5/19/2010

The MTL Debate

The debate continues. Actually it is a very healthy exercise to talk about this issue as it affects practically every school going child and the parents. And the outcome will have a very significant impact on the future of the generations of children to come, and what Singapore will be. At the moment the tussel is between those for and those against MTL with some in between. Both camps have strong reasons to argue for their cases. In between there is a middle camp that accepts MTL but wants it to be made simpler or easier. Ng Eng Hen and his team would now have to sweat it out to come out with a compromise solution to appease the parties. I doubt that in this case they would dare to use the compulsory sword and just decide and make the people accept it like CPF Life, Medisave, Minimum Sum etc etc. Taking such an option will be very costly politically. Whatever the final decision on this, let's hope it is a wise one. The unfortunate thing is that not everyone is going to be happy about it no matter how it turns out. This is clearly an area that is not white or black. Maybe he can fall back on his policy as a long term one as the consequences of the policy will take generations to bear fruits, be it sweet, sour or poisonous. Only the future will tell.
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3 comments:

  1. Lost4everMay 19, 2010 9:43 am

    Can there be a freedom of choice, eg:

    1. Banana may select to do French, German, Spainish, etc as second language, why must be Mandrain, as they do not even use, or may argue that their mother tongue is either hockien, teochew, cantonese, hakka, hainanese, etc.

    2. People who wants their kids to use English more often, as they themselves lost out when they were young because of English handicap, so their focus is on English and not Mandrain.

    3. Hardcore, who insist kids must do Higher Chinese

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousMay 19, 2010 10:54 am

    With atmost sincerity, me says let everybody chooses what they wish to learn.

    Many do not honour or even respect their biological fathers and mothers, how then can we expect them to honour father tongue and mother tongue??

    Pragmatic people have little or no interest in heritage and customs.

    patriot

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousMay 19, 2010 3:07 pm

    "Can there be a freedom of choice...."

    What freedom? Singaporeans lost all their freedom progressively over the last 45 years.

    What we have now is a return to the old days of master and slaves.

    Do slaves have a choice?

    ReplyDelete