Singapore Government Press Release

Media Relations Division, Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts,

MITA Building, 140 Hill Street, 2nd Storey, Singapore 179369 Tel: 6837-9666

SPEECH BY MINISTER MENTOR LEE KUAN YEW AT THE PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE ON THE REPORT OF THE CHINESE LANGUAGE CURRICULUM AND PEDAGOGY REVIEW COMMITTEE ON THURSDAY, 25 NOVEMBER 2004

I have been grappling with the difficulties of bilingualism, especially English and Chinese, since I went to Choon Guan School in Joo Chiat at the age of six. I was taught in Mandarin, heavily accented by dialect. After a few weeks of bafflement, I persuaded my mother to transfer me to Telok Kurau English School. Against the wishes of my grandmother, my mother agreed. So I grew up speaking English at home with my parents, and Malay and Hokkien with the children in the kampung near my home in Siglap. My grandmother made me join the fishermen’s children in the village school, an attap house at the back of our home. It had one solitary teacher speaking what was supposed to be Mandarin, and I was made to practise writing with the brush. I did not make much progress and gave up after a few months.

My first crisis with a foreign language was when the Japanese occupied Singapore in February 1942. I did not understand what the Japanese soldiers said and was slapped, nor could I read their notices pasted on walls. Such was my antipathy to the Japanese that I decided to learn Chinese so that I could understand the written Japanese notices. I bought myself two sets of books “Mandarin Made Easy” by Chiang Ker Chiu, and a 4-volume booklet produced by the Prinsep Street Chinese School, teaching Chinese through English. In 6 months, at the age of 19, I learned to write 2,000 characters, understand their meanings as individual words and in some phrases. Because I was self-taught, I could not speak Mandarin. I got my neighbour, a Teochew lad, to teach me for a few weeks. He spoke Mandarin with a strong Teochew accent. I knew it was not proper Mandarin and did not want to stick it into mind.

My next language crisis was in 1955 general elections which I contested in Tanjong Pagar. My opponent, a Mr Lam Thian, a Hakka pawnbroker, who represented the Hakka community in the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, challenged me to debate in Chinese. Deeply embarrassed, I dodged his challenge. I decided to make a speech in Mandarin, for the first time in my life. All the foundation I had was the 2,000 characters I learned on my own in 1942. I got a friendly reporter from Sin Pao, a leftwing broadsheet, to write me a 1-page speech. He was Jek Yeun Thong, later to be my political secretary and a minister in my government. It was the most taxing speech I ever made in my life, and to a crowd of over 20,000 people, packed in the open ground at the back of rows of shop houses, where Kreta Ayer Theatre now stands. I was barely understood. But the crowd was with me. They cheered me.

In 1955 I was a member of the All Party Parliamentary Committee that had to report on the Chinese schools, then in a state of political agitation. This was my first introduction to the problems of Chinese education. These schools had produced over half the young population of Singapore in a language that could not give them the jobs their ability led them to expect, because government and businesses needed English language workers.

Elected as an Assemblyman and being Secretary-General of People’s Action Party, I had a powerful motivation to learn Mandarin, both spoken and written, to understand and speak to the people around me, and to read the notices and pamphlets that were put out in the name of the party. I studied for 1 hour every day during lunch, taking lunch at my desk at the same time. My teacher was from my branch in Tanjong Pagar, a young pro-communist activist. He taught me for free. He was tasked to convert me into a Marxist and absorb me into their movement. The text books were Marxism made easy in Chinese. So I became familiar with the vocabulary of the left wingers and communists.

By the May 1959 general elections, 4 years after my first Mandarin speech at Kreta Ayer, I was able to make Mandarin speeches off the cuff. Then came another language crisis, a terrible setback in 1961. PAP’s best Hokkien speaker, Ong Eng Guan, a non-communist, the first and only Mayor of Singapore, had rebelled against the party. He wanted to become the leader and picked a fight with the party. He resigned his seat in Hong Lim. So we faced a by-election. We could not depend on Lim Chin Siong, who had been our great Hokkien orator because we would not release all the pro-communists in detention. Ong Eng Guan had become our Hokkien speaker in his place when Lim Chin Siong was in detention from 1956 to 1959. Goh Keng Swee came to see me in my office at the City Hall, dolefully, he looked me in the eye and said, “Learn Hokkien, you be our Hokkien speaker, no other way”. I did so, furiously and assiduously, spending 1-2 hours a day in between my work as PM. After a few weeks I made my first Hokkien speech based on my Mandarin and the snatches of Hokkien I remembered it from my youth. My teacher was Radio Singapore producer of Hokkien programmes, Seah Cheng Tit. His enthusiasm and skills plus my determination and total concentration, made for progress. My first street rally in China Street was unforgettable. The little kids around the lorry from which I spoke, laughed hilariously as I spoke in Hokkien. I took them seriously. I said, children don’t laugh I want to learn in order to speak to you because I have something important to say to you. At the end of 3 months by polling day of that by-election campaign I had mastered enough basic Hokkien to stop them laughing at me.

