MM Lee admits “mistake†made in his education policy
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Actually, on the contrary, I credit him for enforcing English as the 1st language.
The English language was, is, and always will be the de facto language for business, at least for several generations.
The issue is of simplicity. English is easy to learn and use. Chinese, on the other hand, is much more difficult.
If given a choice of losing one language, unfortunately, losing Chinese is better than losing English.
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i dont think chinese is more important than learning English. English is international language but Chinese is not. If china want to do business, they need to adopt to English and not we adopt to them.
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Originally posted by ☃®:
i dont think chinese is more important than learning English. English is international language but Chinese is not. If china want to do business, they need to adopt to English and not we adopt to them.
More importantly, it's the practical reason why English is the de facto international language, and why Chinese will never be.
It's about simplicity. Chinese is just too complicated to be adopted by everyone in the world.
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Please make constructive posts.
This thread itself is getting way out of line. I cannot understand the anger felt by so many people against our government... Is this what we called "monkey see , monkey do?"
Ask yourself, where such hate breeds from? Such strong hated. Do not keep asking what can the country offers you, ask yourself what you can offer to the country.
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I do not agree that Chinese is more complicated than English. It is just a matter of getting used to. The tide is changing, who knows, our next generation might be conducting business and talking technology in chinese instead. I cannot imagine myself doing that since my Chinese really sucks, but can we say that this will never happen?
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That angel 3070 is a crazy bitch and bias against the government as always.
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Is the Chinese language that hard?
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I think the point soul_rage is trying to make is that it is harder than English.
I'm pretty ok with either language, but i think it was just a fact that as a technical language English is better suited than any other options considering the global stituation then.
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Lee can make mistake
Rich or elites can make mistakes
but poor cannot make mistakes
?
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Originally posted by soul_rage:
Actually, on the contrary, I credit him for enforcing English as the 1st language.
The English language was, is, and always will be the de facto language for business, at least for several generations.
The issue is of simplicity. English is easy to learn and use. Chinese, on the other hand, is much more difficult.
If given a choice of losing one language, unfortunately, losing Chinese is better than losing English.
I can't say i completely agree with you there, personally i think Chinese is versatile enough a language to pick up and master and quite suitable a language for technical purposes as well.But the fact remains that Post Independence, the world was an English speaking world. Regardless of the internal political reasons (Though i think weakening the Chinese dialect speaking majority was one of the happy accidents, not the main goal), Singapore as a whole would benefit more on the global stage then by strictly implementing English.
My grandfather insisted that my mother and her siblings attend Chinese schools in the morning and English schools in the afternoon. Though I'm sure we like to convince ourselves that the people post independence were mindless sheeps being herded by LKY, i believe they were quite aware of the global stituation then.
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Originally posted by Stevenson101:
I can't say i completely agree with you there, personally i think Chinese is versatile enough a language to pick up and master and quite suitable a language for technical purposes as well.But the fact remains that Post Independence, the world was an English speaking world. Regardless of the internal political reasons (Though i think weakening the Chinese dialect speaking majority was one of the happy accidents, not the main goal), Singapore as a whole would benefit more on the global stage then by strictly implementing English.
My grandfather insisted that my mother and her siblings attend Chinese schools in the morning and English schools in the afternoon. Though I'm sure we like to convince ourselves that the people post independence were mindless sheeps being herded by LKY, i believe they were quite aware of the global stituation then.
China was still a slum post independence.
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Originally posted by ☃®:
China was still a slum post independence.
That's the point i was trying to make -
when the american bald eagle was king, Lee Kill You pandered to it.
now that the chinese dragon is awakening, Lee Kill You does the same.
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next is Indian tiger?
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MM only mentioned the learning of Chinese Language. What about the Malay and Indian languages that were also involved ? There were many Malay and Indian students too who sufferred because of the bilingual policy in our schools. I hope MM does forget that there are also other languages in Sg.
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chinese language is hard because it is not in letters but in characters. the complex character can be difficult to remember as there are too many strokes.
alot of students gave up cos they lack interest and environment to speak the language. plus the difficulty of remembering to read and write the characters made the problem worst. at that time china was a backward communist country.
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let's move on
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MM Lee Kuan Yew is the Prime Minister we have, without him the Malays will be nothing?
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I think for those uncles, there is no regret in learning chinese in their early years, they should thanks MM Lee, if not how to communicate so well with PRC gals.
