On the 11 hours flight to Xi’an, i read LKY latest book on singapore polices on bilingualism.  The book record his account on the formulation of Singapore bilingualism policy since British colony time to his ‘iron fist’ control of the Ministry of Education to impose this far sighted policy.

Reading this book I felt that this was not his own written word taking account that he was assisted by many editors from the press media. And his usual fighting stance was minimised and much missed.

It was interesting to note that he has deleted his christian name ‘Harry’ given by his grand father and used only Lee Kuan Yew when he was registered to practise law.   This is to reinstate that he was chinese by nature and no matter what kind of western education he received he would not became an English Gentlement which was embraced by the majority of the colonies.

Only when you inherited the wealth and value of your ‘own’ culture then you will be confident and bold in your thought and action.   In this case it was the chinese or asian value mentioned by him.

Another interesting account was his government critical and closing of some chinese institutions.  It was the political correctness at that time as singapore was situated in the sea of Muslim countries. 

I think writing this book now also reflected his political correctness considering the rise of the modern China.  And a certain emotion of his action and inaction of his dealing with the delicate Chinese language situation in the history of Singapore.  I sincerely hope that this will not be his last book.

RSS feed for comments on this post.
TrackBack URI