I had learnt Japanese from late 1942 by attending a 3-month Japanese language course run by the Japanese Military Administration in Queen’s Street. Then I worked as a clerk in a Japanese firm. By the end of the war in 1945 could act as an interpreter from Japanese to English.

I had learnt Latin in school for my Junior Cambridge in 1938 and Senior Cambridge in 1939. I forgot all of it and in 1946 had to re-learn it when I started to read law.

I have recounted my personal experience in learning languages and at critical moments of my life to show that I know its difficulties. Because Chinese is not an easy language, and because I felt the loss keenly, my wife and I decided that our children would be educated in Chinese schools. We feared but were prepared for their English to be less fluent as a result. They went to Chinese schools in the 1950s where English was taught as a second language, inadequately, as one subject. But they spoke English to their mother at home and I spoke to them in Mandarin to practise my Mandarin. As it turned out, their English became more fluent than their Mandarin because after Chinese secondary schools, they went on to English language universities and then worked in English.

I remember discussing bilingualism with Pierre Trudeau shortly after he became prime minister of Canada. I was in Vancouver at University of British Columbia, watching the US Presidential elections and preparing to go to Harvard for one term in the autumn of 1968. Pierre Trudeau sent a small aircraft to take me to Ottawa on route to Boston, Harvard. He was French Canadian, with a French father and an Irish mother. He spoke both languages fluently, having been educated in Quebec in both French and English. He went on to the LSE and also to a university in Paris. When he held a press conference after a Commonwealth meeting in Ottawa in the 1970s, I marvelled at his bilingual skills. When questioned in English, his accent, his facial expressions and body language were those of an Englishman, restrained and understated, something he learnt in his years at the LSE. When questioned in French, he replied with the expressive gestures of a Frenchman. He wanted to solve the Quebec separatist problem. He wanted all Canadians to be bilingual, in English and French and set out with great passion to do this. I held similar hopes for Singapore, English and the mother tongue. But French and English was a much easier combination than Chinese and English.

But after 40 years, Canada, despite enormous efforts, teaching English and French in schools, requiring every government document to be in two languages, making the courts operate in both English and French so that any Canadian can give evidence either in English or in French, and speeches in Parliament can be in either English or French, Canada still does not have a bilingual population. The effective bilinguals are but a small minority.

In 1968, however, I shared Pierre Trudeau’s ambition to have a whole society bilingual, competent in both languages but at the varying levels people can manage. This caused great stress on many because examinations catered for differing levels only after we learned that equal competency was not possible.

In the 1970s I was in Luxembourg. It was the most multilingual society in Europe. They speak their own local dialect, Luxembourgese, also French and German. For tertiary education, they go to universities in France, and Germany. As they were developing a financial centre and their banks worked in English, they were learning English. But the language standards of their English newspapers were poor; so too their French and German papers.

I was in Mauritius in 1979. It had been French, and was handed over to the British in the early 19^th century after the Napoleonic wars. The British undertook to allow the teaching of French. France continued sending French-language teachers to Mauritius. The educated Mauritians, in particular the prime minister of the time Dr Ramgoolam, spoke English with a French accent. He was an English barrister. He also spoke Hindi. After independence he added a third language for teaching in schools, Hindi, Tamil, Chinese and Creole, a pidgin language. Their newspapers in French, English and Chinese were rudimentary and patchy. Effective bilingualism was confined to a few at the top.

I have visited Hong Kong and Taiwan frequently. In Hong Kong the people all spoke Cantonese and the British taught English in some schools and in Hong Kong University. The effectively bilingual in Hong Kong is between 5% to 10%. In Taiwan their top students who can afford it go to American universities for their PhDs. Their bilinguals are a small minority probably about 3-5%. Singapore can achieve a higher percentage of the effective bilinguals. The 5 to 10% at the top can be equal to Hong Kong’s, but with their English stronger, but their Chinese weaker than Hong Kongers who live in a Cantonese speaking society and read Chinese newspapers. But Singaporeans will have another 50% of bilinguals. They will be able to listen, speak and read Chinese, and their Mandarin and English will not be as good as the top 5 to 10% of Singaporeans. The rest of the Singaporeans will also be bilingual, but with lower levels of fluency. Many of them will be more comfortable in Mandarin than English, because Mandarin will be their home language.

