Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew visiting a Tamil school during his tour of Jalan Kayu constituency,
19 January 1963, Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection, Courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.
The 146th Birthday of Thanthai Periyar was celebrated at the National Library Board, Singapore on 17th September 2024. As the major part of the celebration the book ‘Sojourners to Settlers – Tamils in South East Asia and Singapore’ compiled by Arun Mahizhnan and Nalina Gopal was reviewed. The book was published in Tamil with the title ‘ஊர் திரும்பியவர்களும் வேர் ஊன்றியவர்களும்’ and in English under the title “Sojourners to Settlers”. Both the volumes were compilation of articles contributed by various academicians and research scholars on the migrated population of Tamils in Singapore in the 19th and 20th century. The book has authenticated the impact created among the diaspora Tamils by the visits by Periyar E.V.Ramasamy (1879-1973) in 1929 and 1955 to the then Malaya, comprising the present sovereignties of Malaysia and Singapore but out of the 13 + 14 articles, the excerpts from the article, ‘Tamil Language Education: Responses to New Challenges’ by S.Gopinathan, Seetha Lakshmi and Vanithamani Saravanan are reproduced below.
Singapore represents an interesting case of the ways in which multi-ethnic, and therefore multilingual societies, deal with the opportunities and challenges that multilingualism poses. Several special features stand out in the Singapore case. Singapore was founded as a British trading port in 1819, and soon after began attracting migrants from south India and Sri Lanka, drawn by the economic opportunities the port provided. One feature that distinguished them from Chinese migrants is that they came from a territory also ruled by the British. Secondly, they came from a wide range of regions in India, bringing with them proficiency in a variety of Indian languages. Thirdly, Indians, then and now, represent the smallest of the major ethnic groups in Singapore, well behind the Chinese and the Malays.
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These features are important for the consequences they have for education provision and participation. In the late 19th century Indian migrants’ familiarity with the British and their language and norms may, in part, explain Indian participation in English-medium education, greater in percentage terms than the Chinese and the Malays. Though diverse in terms of languages spoken, among Indians, Tamil speakers formed the overwhelming majority. Next, the relatively small share of Indians in the overall population meant that in Colonial times, Tamil-medium schooling was always a minor stream, its long-term sustainability always in doubt. Better prospects emerged after World War II. In the All-Party Report on Chinese Education, released in 1956, equality of treatment was laid out as a core educational commitment. Tamil was chosen as the language of the Indians. To this day, Tamil remains the dominant language offered to Indians, via the school system.
Building the Foundations, 1819-1900
By the beginning of the 20th century, effective governance and a free port status led to growing economic prosperity in Singapore; this in turn attracted a growing stream of migrants, some with wives and children in tow. Young children required schools and a colonial education policy emerged. This was principally to support a few government English schools whose graduates would staff government offices and to encourage Christian missions to establish schools. Church-funded schools, some of which exist to this day, were a way of minimising government expenditure on education. In large measure, provision for the Chinese and Indian schools was left to community support.
“Tamil education was struggling for survival during the nineteenth century. The Christian missions did their utmost to revive education in Tamil despite all the obstacles such as the smallness of the school population, the apathy of the parents, and the lack of suitable teachers, of school premises, of textbooks and of other educational needs. The Christian missions were encouraged to work in the educational field through the Government’s assurance of financial aid”.
Educational Developments, 1900-1942
It was in the first half of the 20th century that Tamil schools began to find a firmer footing. Singapore’s continued growth and prosperity attracted more migrants; therefore, a settled community of Indians, predominantly Tamils, led to a demand for better-quality education. A school for Tamil Muslims was established in Tanjong Pagar around the 1860s. By the early 1940s there were 18 registered schools with an enrolment of 1000 pupils. No further data are available on types of school and other details. Although enrolment numbers rose, the same could not be said for quality. Facilities in schools were rudimentary, teachers did not have professional training, and they were not paid adequately and regularly.
