To: chee_hong_tat@pmo.gov.sg
Dear Mr Chee

We are forwarding to you the following mail from one of us, for your kind attention.

Civic Advocator

Chee

Hi there. You don’t mind if I call you Chee right?

I came across your letter to Straits Times forum this morning. You wrote responding to an earlier article which quoted something by Dr Ng Bee Chin, the acting head of NTU Division of Linguistics and Multilingual Studies.

I did not read the earlier article, because it is not my job to scan newspapers to defend previous policies of my boss. But I do agree with your position that bilingual education is good for Singapore, and maintaining dialects might not have helped some of us learn two languages, which is already quite a tough job.

Unfortunately, I became quite distressed after I read the sentence, “It would be stupid for any Singapore agency or NTU to advocate the learning of dialects, which must be at the expense of English and Mandarin.”

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Our responses to some of the comments are listed below. If we are not answering some other specific questions, that is because we do not know how.
 

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I don’t know

Our Singapore

As seen by people

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• Purpose

To observe, analyse, present our position, and call for action. Read our articles, give your views, and learn together with us.