I have reluctantly concluded that very few people can be fluent in two languages. Those who can, like simultaneous interpreters, spend much of their time practising putting words from one language into another language according to different grammatical rules. And there are problems with idioms and metaphors. To be fluent one has to retrieve words instantaneously. The more you use one language, the less you use the other. So at any one time, you have one language dominant.

I used to believe that having learnt a language you are always able to use it; that if you had learnt it young enough the language can come back almost instantaneously. I have discovered this is not quite so. However well you master a language, if you stop using it frequently, you will lose your fluency and your easy retrieval of words. But because you have mastered it when young, it can be revived with some practice. I once asked Pierre Trudeau what his master language was. He said that when he had been campaigning in Quebec, his master language was French. When in western Canada, speaking English all the time, it was English. I did not quite understand why he made this distinction. I understand now, that however high my mastery of English, if I were to live in China or Taiwan, and spoke nothing but Mandarin for a few years, my Mandarin would take off, but my fluency in English would decline. At any one time I have only one master language. But if I stop using Mandarin, it will soon be rusty and will need great effort to bring it back to fluency.

I once thought that a person’s ability to learn languages corresponded to his IQ or intelligence. I have learned that students of the same IQ have different linguistic skills. And it is statistically proven that girls are generally better at languages than boys. Long before neurologists discovered that different parts of the brain were involved in the learning and use of the second language, we knew there was a difference between IQ and linguistic ability.

Next, learning a second language depends upon one’s motivation and the opportunity to use it. It also makes a difference how you teach it, and who teaches it, so that learning the language becomes interesting and the language becomes fascinating and captivating. There is a wide range of bilingual skills in any population and each student should be encouraged to reach his optimum level.

We decided in 1965 that English was Singapore’s working language. As I told the Chinese Chamber of Commerce committee in 1965 when their leaders urged me to make Chinese the national and official language, Singapore would fall apart. Our races would be in conflict. In any case even if we were all Chinese, and there were no disadvantaged minorities, we would not be able to make a living if our working language was Chinese.

English was and still is the language of commerce, of science, technology and international intercourse. Once English is the language of government and the workplace, every student must reach a certain level of competence in English. He needs this to gain his other knowledge, history, geography, chemistry, physics, and mathematics. Hence the mother tongue had to be his second language. Moreover English is a neutral medium for our different races.

What is the responsibility of the government? It is, first and foremost, to give everyone enough English language skills to make a living. Because if he cannot make a living, nothing else is important. However, we also need to teach him his mother tongue, because that is what gives him his identity and makes our society vigorous and distinctive.

We cannot have a one-size-fits-all type of teaching of the mother tongues. From the very linguistically gifted and highly motivated, to those who are least gifted and do not speak the language at home, we must help each to achieve his/her best.

Parents can decide what is the ratio of emphasis between English and the mother tongue they want for their child. Schools and teachers will advise. Pupils coming from English-speaking homes can have more classes in Chinese language to help them, while those from Chinese speaking homes can choose to have more time on English. Our schools will offer different ratios or balances between EL and ML (mother tongue), ranging from minimum ML to maximum ML in SAP schools. Those with the aptitude and interest can choose the bicultural programmes in secondary schools. We must understand that there is no constant steady state, because the importance of a language changes over time.

In 1965 the PAP government decided on teaching the mother tongue because my colleagues and I strongly believed that it gives a person confidence in himself and pride in his language and culture. We thought it important enough to make it compulsory for every Chinese child to study Mandarin. We gradually realised that while parents and students wanted emotionally to keep their mother tongue, sentimental reasons are not as strong as the economic value of the language. With China’s economic resurgence, parents and students now know that the Chinese language is a valuable skill. The motivation is now much stronger, but what standards are achieved will vary with each student’s language ability, the method of teaching, and the Chinese language environment of their workplace, home and clubs. Several writers in ZaoBao have deplored the fact that the present enthusiasm of parents and students for learning Chinese is because of its economic value. But let us not berate the pragmatism of Singaporeans.

Parents anticipating what China will be in 20 years, may eventually want to choose Chinese as the first language in primary school for their children. We can provide such teaching by expanding the teaching in Chinese of other subjects in some SAP schools, at least for the first few years of their children’s education. But parents must be sure that their children have the home backing to eventually catch up in English. Remember that constant use determines the fluency and mastery of a language.