Ramakrishna Mission’s Vivekananda Boys School and Saradamani Girls School were established in Norris Road in 1928. Their focus was on eradicating caste differences and providing shelter to homeless students. Umar Pulavar Tamil School (Primary) was established in 1946 and Umaru Pulavar Tamil High School in 1960.
The 1930-1940 period is also significant for the seminal role played by Govindasamy Sarangapany. He was both a publisher and a public intellectual, rallying the community to the cause of Tamil and providing a justification for its use in education as well as creatively using newspapers to spread his message of opposition to caste-based prejudice and discrimination. In 1932, he co-founded the Tamils Reform Association and Tamil Murasu, which he launched in 1935 as a vehicle to inform, instruct and entertain the Tamil educated. Through Tamil Murasu he was able to position Tamil as a strong marker of Tamil social and cultural identity arguing that Tamil-language education was an effective way to instil that identity. In 1949, he co-founded the Tamil Education Society. It was a community effort to train Tamil teachers, to bring all Tamil schools under central control, and to re-register schools that had closed.
However, when it came to the setting up of the Indian Studies Department in the then-University of Malaya in Singapore, there was a strong recommendation by the eminent Indian historian K.A.Nilakanda Sastri that Sanskrit, not Tamil, should be the main language of study. But Sarangapany was able to overcome this recommendation by arguing for the relevance of Tamil and the irrelevance of Sanskrit to Singapore Tamils. Despite this victory, in 1962, the Indian Studies department was transferred to Kuala Lumpur when the University of Malaya campuses in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, were delinked. Though Indians were small in number, that made no difference to competition based on linguistic affiliation. According to Rajan, Dravidian Ideology glorified Tamil language and culture and she cites Purushotam as saying that the movement gave impetus to the development of a Tamil identity and significant meaning to the Tamil language.
Post-War Developments, 1945-1956
In 1946, after Singapore had returned to British rule, the British Colonial Government introduced the 10 Year Education Plan which signalled a comprehensive strategy for the provision of education in the colony. Its core provisions were to provide six years of free primary education in a language medium of the parents’ choice – English, Malaya, Chinese or Tamil. The plan also pledged financial support for vernacular schools.
The teaching and learning of Tamil, the significance of the All-Party Report was that it led to the recognition of Tamil as an important language in the evolving education system. It also helped to establish the need for formal training for Tamil language teachers. Consequently, in 1957 teaching training began for 24 Tamil teachers at the Teachers’ Training College (TTC), Umaru Pulavar Tamil High School was established in 1960. Further, two community-run schools, St.George’s Road Tamil School and Aravinthar Tamil School, became government schools while others received government grants.
Post-Independence Period and Beyond
When Singapore became independent in 1965, it became possible for the Ministry of Education to implement the bilingual policy more vigorously. The government’s education vision was for a national education system with the twin aims of building social cohesion and preparing students for employment.
A boost to the learning of Tamil came about with the Government’s intention to implement the bilingual policy in a speedy and efficient manner. In 1966, the learning of a second language, the pupil’s mother tongue, was made compulsory for all secondary school pupils.
As a result of the policy initiatives outlined above, the 25 years following independence saw the establishment of Tamil as the dominant language for Indians and an established school language. Syllabus development, textbook production, teacher preparation and teacher professional development were all put on a more secure basis.
By the beginning of the 1990s, Tamil’s place in Singapore’s education system was established firmly. Syllabus and textbook development were important to ensure that the learning and teaching of Tamil was relevant to pupil needs and Tamil’s position as a mother tongue. The Report of the Tamil Education Review Committee, one of the first review reports on Tamil education, recognised that extreme digiossia was a key feature of Tamil. It recommended that the spoken variety be adopted as acceptable in classroom-based language activities to develop better oracy skills.
Even as Tamil was being established firmly as the dominant language of the Indian community, increased diversity in the Indian community led to calls for greater recognition of non-Indian languages. We have noted that in the earlier decades of the 20th century, instruction in Hindi and Punjabi had emerged to cater to the distinctive needs of these language groups.
