Revisiting the assessment of Chinese at PSLE

Lesley-Anne was featured in the Straits Times yesterday (if the print is too small to read, click on the image):

If you've read my original post on this topic in March, you will know how thrilled I am by the news that MOE is looking at reducing the weightage of Chinese at the PSLE. It's like someone took a look at my wishlist and decided to grant it.

As expected, there are contrasting reactions to this announcement, and on such a controversial topic, you can bet there are heated arguments flying in all quarters. Afterall, we talking about something which up to this point, has been a sacred cow in Singapore education - the bilingualism policy.

To me, this move is long overdue. I've already detailed in my previous post why I think it needs to be done. In this post, I want to elaborate on this, specifically in response to arguments made by those in the opposing camp.

1. If we drop the weightage in Chinese, we're sending the message that Chinese is not important.

We're confusing the issues of exams and learning. Unfortunately, in exam-intense Singapore, many parents and kids have become so skewed in our focus on exams that we judge the value of a subject by how much it will count in the exam. This is a mindset problem, not one of policy. If you are one of these tunnel-vision people, then so be it, but national policy shouldn't be dictated by such myopia.

However, I have enough faith in people to believe that there will be parents who will still recognise the importance of Chinese (not difficult, given China's position) and together with schools, help children learn Chinese well, without the burden of acing Chinese exams. Pragmatists who are all for learning Chinese so that they can work in China will be the first to tell you that you don't need exams to indicate what's important.

2. Kids won't bother to study Chinese anymore, hence causing standards to drop and loss of our cultural roots.

Riiiiight... as opposed to our wonderful Chinese standards now? Compared to the mainland Chinese, our Chinese is pathetic. My kids' Chinese tutor from China once said to Lesley-Anne (in Mandarin), "No need to say that your Chinese is not fantastic. Everyone knows that the Chinese of Singaporeans is not fantastic." She wasn't being condescending, she was just stating a fact.

Raising Chinese standards has nothing to do with assessment. The solution is to design the Chinese curriculum so that it builds proficiency in the language, especially spoken Chinese. This, MOE has been striving to do for the past few years, by revamping the syllabus so that it's more interactive, relevant and customised towards different levels of ability.

On the flip side, I'll tell you what's the fastest way to make a child hate Chinese and renounce his roots. Make him swot for hours everyday for six years and then find out that he still does badly in an exam which determines his future school. I guarantee you Chinese will come to represent everything negative to the child, for a long time. Trust me, I've been there.

Yes, granted there will be a group of students who will take the opportunity to drop Chinese like a hot brick but I'm guessing this group has already more or less given up on the subject anyway. If you reduce the exam component, I feel there's a better chance that these kids will not hate Chinese, even *gasp* find it fun, since there's less at stake.

3. Reducing weightage is taking the easy way out, kids should just work harder at Chinese.

I'm pretty certain that people who say this are those who never had difficulty learning Chinese. It's not as simple as "if I can do it, so can you." If you are a size 2 model who can feast on a chocolate buffet and still fit into your skinny jeans, it's so easy to tell a chubby woman who can put on weight simply by looking at a doughnut ad, "Why don't you go on a diet?" (though she'll probably whack you into tomorrow's dining room with her over-sized bag).

In short, it's a predicament you won't understand unless you've experienced it. Unless you have spent days, nights and weeks slogging at Chinese idioms and characters until you want to cry, and still go into an exam not understanding the questions, you simply won't get it. It's always more convenient to glibly dismiss other people as lazy or not putting in enough effort than to admit that perhaps they were disadvantaged to begin with (because that would mean we were advantaged somehow).

I personally know of kids who have put in more time and effort into studying Chinese than all the other subjects combined and still score barely passable grades. These are otherwise bright kids who do very well in school. Both Lesley-Anne and Andre have had Chinese tuition since they were in p1, the only subject they have tuition in. If effort = results, shouldn't they both be doing better in Chinese than their other subjects by now?

I'm not saying effort counts for nothing, of course it does. A lot. But when it comes to learning languages, it's not entirely a question of effort. It's partly how the human brain processes languages - it's different from say, learning maths or science, and some kids, especially boys, are unable to do so optimally, exacerbated by a non-conducive home environment. I have friends who think Chinese can just be learned as easily as other subjects. Incidentally, they're all fluent in Chinese and grew up in Chinese-speaking families. Coincidence? I think not.

4. The move would put Chinese-speaking kids who are weak in English, at a disadvantage.

Actually, I can't argue with this one. But it's difficult to make a case for reducing the importance of English, simply because it's our official language. English is the language of business and instruction in Singapore. There is simply no good enough reason to reduce its weightage in assessment, whereas Chinese is a second language. Why should it be given equal weightage as a first language?

And my gut feel tells me English, being a Romanised language, is more straightforward to learn than Chinese. It's probably one of the reasons why you often hear of Chinese kids struggling with Chinese and Indian kids struggling with Tamil, but seldom Malay kids struggling with Malay. I know a few Malaysian Chinese who picked up Malay easily but couldn't learn Chinese. Notice it's not as if they spoke Malay at home. While I applaud the abilities and tenacity of China kids who come to Singapore with zero English and become adept at it within three years, I can't help wondering if the road would be more arduous if they had to master say, Hindi or Thai. I know it's not politically correct to say this - just verbalising what many people believe to be true.

Anyway, even if I agreed that Chinese-speaking kids might be disadvantaged by this move, it is not a valid point for keeping the status quo - you don't make policy just so that everybody can be equally disadvantaged.


I think arguments for issues like these something get confused amidst the rabble because there are too many vested interests at stake. I suspect for many opposing parties, the real reason they don't want the changes is because they're strong in Chinese and they fear that the revised policy will erode their advantage (or it's coming too late for them and they want others to suffer as they have). But wanting others to fail so that you can succeed is just kiasu-ism at its ugliest. Let's not go there.

I will be the first to confess that I'm not completely impartial either because obviously Andre stands to gain from the new revisions (if they're implemented in time). That's why I thought I should look at the opposing arguments and present what I hope are credible responses to them.

I couldn't have said it better than someone who wrote to ST Forum: "Our examination system should recognise a pupil's strengths, not penalise his weakness." There you have it, folks. At the end of the day, this issue is not about who gets to benefit more, or which faction we should support. It's about making the assessment system as fair as possible, so that there are minimal casualties.