If you flip through the classified ads for jobs in the Straits times, or any other publications. You can easily see that many jobs in Singapore would require the employee to able to speak mandarin. I am not sure if the job scope would require mandarin or the preferred language used in the working environment was mandarin. Either way, the non mandarin speaking community is disadvantaged.
Many Indian or Malay job searchers would sometimes brand it as biasness towards the Chinese community. English is the working language in Singapore, So why mandarin is preferred? I would say this is every employers own preference.
This issue has been around for a long time. But from the people’s front nothing has been done. When i was in polytechnic [Ngee Ann polytechnic], which was during 2001 to 2004. The polytechnic had a program called inter-disciplinary studies. The idea of this project was to diversify the study scope of the students so that they are better skilled in all trades. One of the elements of this program was “live skills”. Under “live skills” a students were taught various languages such as French, Japanese and Spanish.
Now i begin to wonder why, was not “mandarin” taught. If i look at it from jobs prospective mandarin would be the most useful language that the student can learn. In fact its in the papers, that mandarin is preferred.
Politically incorrect ?
If the polytechnic would have mandarin taught then, the public might get the wrong idea that the polytechnic was promoting mandarin to be the working language, or sending the wrong message. To solve that ,why not also include Malay and Tamil in the language program in the live skills portion.
this is not to please the other races, but with a cause.
I think it would promote racial harmony in one aspect. Knowing basic language of the other race would be good for cultural bonding in Singapore.
I don’t think there would be shortage of Tamil or Malay teachers.
This would be my plan for a more unified Singapore.
