An uneducated culture: What kind of a culture is that? A language-less culture? Below, a man writes of education and language and not know what is said.
MALAYSIAKINI has a letter, dated July 17, 2008, from one Kashminder Singh. Pertinent parts:
… I can also understand and agree with the need to preserve the positive aspects of our own rich culture. However, I am not sure that the issues of education and preservation of cultures need to be tied together. …
I believe that Singaporean Tamils have used other means, and apparently quite effective means, to preserve their culture and language. At the same time, by joining the mainstream education system, Tamil students there appear to me to have done as well as their peers.
The US is another place where Indians have migrated to and they have studied in the English-based education system there without many of them compromising their culture.
I reiterate again that everyone involved needs to be a bit dispassionate and examine if maintaining Tamil schools (and yes Chinese schools too) is the only way to preserve the community’s rich heritages.
Kashminder Singh writes on two cultures – Tamil and Chinese – that has nothing to do with him. That is, he has no stake in either. This raises a number of questions about his motivations: is he an Anglophile? When he says “mainstream” education in Singapore does he mean an English colonial-handed down system? But we shall ignore that for the moment.
Singh’s premise and conclusion wrapped into one is this: culture is independent of education, specifically education by the mother tongue language. This is also to say, it doesn’t matter what medium of instruction is used, or what system is used; either way, culture is preserved. People find a way to do it.
If Singh is correct, then why bother, in Singapore, to offer the choice of an English colonial handed-down system or a Tamil system? Why not convert all schools to a Chinese system, found for example in Taiwan, and make mandatory all medium of instruction in Mandarin? Why, in Malaysia, bother with a national education policy pivoted on the Malay language? Why not force the likes of Mr Singh, Tamils and all Malaysian Indians into schools that use Malay and Malay only? After all, according to Singh’s grand theory, culture can be preserved (intact? in totality?) without the pertinent language use in the school?
These questions raise even more questions that, collectively, leave behind holes into Singh’s argument. What does he understand in the meaning of and by the word culture? According to the Singh theory of a culture that’s independent of education, then education is not a part of culture? In the extreme, the Singh theory says even language is not a part of a culture, since language can be preserved (in its totality?) without education. And if language preservation is independent of education, and education is independent of culture, then language preservation can be made independent of culture? Each of the three stands alone?
Consider Singh’s phrase: “by joining the mainstream education system, Tamil students there (in Singapore) appear to me to have done as well as their peers.” In that line, Singh is implying a certain superiority in the English colonial handed-down education system; so superior is it that he found it necessary to suggests how “well” Tamils have done compared to the peers. What peers? Truth be told: Singh loves an Anglo-Saxon culture, that is, he is an Anglophile.
Note the qualifier – only – in Singh’s penultimate sentence: “I reiterate again that everyone involved needs to be a bit dispassionate and examine if maintaining Tamil schools (and yes Chinese schools too) is the only way to preserve the community’s rich heritages.
That was not his assertion in the beginning. In the beginning he said, you could do without education in the mother tongue to preserve culture (whatever he chooses it to mean). Then he goes on to try and show proof, without telling what the proof is, other than making more assertions: see, the Singapore Tamils have preserved their culture. (Really?) Now, at the end of his letter, education by mother tongue is not the “only way” in culture preservation. If that is not only way, what are the other ways? And if it’s one way, why is Singh quibbling with a different assertion in the beginning?
Kashminder Singh is very confused; he is got it to back way around. More than that, he has through himself, and through his letter, showed evidence of a culture and a language lost by his love of an Anglophile education system. Only he doesn’t realise it; hence the letter. Poor chap.
