It's been a long time since I put some serious thoughts about issues related to education. But I have been challenged in some ways to think about such issues once again. So here goes..
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Singlish versus English

There's a lot of debate in the local papers on the issue of Singlish once again. Some see it as a part of culture and national identity, others think of it as an inadequate cousin of proper English who needs to be corrected. Linguists will beg to differ and see it as a natural outcome when languages meet, where 1 + 1 = 3. Regardless of point of view, we should start considering Singlish seriously.

Research on the penetration of Singlish, variants of Singlish and acceptance of Singlish among Singaporeans have to be conducted to devise appropriate strategies to address the issue of competitiveness of Singapore in the long run. We can't pretend that classroom teaching, sending PCK for language courses and an annual campaign will turn things around any time soon. We need to learn more about it. However, by doing so (researching on it), it is equivalent to acknowledging Singlish as a language (or creole or pidgin of English) and some people in power may not be ready to accept this yet.

Singlish is definitely more than just a simple lah or lor or borrowed terms. My brief encounter with English Language back in NUS (to fulfill some requirements) involved a project studying the structure of Singlish. The wikipedia entry does a more detail discussion on this phenomenon. The question is how do we deal with this phenomenon in Singapore such that we can remain competitive in the future (i.e. we do not produce generations of Singlish speaking citizens whom foreigners could not understand)? What can we do if the endless campaigns are not effective at all?

Cantonese is a dialect of Chinese and the spoken variant of Cantonese is very different from Mandarin Chinese. In fact, if you get a magazine written in colloquial Cantonese, I bet that you will find it difficult to understand it without knowing the language, even if the words used are Chinese characters (or looks like Chinese characters). With a few more decades of development, Singlish may become a dialect of English sharing common traits as Cantonese. It may be a matter of time before we have to deal with the Singlish-English divide like how Hong Kong is dealing with Mandarin-Cantonese in education. Perhaps we can recognise and accept Singlish as a creole of English in Singapore and incorporate lessons to highlight the differences between them.

Yes, Singlish is new and only a few decades old, people may reject them and look down upon people speaking Singlish. But the Queen's English that they are embracing started off as a 'bastard' language that is neither German or Latin etc. It's just like Singaporeans who look down upon new citizens, despite the fact that their parents or grand parents were new immigrants decades before.

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Research in Education

Like a PW project, I have to apply my case study 1 to case study 2. So for case study 2, I have chosen research in education.

Currently, research is taken as an elective or enrichment for students in the elite schools. Research skills, structured mentorship programmes etc are dominated by tops students in such schools. It has reached a point of saturation where by research mentors in research institutes are stretched in offering such opportunities to the increasing number of such programmes. Such an enrichment programme is usually offered on top of academic subjects and co-curricular activities. This will inevitably increase the pressure and workload of our students and teachers. Very often, programmes like the bicultural studies programme and research programme, are fighting over the same talent pool. To progress, there will be a need to adopt a structured approach to study the best strategy in incorporating research in education. Research can be offered as a H3 subject in 'A' levels but more can be done to start at the secondary level. It is time to end the adhoc matching of teacher mentors to projects and disorganised instructional lessons for students in research. Let's give research the recognition it deserves and provide a comprehensive and conducive environment for our students to learn and experience research.