What’s The Big Deal About Chinese?

Today, my son came home from school with his portfolio and as I was browsing through the work he has done,… class reviews and teacher’s comments, I noticed that his Chinese teacher, on one of his recent Chinese worksheets had circled his name in red and had written some Chinese characters beside it. I presume that it was a direct translation of his English name.

I found that very uncalled for, offensive, rude, insensitive and callous!!

The last hour I spent going through my paper work from 2012. I came across my son’s kindergarten documents where I had asked the teacher to give him a Chinese name as I thought then it was a must since he was taking Chinese as his second language.

His kindergarten Chinese teacher did give him a Chinese name but also told me it was not necessary for it as my son isn't Chinese and so I did not register it. Since then, we have not bothered with a Chinese name.

Where am I getting with this? The point is that I searched through these records to be sure I did not make a mistake. I wanted to be sure that I did not register his Chinese name. But while doing this, I realized that what his kindergarten teacher had given him, wasn't even the one the Primary school teacher had written.

I am pissed! Actually I am more than pissed!!

WHY would a teacher ‘mark’ my son’s name in RED and correct it with something that to us doesn't even exist and should NOT exist? Do Chinese teachers go around giving names to students just for the fun of it? Do they give names just because they can’t pronounce the English ones? If so, then maybe they are the ones in need of going back to school to learn some English?

Imagine you gave birth and I’d go fill out your child’s birth certificate with a name I think would be good for your child?

I wonder how she would feel if I named her son for her? Worse is I’d give her son a name of a different race! How does Osama Bin Laden? Hmm…. Sounds nice don’t it? She may not think so….but I do….. 

In all honesty, I would have been alright if she had just written the Chinese characters beside my son’s English name but to mark it in red and make it seem like it’s wrong is unacceptable.

Sheeshh…..

The problem with this country is they stress and focus so much on the bloody Chinese language. Isn't our country a multi-racial country? Yep I figured….so why the stress on Chinese alone?

Bad enough our non Chinese/Malay/Indian kids are forced to take a second language…now they want to force a ‘foreign’ name on to our kids too??

Yes, knowing Chinese would be good especially when China is coming up in this world now. But do you realize that they are teaching English in schools in China? I moved to USA and what did I do with my Chinese certificate? I used it to wipe my bum! Ha.

Really. I didn't need that certificate when I was in America and it didn't hold me back.

What I am trying to say is…so what if you can’t speak or understand Chinese? Lots of other countries in the world have survived without it and still doing extremely well. So stop trying to force any damn language down our throats.

I can’t even exempt my non-Chinese kids from dropping the subject. WHY?

Even on the MOE website it states that kids can be exempted if they’re from overseas. Yeh, no doubt my kids started kindergarten here but Chinese is not in their blood. Hell! No one speaks the language at home!! This is approved on a case to case basis… ??? A crock of shit. I was denied twice! WHY? Because I am Chinese? Maybe I should try and apply for the exemption again since I had changed my race to Eurasian?

So they want kids miserable throughout all of their school life…. Hating to go to school because they hate Chinese … because they are struggling… and because half these Chinese teachers are not even fit to be teachers and who belittles these kids. If they think they are all high and mighty, I have no problem telling them they are not. BECAUSE technically, you will get on better in life if you speak good English!

I always thought that “mother-tongue” meant a language a person has learned from birth or within the critical period. Like in some countries (namely Singapore), the term mother-tongue refers to the language of one’s ethnic group rather than one’s first language. So for my kids, shouldn't it be English??

Oh well….

As long as we’re here in Singapore, we shall ‘abide’ by these silly rules until the time is right. After all, aren't we all just ‘robots’ programmed to be living in this perfect little country abiding by all these perfect little rules that is supposedly to make us perfect humans?

I don’t push my kids with Chinese. Every new teacher they get, I make sure I get my point across that I will not tolerate them pushing my child to excel in the language to a point of hating school because of it. For me, as long as my kids excel in the other subjects in school, I will be more than happy.

For now, I am writing to my son’s school and putting the principal and also MOE on CC (carbon copy). I should demand a written apology from this ‘high and mighty clown’. What do you think?