects, H1 H2 subjects, CME, PE, Music, Art and Craft. There are perfect examples of subjects that are already marginalized in today's system. That is something that, in my opinion, cannot be tolerated, and should not be happening!

When subjects are marginalized, it only begins a vicious cycle. The students will neglect the subject -> The teachers will not be dedicated to teaching the students -> Results get worse -> Less people contribute time into the subject etc.

To put it bluntly, if you want to improve the general abilities of a cohort, making it less important is not the way to go.

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On another note, whilst I disagree with the recently suggested changes, I believe that a reform, whilst not necessary, would definitely be appreciated by all students and teachers. However, the reform must be carried out with the goal in mind, and not pampering parents whom believe changing the policy is easier than teaching their children.

I'm personally game to see what more the ministry can bring to the table, when now even the act of teaching requires a level of entertainment to keep the interest of the students.

I will probably do another post soon to talk more about possible suggestions. This will do for now, thanks for reading.