My three children were educated completely in Chinese from kindergarten to primary and secondary schools. My eldest child finished his HSC in Catholic High School in Chinese. However they all went on to English language universities, and after graduation all worked in English. Today all three have English as their master language.

My grandchildren went to the same Chinese kindergarten and primary school as my children – Nanyang Kindergarten (Youzhiyuan) and Nanyang Primary School (Xiao Xue). But they spoke English at home and with their school mates and friends. Wee Cho Yaw once lamented to me that when he addressed his grandchildren in Mandarin, they replied in English. Yet their fathers, Cho Yaw’s sons, were Chinese educated. I knew what he meant and how he felt. When I pressed my grandchildren to speak in Mandarin, they gave me short answers in Mandarin and then switched to English. All except one were in the gifted stream (GEP). But they felt they had to spend a disproportionate amount of time swotting up Chinese for examinations. These changes have come too late for them to benefit. Except for the youngest grandson, still in primary school, they have all gone through the system. My eldest grandchild, went from Nanyang to RGS to Hwa Chong JC and did Higher Chinese at ‘O’ levels. But today she still prefers to speak English. The other grandchildren all found the subject hard, and did not enjoy it despite the best efforts of their very dedicated CL teachers.

Their different results show that their language skills vary widely in spite of similar performance all in maths and science. But all were affected by the changed language environment of their schools, homes and peer groups.

The changes proposed in the White Paper offer a wide range of options for students and their parents. The level a student achieves will depend on his ability, his inherent bilingual skills, and the language environment in school, home and the neighbourhood. We will monitor how these changes work and adjust them to achieve our objectives, namely to enable each student to acquire the most he can absorb and to appreciate the language so that he will want to continue learning and reading it later in life.

We are taking out the drudgery of rote memorising of words and passages for examinations. That is no longer necessary. IT has enabled everyone to type in pinyin instead of writing the Chinese characters. Our examinations will move towards real life situations, by allowing use of pinyin for typing in words. These tools are what everyone will have and will use in life. We want every student to reach the highest standards he can attain in listening, speaking, reading and, least important of all for a second language, in writing. I have no need to write Chinese and have not done so for the last 40 years. My Chinese speeches are translated and typed for me. But learning to write basic characters is still important for the student to understand the strokes and to read handwritten letters. There are IT programmes to show students, again and again, how characters are written. Writing a character reinforces it in his memory. With IT, the pronunciation of new words can now be digitally accessed, and the technology is getting better each year. When you highlight a word, an electronic voice will read it out; and with another programme it can produce the pinyin and tonal value of that word.

What is difficult is the implementation of these changes: to get the textbooks revised; wordlist revamped and reduced; examinations recast to lessen rote learning and focus on testing ability to listen, speak and read; make handheld digital devices available in classrooms, and allow their use in examinations; later in home laptops, software to enable pinyin to produce Chinese characters. Most important are the teachers. Our Chinese language teachers typically have to teach 4/5 classes of 35/40 students each, across all levels. At Primary One, teachers will need a few months, using simple diagnostic tests, to identify which students require bridging modules, or advanced modules. Teachers must be given help to cope, so that they have the time to assess their students’ needs, and to develop interesting lesson plans to motivate and excite their students. The Minister of Education and his professionals will have to work the schemes out.

Had these aids been available when I was self-learning Chinese in 1942, and again in 1955, I would not have had to sweat so much blood. I had to look up dictionaries, search for the radicals, and count the number of strokes of the rest of the character. IT does not mean no effort is required. It removes the drudgery, and our examinations in future will test, not memory, but real understanding of a language, the ability to listen, to speak, to read, and type pinyin on the computer for the written characters.

I have discussed this problem of acquiring a command of the Chinese language with many Singaporeans working in China, including our Embassy staff. All of them have gone through our national schools with Chinese as their second language. They said that with constant exposure to Mandarin in China they can now work in Chinese. One lady in her forties, a lawyer educated in NUS, with Chinese as a second language in school, was sent to Shanghai by her Singapore law firm. After some years in Shanghai she enrolled at Fudan University, Shanghai, to add polish to her Chinese. Today she can draw up legal documents in Chinese. These Singaporeans in China are testimony to the success of our second language policy. Without that second language foundation in school they could not have been able to work in China without interpreters. And at home in Singapore, because of the second language, more people view and listen to Chinese news on TV and radio than on the English channels. The majority however read English newspapers and magazines, because they find it the easier language to read as English is the language of their workplace.

