I’m quite bemused by this whole mother tongue issue, especially after having read a few forum letters written by parents who claim they were forced to migrate so that they could give their children a better, Mandarin-less future in a country where they would not be forced to study a language that they not only cannot speak, read or write, but have no interest in learning. I’m amused that the Ministry of Education, having jumped the gun in announcing that it was looking at adjusting the weightage of Mother Tongue (which, by the way, is not just limited to Mandarin but also includes Malay, Tamil and other minority languages) in the PSLE, quickly backtracked after pressure was applied by the …
school
Alison’s March achievements
K attended a scheduled Parent-Teacher Meeting this morning together with Alison. He met her class teacher as well as her Mother Tongue teacher. Both had mostly good things to say about the Allycat. Her English is excellent, her Maths is good and her Chinese, well, her reading and writing are good but her speaking, not so much. When the Chinese teacher found out that we never speak Chinese at home, a light bulb came on and he told K he now understands why Alison is so reticent about speaking up during Mother Tongue class. However, she is otherwise “very communicative”. “You mean she’s talkative,” K said to the form teacher, which earned a chuckle and assent. The form teacher also …
