From Third World to First The Singapore Story pdfdrive com

11. Many Tongues, One Language
Both Choo and I had been educated in English-language schools. When we met
students from China while studying in England, we became conscious of how
deculturalised we were, almost like the Chinese students from the Caribbean.
We felt a sense of loss at having been educated in a stepmother tongue, not
completely accepting the values of a culture not our own. I felt separated from
the mass of the ordinary Chinese who spoke dialect and Mandarin. My world of
textbooks and teachers was totally unrelated to the world I lived in. We were like
hundreds of Raffles College graduates, not formally tutored in their own Asian
cultures, but not belonging to British culture either, lost between two cultures.
Choo and I decided we should not inflict this cultural handicap on our three
children, and sent them to Chinese schools to become a part of this vibrant,
vigorous, self-confident community, even if their English suffered. We remedied
this by having Choo speak to them in English while I spoke to them in
Mandarin, to improve my Mandarin!
It turned out well for all three, educated in Chinese, imbued with the values
that made them filial children and good citizens, and equally fluent in English.
They did well in school, winning prizes which their schools and the Chinese
press publicised to encourage other parents to send their children to Chinese
schools. This convinced the Chinese-speaking that I would not exterminate
Chinese education in Singapore. Those born and bred in homogeneous societies
may not understand why the language medium in which I chose to educate my
children had political implications.
Singapore never had one common language. It was a polyglot community
under colonial rule. The British left the people to decide how to educate their
children. The government provided a limited number of English-language
schools to train people to be clerks, storekeepers, draughtsmen and such
subordinate workers, and Malay-language primary schools for Malays. The
Indians ran their own Tamil and other Indian-language schools or classes. The
Chinese set up schools financed by successful members of their community, to

---

teach in Chinese. Because the different races were taught their own languages,
their emotional attachment to their mother tongue was deep. They were like the
five million people in Quebec tenaciously holding on to French in a continent of
300 million English speakers.
When we formed the government in 1959 we decided on Malay as the
national language, to prepare the way for merger with Malaya. We realised
English had to be the language of the workplace and the common language. As
an international trading community, we would not make a living if we used
Malay, Chinese or Tamil. With English, no race would have an advantage. But it
was too sensitive an issue for us to make immediate changes. To announce that
all had to learn English when each race was intensely and passionately
committed to its own mother tongue would have been disastrous. So we left the
position as it was, with four official languages – Malay, Chinese (Mandarin),
Tamil and English.
The necessity for a common language was vividly highlighted in the
Singapore Armed Forces. We were saddled with a hideous collection of dialects
and languages and faced the prospect of going into battle without understanding
each other in any of the four official languages. Many could speak only dialects,
requiring special Hokkien-speaking platoons. The Chinese were speaking one of
more than seven different Chinese dialects at home but learning Mandarin and
English in school, neither of which they used at home.
Not wanting to start a controversy over language, I introduced the teaching
of three mother tongues, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil, in English schools. This
was well received by all parents. To balance this, I introduced the teaching of
English in Chinese, Malay and Tamil schools. Malay and Indian parents
welcomed this but increasing numbers preferred to send their children to English
schools. A hard core of the Chinese-educated did not welcome what they saw as
a move to make English the common working language, and expressed
unhappiness in Chinese newspapers.
Barely eight weeks after separation, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce
publicly asked the government to guarantee the status of the Chinese language as
one of the official languages in Singapore. The Chamber’s treasurer, Kheng
Chin Hock, a Chinese-language champion from pre-Malaysia days, stressed that
Chinese was used by more than 80 per cent of the population in Singapore. I
scotched this move before it could grow into a campaign, for once the Chinese
Chamber got going, every Chinese school management committee and the two
Chinese teachers’ unions would surely work up the ground. On 1 October, I

---

restated that all four major languages in Singapore were official and equal. I
reminded activists like Kheng in the Chinese Chamber that they had been
conspicuous by their silence on language and other vital issues when Singapore
was controlled by the Malaysian police and the Malay Regiment. Five days later,
under the full glare of television lights, I met the committees of all four
chambers of commerce. I left the Chinese representatives in no doubt that I
would not allow anyone to exploit the Chinese language as a political issue. That
put an end to their attempts to elevate the status of the Chinese language.
Nevertheless, opposition continued to come from students at the Chinese-
language Nanyang University and Ngee Ann College. In October 1966, when I
declared open a library built at Nanyang University (shortened in Chinese to
“Nantah”), 200 students protested. Several days later, Ngee Ann College
students demonstrated outside my office and clashed with the police, after which
they staged a sit-in at their college. After I deported the Malaysian leaders of the
two demonstrations, student agitation diminished.
We waited patiently as year by year parents in increasing numbers chose to
send their children to English schools, in the face of determined opposition from
the Chinese teachers’ unions, Chinese school management committees, Chinese
newspaper owners, editors and journalists, leaders of clan associations and the
Chinese Chamber of Commerce. Every year, around the time when parents had
to register their children, these groups would mount a campaign to get parents to
enrol their children in Chinese schools for the sake of their culture and identity.
They berated those who chose English schools as money-minded and short-
sighted.
Many Chinese-speaking parents were deeply attached to their language and
culture. They could not understand why their children were allowed to be
educated completely in Chinese under the British, yet under their own elected
government had also to learn English. But for better job prospects, many sent
their children to English schools. These conflicting pulls provided fertile ground
for agitation.
Towards the end of 1970, the major Chinese paper,