Print: #14
Online: #1
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Soliloquy in Monochrome: Lowering the Bar for Mother Tongue
2010 May 9
Education Minister Ng Eng Hen’s recent comment on the possible reduction of the weightage assigned to the Mother Tongue Language (MTL) in the PSLE has sparked intense debate amongst Singaporeans. Currently, MTL accounts for 25% of the PSLE score, on par with the English Language, Science and Mathematics.
Two factions have emerged from this apparent struggle of wills: on one side, you have the English-speaking parents who have long-argued that the equal emphasis on MTL penalizes students (specifically, their children) who score well in every other subject but do poorly in MTL. On the other side of the divide lie the Chinese-educated community leaders and young bilingual professionals.
In my opinion, although this act of goodwill is meant to serve the interests of the unfortunate few whose Achilles’ Heel and bete noire is the MTL, we must be mindful of the potentially divisive nature of this issue – it cuts across language lines and has mild but obvious overtones of further class stratification in Singapore (given the common association of those whose first language is English with wealth and status; as opposed to the Chinese-educated who are seen as inferior with a chip on their shoulder to boot). We must ask ourselves: while we seek to help the few, is the redefinition of the value of the MTL truly a remedy to the problem? Are we doing a disservice to the current crop of students by halting the healing rain that will encourage the sprouting of young buds of interest in the language or are we simply surrendering ourselves to one of mankind’s seven deadly sins – sloth?
I do not presume to say that I have ever excelled in MTL … In fact, I can’t even claim to stand among those who perform only modestly in the subject. However, if there is one thing I must say from experience; it is that it was the 25% PSLE weighting that acted as the proverbial rod that whipped me out of my indolence into the warm embrace of an ‘A’ in the PSLE. It is hard to like (much less love) a subject that you do badly in. It is even harder to confront such an adversary when it has the power (albeit one-fourth of a share of that power) to determine your future choice of secondary school, the academic climate you study in and even who you fraternize with in the future. Nonetheless, let me ask of you this question: would you put in as much effort to appreciate the language and learn it if the weighting was cut? Is it really that easy to switch from hating a subject to the polar opposite just by massaging a few measly figures?
The inadvertent retort to the first question bubbles to the surface of the mind in protest. Of course not! The very point of lowering the weighting is to let me focus more energy on other subjects in the first place! To those who can discern the ramifications of the move towards a ‘less-stressed’ academic environment by removing the bugbear that is MTL, I do believe that we can see that we would have gained nothing and only lose more in the process. Is the reduction in the weighting of the MTL at the PSLE going to make the PSLE exam an easier or less pressurizing one?
Instead, in the eyes of the archetypal Machiavellian Singaporean student, it is now more justifiable to choose sleep over an MTL quiz that is not counted in your Mid-year examinations. In our minds, the measure of a subject’s importance is how large a slice it makes up in the pie of academic results.
Additionally, if one does not even deem something of enough significance to acknowledge and learn it, what incentive is there to bridge the great chasm between hating and loving it? “All we need is a little time”, one may cry. Alas, I fail to see how leaving those unimportant Chinese books sitting sadly on the shelf is going to cultivate any form of feeling towards the language apart from its collection of mold and dust. More likely than not, the subject would probably be sent off the plank into the abyss of neglect with little more than a nonchalant shrug and dusting of palms.
Hence, the real question we should ask ourselves is: should we be lowering the bar so that it accentuates our incompetency or raise our level of competency to clear that very bar? Maybe that should be our focus rather than how many percent should the MTL make up the PSLE.
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