The debate over the merits of mother-tongue teaching has raged for decades. It has escalated in the past two months as the Education Department told 24 of our 124 English-medium local schools to switch to teaching in Cantonese at the start of the coming school year. Twenty of those 24 are now appealing, and 15 of the 20 have formed a coalition to fight what they see as discrimination in the ED's decision. The furor will not subside unless the ED succeeds in communicating the reasons for its policy, and the details about how the vetting committee came to its decisions. In our view, not all students benefit from learning all subjects in English.
Education is about understanding.
The prime objective in a classroom is to achieve communication and understanding between teachers and students. Insufficient communication results in insufficient understanding. Even in cases where students are capable of achieving good English-language examination results, barriers to real understanding very often remain. The lack of skill in English may even impinge on learning English itself. In such cases, students would benefit more from effective teaching of English as a second language than from continuous English-medium instruction in other subjects.