Bilingualism is possible.
I was rather pissed off by today's newspapers. After 3 months of letting it lie fallow in the hopes of getting less-bullshitty news, they had the nerve to put in 'Forums', or whatever it is they call the letter-discussion thingy.
I cannot begin to understand how people can hate Chinese. Shure, it sounds hypocritical of me to say that since I'm typing in English most of the time but right now I'm listening to 他夏了夏天 by 蘇打綠 so I guess that says at least a bit of the language of songs I'm inclined to listen.
There was this letter which wrote about how PSLE and the emphasis on subjects ends up making students leave the country to source for better options because they can't do well with their languages. But really,
it's just PSLE. It determines what school you get into, so most people get into neighbourhood schools anyway so why bother? There's nothing wrong with neighbourhood schools you damned elitists, parents always go like 'Reputable school or nothing, I'm moving out of Singapore', but in reality hardly anyone can move at such whim or fancy because it's a hassle and probably sexpensive. No, that's not the point. The point is that what the person who wrote the letter was saying
is completely irrelevant.
Not many people can move at whim or fancy because their child didn't do well for Chinese/English FOR PSLE WTF. It's just PSLE and if you can't handle your languages how are you going to even communicated with your friends?
A: 'Hi'
B: 'Uh? Hi?'
A: 'I'm Alastair'
B: 'Hi?'
A: 'So what's your name?'
B: 'Hi?'
Scrap that, how do you even begin to make sense if you're only able to think thoughts? No one has a telekinetic link to your brain and living in your own microcosm of an existence doesn't benefit you in Life, so it's consperm + chop that for a well-rounded education, emphasis must be placed on language.
Imagine a Singapore of women wearing their office-things and pointing and grunting and not understanding that their boss wants a blowjob.
This must not happen(because I'm the boss).
So what's wrong with people these days?
Kids + protective parents = pampered + useless kids.
My father told me a few weeks back:
'In the past, when the teacher calls to meet parents, parents straightaway whack their children because teachers are always correct.
Now, parents argue with their child's teachers because their child is always correct in their eyes.'
or something along those lines.
Isn't that true? Because kids these days think that they have an opinion and a right to their opinions, they don't give a shit about others because once you have your own opinion you stick by it and think that other opinions and thus other people are less important than yours. That's why I'm such a prideful man, because I think many thoughts, am deep/profound/sophisticated, and thus have many opinions that I'd stick to.
OK that was off-topic.
So first, kids are given a right to their opinions. Then, kids are in English-speaking families. They are foreign to Chinese despite being Chinese themselves so they hate learning Chinese.
OK, Chinese is definitely much harder to write than English and I remember I didn't like writing my name that much because 毅 was damn tough a word for me at that time.
Then I realized that there were names much harder to write than that. Consider: 璘
But that still isn't an excuse to not learn Chinese. What about: Why can't you learn Chinese?
Bilingualism isn't that hard. I can't say that I've achieved it because I lack in the written form but I can say that I never hated Chinese when I was learning it.
It was just another subject, in a different language other than the English medium, and if others can do it why can't I?
Saying that your child is 'psychologically not suitable to learn Chinese' or something along those lines is just bullshit. It's an excuse for 'laziness' and again, the protectiveness of parents.
What's the education system coming to? I prefer rigid. Rigid means no exceptions. No exceptions means uniformity. Uniformity means education.
Consider this:
Chinese kid: My mother tongue is Chinese.
Failure Chinese kid: My mother tongue is -French/Portugese/German/Japanese/American.
Chinese kid: Wow.
Failure Chinese kid: I am so unique, I am better than you who have to take Chinese as your mother tongue.
Chinese kid: How did you change your mother tongue?
Failure Chinese kid: I went to take a psychology test and they allowed me to take a mother tongue other than Chinese.
Chinese kid: Wow. Ima do that too.
Then who would be left to take Chinese?
-- 11/24/2009 01:47:00 AM
