小孩不笨

Last Sat night, I was watching 小孩不笨 for the first time on Channel 8. It was really quite a meaningful show, besides all the laughter. The 3 stars - Terry, Guobing & Wenfu acted really well. They brought so much life to the movie.



The movie brought about 2 things that I really felt deeply.

1. The Chinese language is no longer valued nowadays.
In the movie, Jack Neo's boss was so proud of himself that he couldn't speak a single word in Mandarin, and yet he could succeed in the advertising world.

I'm a Chinese. To me, it is very important to be able to converse in Mandarin. It is our roots and our heritage. But sad to say, many young people today dislike speaking in Mandarin. They have problems putting Chinese words together to form complete sentences. We really don't need to talk about 成语 (idioms) or 谚语 (proverbs).

I really hope that the MOE would put more emphasis on the Chinese language. They must really help promote the language. It is a scary thought to envision Chinese in Singapore unable to utter any words in Mandarin.

Let me be frank. I can't write Chinese characters well. But I'm quite confident of speaking in Mandarin.


2. Many students in S'pore have been 'marked' for failure at a very young age.
During my time, until even recently, in Primary 5, all S'pore students have to go through streaming - EM1, EM2 and EM3. Well, if you're in EM1 or EM2, you probably feel it's okay.

However, what about those streamed into EM3? In the movie, Terry and his friends were all in EM3. And sometimes, they were been laughed at by their friends. Sometimes, they just felt lousy about themselves. Even their parents also sometimes felt that they were useless.

Then, after PSLE, students at a young age of 12 are again streamed into Special, Express, Normal Academic (NA) and Normal Technical (NT). The perception is - if you're in NT, that's it. You won't have a bright future.

My personal belief is that every child has potential. Every child has his giftings. However, our S'pore education system is one such that it only emphasizes on Math, Science & Language subjects. But thankfully, we're already trying to change. That's why there's the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music at NUS.

As a teacher, I'm quite convinced my role is to bring out the potential of my students, even if their potential doesn't lie in academic subjects.

You can find out more about your strengths by doing a simple online test at this website.