Originally posted by men_@_arms:
More emphasis should be put on Chinese. E.g. some subjects should be taught in chinese, like maths or science, the way it is done in China. However, this must be done from primary 1 onwards, or else you will kill other students trying to adjust to the problem. THis follow's nismo's theory of practice makes perfect. THe reason why standards of mandarin sucks, is because people dont practice, why? Because Chinese is percieved as unhip, why? Because there are little glorified movies in chinese being used to teach. New methods of teachings should be used like movies, Hero is good. Instead of having teachers just coming in... explaining some chengyu and moving out to the next class, its pathetic.
We can't teach other subjects in mother tongues because that would mean having to segregate the various races into different classes for different subjects. Involves alot of work. In addition, we're trying to promote racial harmony.

This, of course, is an exception in e.g. Chinese schools like Chinese High or Dunman High... they teach Moral Education in Mandarin. But these schools have a high percentage of Chinese students, and even if there were students from other races, they normally speak very fluent Mandarin.
From the ST Forum page, a lady wrote in and pointed out that in order to use English to teach Chinese efficiently and effectively, the teachers would be required to be proficient in both languages. I thought that was a good point. And then the problem now is, we don't have many such teachers from the previous generation, let alone the current generation.
