I would think Singapore's Bilingual Education not to have been too successful. I've thought of this for a very long time. At least 6 years I think, is what it takes to learn a language. But children struggle to split their time between two languages - often having no environment to sustain one of them. If thinking were impossible without language, what we have done is fragmenting their thought-life. Yes, they don't have enough words in either language to adequately express themselves without the other - and why should this be important?

For me, a language is not just an "external interface protocol", but also a whole framework of thought that allows you to sort yourself out. If your framework gets fragmented, you'll need something to hold it all together. If you don't, it's like having too many contractors for a project and nobody knows how the whole thing fixes together - nobody recognises the big picture, and parts sometimes don't fit too well together.

Yes, making a living is important, but if you can't even sort yourself out, you're gonna be spending a lot of yourself on your job.

Okay, maybe that's exactly what the urban life needs. People who cannot sort themselves out, seeking solutions in the world to fill them up - and along the way just happening to be always paying for the bigger, the better, the newer, the faster everything... I wouldn't like to think that this has been the energy driving the Middle Class in this country.

I think what we should do, is to school children in a language different from that they speak at home. So that they have environments to sustain both. And if this turns out bad - maybe our text books have been too badly written? Oh yes, or maybe Chinese teachers can quit pretending to be Ambassadors of the Chinese Tradition.