Mother tongue education in Singapore: concerns, issues and controversies (original) (raw)
In 1966, the Singapore Government implemented the English-knowing bilingual policy which made it mandatory for all Chinese students to study English as a ‘First Language’ and the Chinese language (CL) as a ‘Mother Tongue Language’ in Singapore schools. Using key literature relevant to Singapore’s bilingual educational policy and adopting a wider sociohistorical, sociocultural and sociopolitical analysis [May, S. (2006). Language policy and minority rights. In T. Ricento (Ed.), An introduction to language policy (pp. 255–272). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing], this paper critically evaluates mother tongue education in Singapore. It argues that maintaining additive bilingualism in multilingual Singapore is problematic because English, a majority language with greater political power, privilege and social prestige in the local linguistic landscape, has come to replace the range and functions of Chinese, a minority language within the linguistic ecology of Singapore. The inevitable result is that speakers of Chinese experience a ‘shift’ to speaking the majority language and there is a fear that Chinese will erode further as an increasing number of younger Chinese Singaporeans display a lack of interest in learning their mother tongue due to a dominant English education and the overwhelming presence of English in Singapore’s society. This paper draws attention to the need to accord protection to the CL in order to maintain additive bilingualism in Singapore. Keywords: Singapore; bilingual education; mother tongue; challenges
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