李光耀的语文观与新加坡的“双语政策” (Lee Kuan Yew’s View Of Language And Singapore’s Bilingual Policy)

Wong, Sieow Sze (2018) 李光耀的语文观与新加坡的“双语政策” (Lee Kuan Yew’s View Of Language And Singapore’s Bilingual Policy). Master dissertation/thesis, UTAR.

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Abstract

This dissertation is focusing on the Singapore’s founding pioneer – Lee Kuan Yew. The aim is to investigate the implementation of Chinese Cultural Values in Singapore based on Lee Kuan Yew’s language view, and the development, feature and influence of Singapore’s bilingual policy. The key step is to review the existing literatures and trying to find out if the declining of Chinese Cultural is due to the Lee Kuan Yew’s language view and bilingual policy. The scopes of Chinese cultural values always been limited within history, literature, festival and custom. Mostly, the core driving of Chinese Cultural Values has been neglected. The general perception is that raising the level of Chinese Language is equivalent to promoting Confucian cultural values. It is necessary to master high level of Chinese language in order to comprehend the breadth and depth of Confucian cultural values or Chinese traditional culture. From Ong Teng Cheong’s report evolving to He Pin’s report, Chinese Language level has been adjusted gradually in accordance to student learning capability. Unlike English language level, every student is expected to master high level English regardless of their learning capability. In this sense, it gives an impression that the learning of Chinese Language has been gradually weaken. Therefore, the significance of iv this dissertation is to critically review whether Lee Kuan Yew is diluting Chinese culture. Goh Kheng Swee’s report is the watershed of Singapore’s bilingual policy, which lays a foundation that English is taught as a first language, mother tongue is taught as a second language. This leads to the adjustment of various decisionmaking, launching of special selected school, and initiative of speak mandarin campaign and etc. These demonstrate that Singapore Government is putting great effort to preserve mother tongue, maintain the sense of identity and bring out the values of Confucianism. The traditional Chinese Confucian culture advocated by Lee Kuan Yew is embedded with Singaporean characteristics. The traditional Confucian ideology “loyalty, filial piety, benevolence, justice, politeness, justice, honest, shame” was redefined by Lee Kuan Yew, and modified to the “five common values”, which becomes the code of conducts of Singaporeans. In this way, Singapore preserves the language in both written and spoken forms. At the same time, the Confucian culture is retained at the level of national spirit. To certain extent, Singapore has successfully preserved the “root” of Chinese culture and continues to develop the potential and dynamic of Chinese language.

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