TRE misrepresents what Chee Hong Tat said!

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

http://www.tremeritus.com/2015/08/14...ong-tat-wrote/

TRE misrepresents what Chee Hong Tat said!


August 14th, 2015 |
Author: Contributions





The title to this editorial
is misleading and misrepresents what was actually written in his letter to the
Forum in 2009. If someone had misrepresented me like this, I’d sue.

1) Chee didn’t condemn dialects. He stated plainly that bilingualism is the
foundation of our language education system and only a select few would be able
to speak multiple language fluently.

Assuming that learning a dialect, is not at the expense of less learning of
English and Mandarin, it is indeed foolish to expect the average student to
achieve any level of acceptable fluency in his dialect. If it’s formal education
in dialect, then there’d be tests, learning to write the written Chinese script
in dialect form since Cantonese and Hokkien uses different Chinese characters
than Mandarin and more tests. Consider the average under 25 can barely read a
simple ad in the Chinese paper, we can see how they’d respond to dialect on
top.

2) Leading to this is my second point. Since Chee didn’t condemn dialects but
said it was foolish to educate as part of formal education students in dialect,
the headline implied that Chee had shown disdain or contempt for dialect and
then was a hypocrite for using it during an interview.

TRE is free to stump for the Opposition and condemn the PAP, but outright
misrepresentation of what Chee actually wrote and then to publish the letter
itself where the content clearly differs from the headline is both foolish and
unethical.

If Chee feels like it, also grounds for a lawsuit. For the TRE team’s own
sake, they’d best replace the headline with something more accurate, unless of
course the TRE team decides Richard Wan should eat a defamation
lawsuit.

JayFlee

* Comment
appeared in TRE article: PAP’s Chee condemns dialect learning but gives Hokkien
interview

Editor’s note: Thanks
for the reminder. The writer JayFlee is correct in asserting that Mr Chee did
not condemn dialects. Rather, he is condemning dialect learning. This can be
seen from his statement:


It would be stupid for any Singapore agency or NTU to advocate the
learning of dialects…
Hence, we have changed the title “PAP’s Chee condemns dialects but gives
Hokkien interview” to “PAP’s Chee condemns dialect learning but gives Hokkien
interview”. Sorry for the misrepresentation.


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