Don't change for the sake of changing!

To be good in English, one has to learn the rules and grammars of English, to be good in Mathematics, one needs to memorise the multiplication table and understand the number system. There are those who tell students not to memorise things. Simply ignore them. Instead, politely ask them to remember the multiplication table or poems without memorising!!! To be good in Chinese Language, one has to learn to recognise and write every unique Chinese character and learn the Chinese grammars. All these are called the FUNDAMENTALS.

As time goes by, with the advent of new technology and cutting-edge audio-visual equipment, changes can be made to the method of teaching these subjects but the fundamentals should not be touched or altered as any change to the fundamentals can be disastrous to the outcome of learning.

There was a period of time when English grammar was not specifically taught in schools, the standard of English was obviously affected. Since 2001, the schools have reverted to the teaching of English grammar as informed by the relevant department in its reply to my letter to the press.

Similarly, for the Chinese Language, there was a period of time when almost the entire passage in the Chinese text was written in han-yu-pin-yin (Chinese phonetics) with very few Chinese characters. What is Chinese without the Chinese characters? I thought that is simple common sense. Thankfully, since some years ago, that has also been rectified and replaced with character recognition which was a fundamental that should not have been changed in the first place.

I am an advocate of change. We must embrace change, make no mistake about it, but don't change for the sake of changing. Don't try to be too smart to change even the fundamentals. We have to be clear about what to change and what not to. To have a clear discernment on what to change, one need not be professorial or scholastic, but discretionary, down-to-earth and practical in recommendation and implementation.