Developments in Tamil Teacher Training
Tamil teacher training in the 1970s and 1980s at NIE’s Tamil department was strengthened under the leadership of S.Dheivanayagam, Namashivayam and S. Thiagarajah. They were joined in 1982 by SP Thinnappan, the first Tamil teacher trainer with a doctorate, Ramiah Kalimuthu, with BA from India and an Med and a PhD from Singapore, and N. Govindasamy.
Degree qualifications in Tamil Language and Literature are also available at the Singapore University of Social Sciences. Though modelled on programmes in Tamil Nadu, care has been taken to incorporate local content in the programme to ensure its relevance in the Singapore context. Students can pursue the programme as a single subject or with a minor. Unlike the NIE cohort, a number of students are from Tamil Nadu, some with degree qualifications in other disciplines. A majority of the faculty, originally from Tamil Nadu, are now Singapore citizens.
For the much smaller number of Singapore-born Tamil teachers – most of whom learnt Tamil as a second language – teacher preparation at NIE could pay greater attention to the cultural underpinnings of Tamil and its rootedness in family life, religion and literature. Just as India-born teachers need to know Singapore better, Singapore-born teachers need to know of the issues and transformations in the language, literature and pedagogy taking place in Tamil Nadu, the ‘home’ of Tamil.
Finally, both groups of teachers need to interact more and learn more from each other, thus becoming more united in the pursuit of common pedagogic, cultural and social goals for learning Tamil in the Singapore context.
Teacher preparation for Tamil teaching and learning has come a long way and just as Tamil’s place in the education system is secure, so is teacher preparation. That said, it might perhaps be useful to review the basic beliefs and practices that underpin Tamil teacher preparation in Singapore. Many Singapore-born teacher trainees had studied Tamil as a second language. With regard to the problem of attachment rather than proficiency, it may be useful for more attention to be given to the evolution of language policies in Singapore, current usage patterns and the problems they pose, and language in its cultural context.
Tamil and other Indian Languages
It would be a truism to say that education policies, including language policies, will need constant reconceptualisation and revision to keep pace with demographic and socio-economic change. The nature of the Indian population is changing; Indians now constitute 9.2 per cent of the population. This increase has occurred as a result of inward migration, leading to an increase of permanent residents and citizens. They come from a variety of Indian language groups. More of them are better educated, are professionals or are high-net-worth families. It would be natural to assume that the earlier decision to allow other Indian languages as substitutes for Tamil in Singapore’s bilingualism model would lead to a growth in students for Hindi, Malayalam, Urdu and so on.
Conclusion
We have sought to map the development of Tamil-language education, principally the teaching, learning and usage of Tamil, one of Singapore’s official languages. Although a “language of lesser power”, it is heartening to note the sustained efforts of the Tamil-speaking community to preserve the language and make it grow from the late 1800s to its present position. State support for the future of Tamil, and to a lesser extent, other than languages, was fundamental on this journey, especially from 1956, when Tamil was recognised officially as the ‘mother tongue’ of the Indians and, following the articulation of the Singapore model of bilingualism, a required school subject for Indian students. Continued investment, intelligent policy making, an emphasis on high performance standards, improvements to teacher preparation, and so on resulted in the high quality of Singapore’s education system. Tamil-language education benefited enormously from this transformation.
Tamil-language education is thus well-positioned to respond to new challenges. There is still a need to ensure increased proficiency in Tamil and wider recognition of its role in identity-formation, and its use in a variety of domains. Continual attention needs to be paid to new media affordances and their potential to enhance teaching and learning of Tamil, and greater attention needs to be paid to the use of Tamil in new and old media, creative writing and official transactions. This will ensure that while language curriculum requirements in the school system are met, there is not too great a gulf between school-based Tamil and its use in the wider social and national contexts. Finally, Tamil’s future in Singapore education and society at large will depend on parents and families, teachers, those involved in the media and the government, all working together to ensure that a major and unique feature of Singapore’s linguistic, educational and cultural landscape remains vibrant, and an example for other minority languages worldwide.
Courtesy: ‘Sojourners to Settlers’