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Originally posted by Stevenson101:
I can't say i completely agree with you there, personally i think Chinese is versatile enough a language to pick up and master and quite suitable a language for technical purposes as well.But the fact remains that Post Independence, the world was an English speaking world. Regardless of the internal political reasons (Though i think weakening the Chinese dialect speaking majority was one of the happy accidents, not the main goal), Singapore as a whole would benefit more on the global stage then by strictly implementing English.
My grandfather insisted that my mother and her siblings attend Chinese schools in the morning and English schools in the afternoon. Though I'm sure we like to convince ourselves that the people post independence were mindless sheeps being herded by LKY, i believe they were quite aware of the global stituation then.
If you ask the westerners about Chinese, many will tell you that Chinese is the most difficult language to learn (together with German). The foundation of the language is very much different from English.
Moreover, with us Chinese focusing 5000 years on culture and the language, it is indeed a more sophisticated language to learn. Which language can describe a scenario or situation in just 4 words?
But then again, I won't say I am correct, coz I am no language expert. I am just merely saying this based on my experience with global work. Who knows, maybe in 2 or 3 generations' time, China becomes the defacto superpower, that perhaps everyone HAS to learn Chinese in order to get a foot into the market?
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Australia ranks #2 in Human Development Index 2009 but singapore is #23.
http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/
The Human Development Index (HDI) is an index used to rank countries by level of "human development", which usually also implies whether a country is developed, developing, or underdeveloped
The HDI combines three dimensions:
*Life expectancy at birth, as an index of population health and longevity
*Knowledge and education, as measured by the adult literacy rate (with two-thirds weighting) and the combined primary, secondary, and tertiary gross enrollment ratio (with one-third weighting).
*Standard of living, as measured by the natural logarithm of gross domestic product per capita at purchasing power parity. -
Originally posted by angel7030:
I think for those uncles, there is no regret in learning chinese in their early years, they should thanks MM Lee, if not how to communicate so well with PRC gals.
Only a stupid Taiwanese 'Hum' with no integrity will look down on Singaporean uncles to be constantly besotted with PRC gals.It is quite obvious that the Taiwanese 'Hum' has no integrity to respect Singapore or Singaporeans - even as it has taken up residentship in Singapore.
If the Taiwanese 'Hum' has the slightest bit of integrity in its "hum" - it would not have insulted an 80 year old Dr Lim Hock Siew, who had stood his ground, and refused to surrender to the torments poured on him by the ISD dogs released by LKY.
If the Taiwanese 'Hum' has any integrity left, it should get out of Singapore and return to Taiwan.
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Lee Kuan Yew's policy of destroying chinese education system and imposing english as dominant language and suppressing dialect is a complete rubbish policy in my view.
You only have to look at the standard of english and chinese of Singaporeans to see that all of his languages policies had been a total and complete failure.
The basic reason lies with the rubbish education system, a flaw that many had criticised in the past but only now after so many years did Lee Kuan Yew dare to admit that he failed.
Lee Kuan Yew is worthless at making social policies.
He is an imbecile.
He is a fucking bastard.
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Seriously.
Would you trust someone with below views to make social policies?
"Three women were brought to the Singapore General Hospital, each in the same condition and needing a blood transfusion. The first, a Southeast Asian was given the transfusion but died a few hours later. The second, a South Asian was also given a transfusion but died a few days later. The third, an East Asian, was given a transfusion and survived. That is the X factor in development." - 27 December 1967
"The Bell curve is a fact of life. The blacks on average score 85 per cent on IQ and it is accurate, nothing to do with culture. The whites score on average 100. Asians score more ... the Bell curve authors put it at least 10 points higher. These are realities that, if you do not accept, will lead to frustration because you will be spending money on wrong assumptions and the results cannot follow." - Lee Kuan Yew, The Man & His Ideas, 1997
"I started off believing all men were equal. I now know that's the most unlikely thing ever to have been, because millions of years have passed over evolution, people have scattered across the face of this earth, been isolated from each other, developed independently, had different intermixtures between races, peoples, climates, soils... I didn't start off with that knowledge. But by observation, reading, watching, arguing, asking, that is the conclusion I've come to." - Lee Kuan Yew, The Man & His Ideas, 1997
He is incompetent in social science and probably a closet racist, which is why such views as above appeals to him.
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Originally posted by angel3070:
Lee Kuan Yew's policy of destroying chinese education system and imposing english as dominant language and suppressing dialect is a complete rubbish policy in my view.
Not siding him, but the fall of the Chinese schools in Singapore were actually a way to protect Singapore from commies.
English should remain the first language.