SPH Media to host event lauding work of Chinese-language teachers

When news broke in 1979 that the medium of instruction in mainstream schools in Singapore would no longer be Mandarin, Madam Ang Kim Hui felt a sense of loss.

- Zachary Lim

The retired teacher, who had just started her career then, thought she would have to give up teaching geography as she was trained to teach the subject only in Mandarin.

"I felt a sense of loss," said Madam Ang, 76, who majored in geography when she graduated from Nanyang University in 1972.

Then, she was teaching geography and Chinese as a first language at Hai Sing Girls' High, now called Hai Sing Catholic School.

In 1987, Singapore became one of the first countries in the world to adopt English as the language of instruction for most of the subjects—including geography, science, mathematics and history—taught in mainstream schools. The mother tongues of the country's three major ethnic groups—Chinese, Malay, and Tamil—started to be taught in schools as secondary languages.

It was a major transition too for many teachers who graduated from Nanyang University, which taught students a variety of disciplines in only Mandarin. The affected teachers either had to pick up English to teach the same subjects, or switch to teaching only the Chinese language.