I have read the comments and views in ZaoBao and Straits Times on the proposed changes. Many feel passionately about the Chinese language and culture. I understand their views and share their concerns. As a government we tried to get every student to achieve as high a standard in Mandarin as possible, to be as near the standard of their English as possible. It proved counter-productive. Students and parents put up with the system because they had no choice, but significant numbers had their interest and enthusiasm killed by the drudgery of memorising words, phrases and proverbs that they did not have a use for other than to score in examinations. And doing well in exams is not the same as using the language fluently after leaving school.

What we now propose is more doable, and will help sustain interest in the language. Students of varying ability and backgrounds should achieve the best they can. This policy is not set in stone. We are open to new ideas and will make changes and adjustments as we find out how our students manage. I know that many of the Chinese educated fear that these new changes will tend to reduce the level of learning and use of Mandarin. Their fears are misplaced. If we leave the teaching of Mandarin as it is, standards will decline through turning off many students, especially as more of them come from English-speaking homes. The changes we propose will give every student the optimum he can cope with and in a manner that encourages him to keep using the language instead of turning him off for good. I have feedback that my figure of 200 biculturalists in every year’s cohort is too small. This number is an initial target, what I think our schools can work on at present and deliver the results we want. If there are more parents and students who want this bicultural course, the schools can take in more students. Furthermore our universities can offer special courses for those who have business or work in China.

Our system can evolve and adjust as the situation changes. If the Chinese language becomes much more of economic value and parents and students want to learn more Chinese, our system can accommodate them. The choice must be exercised by parents and students and not by the government.

Let me add this caveat, a note of caution: if you know only Chinese, even if your Chinese is as good as the Chinese spoken in Beijing or Shanghai, you are of little value to China and the Chinese. They do not need the more Chinese-speaking people from Singapore. They already have 1.3 billion of them. What they find useful are Chinese from abroad, like Singaporeans, who understand their language and share their culture and can act as their partners. We add value because of our knowledge of the wider English speaking world and the networks we have built up, because English educated Singaporeans are familiar and well connected with the systems, peoples and cultures of America, Europe, Japan, India and Asean. That is our real advantage, the value add of Singaporeans in China.

For a bright hardworking student the ideal would be to have equal grounding in English and Mandarin. For example, if my children, after graduating from English universities, had gone on to work in China or Taiwan for 10 years, Chinese would have become their master language because they received a Chinese education when they were children. For me this will never be possible because I learned Chinese too late in life.

An important test for our policies is how Chinese-educated parents want to educate their children. I read recently in ZaoBao that Tan Kah Kee’s grandchildren went to Jimei University on the 130^th anniversary of his birth. Some could not speak either Hokkien or Mandarin. This would have grieved Mr Tan Kah Kee. But his children and grandchildren grew up in Singapore and have changed with Singapore’s changed language environment. Few Chinese-educated parents have sent their children to schools to be as Chinese-educated as themselves, because they want a better command of English for their children. If I were a child again, I would want to be taught Chinese as my first language in primary school to make sure I will master it early in life, English as a second. If I can cope, I will continue this in secondary school up to ‘O’ levels. This is because I am confident that with an English speaking home I would not have any trouble mastering English. Then I would want to do Malay to understand what my neighbours are saying.

MOE will allow some primary schools to introduce a heavier Chinese language curriculum, for those confident that Chinese will not diminish their children’s command of English, because English is the language of their home and the media, TV and newspapers. On the other hand my Chinese-educated friends, and my Chinese teachers want their children to have a good command of English, and so avoid the disadvantages they themselves suffered, but at the same time they want their children to attain the highest levels in Chinese.

Parents must bear in mind that if their children go for the easier option and settle for lower standards in Mandarin, it may cost them dearly later in life. My advice to parents and students is: go for the highest level you can achieve after coping with your other subjects that are taught in English.

Regardless of the trends between the relative importance of English and Mandarin, Singapore must always retain a core of the Chinese-educated who can regenerate and sustain the Chinese-speaking and Chinese-reading habits of our population. I believe the outlook is favourable. Our home-grown core will be reinforced by a continuing flow of the completely Chinese-educated from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong who will come to work here as Work Permit (WP), Employment Pass (EP) holders, as PRs, and some as citizens. And the number of Chinese tourists will be increasing. So I am confident that Singapore can maintain a fairly high standard of spoken Mandarin because we have a sizeable majority of Mandarin speaking Singaporeans plus a significant numbers of Mandarin speaking people from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong. They will keep Mandarin alive in Singapore.