Mr Speaker, Sir, may I express a personal view on this subject? I have seen several different parts of our school system. I went to primary school in Nanyang Primary School. It is what would nowadays be called a SAP school, purely a Chinese environment. I went to secondary school in Catholic High School, also a Chinese environment but different, because it is a mission school. We had Catholic brothers and quite a number of Indian teachers, teaching not only English but also Science and other subjects. We also had activities with other schools nearby, especially our brother schools, St. Joseph's, RI, etc., and therefore opportunity to mix with kids from other backgrounds and traditions. I spent a year in National Junior College, where students and teachers came together from all the schools in Singapore - English schools, Chinese schools, Malay kids, Indian kids, Eurasians - attending lectures together, sports, games, together. And plus on top of that, for several years as a kid, I was a member of a wolf cub pack in Kampong Jagoh Primary School, most of whose members were Malay kids because Kampong Jagoh in those days was a Malay neighbourhood. I think I learnt something from each one of these experiences, I would have been the poorer off if I had not undergone them. We do not have a single monolithic homogeneous school system in Singapore, just as we do not have a single homogeneous population in Singapore. There are variations in the traditions, in the ethos of different schools, in the values which are emphasised and the character traits which are brought out amongst the children. There is a common ground. We all say the National Pledge, we all sing the National Anthem. We all must remember that we are citizens of Singapore together. But in the details of moulding the characters of the kids, each school goes its separate way. And I think it is good that we do not all grow up exactly in the same mould, but are a range of individuals with common ideals and common objectives. Raffles Institution is a very good school. They have just celebrated a grand dinner last night; many RI boys have been successful Singaporeans. But I do not think we would like all Singaporeans to be like RI boys. ACS is also a very good school, having produced many very successful Singaporeans, but in a different mould. Again we appreciate their contribution to this tradition but I do not think it would be ideal for every Singaporean to be an ACS boy. Similarly with the Chinese schools, whether it is Hua Zhong or Nan Zhong or Gong Jiao. The Chinese schools were one strand of a national tradition, and had their value. I do not know if it is the language in which the lessons are taught, and values are transmitted, or whether it is the way the teachers carry themselves and dedicate themselves to the task of bringing up the kids. But certainly the atmosphere in a Chinese school is different from the atmosphere in an English school, and I am talking about good schools in both cases. In a Chinese school, the teacher goes in, the class monitor says, qi li, stand up, xing li, you bow, zuo xia, sit down. Everybody bows, including the teacher. It may be a ritual not so different from English school kids chanting "Good morning, Sir", but it is a ritual with some meaning and some influence on the way the kid grows up. If you look at the cut of adult Singaporeans today who have been to Chinese schools, and those who have been to RI or ACS, I think you can distinguish in the adult person the imprint of the formative experiences which he went through. We would be poorer off without any one of these three traditions. We are not starting from scratch in setting up SAP schools. We are trying to preserve an existing tradition which developed over the colonial period, and gradually eroded somewhat as we went into the national stream schools. Now we are saying let us not go all the way into a single national stream. Let us preserve some of the values of the best components of the earlier tradition. We know what the outcome will be in a way because, as the Minister for Education said, a SAP school is not the same as an old Chinese school. You are learning both EL1 and CL1. There is mixture with other students. The activities organised by the schools, the principals, are not the same. It should, by all accounts, be an improvement on what we had before. If you look around in society today, there are many honourable Singaporeans who can say that they have had a good upbringing in the old Chinese schools. So is it wise to let that tradition totally die away, whether by neglect or by policy, by bringing everybody together and say, "No, I will not allow you to have something different because we want everybody to be exactly the same."? Even if you look in this Chamber, many of the MPs have come from Chinese schools - Mr Ong Teng Cheong, from Chung Cheng Primary School and Hua Zhong. Many of the Backbenchers were from Chinese schools. Many of the Malay MPs also have received Malay stream education, at least in the primary school level. We are not the same, but at the same time are we not able to work together as Singaporeans with a common cause? It is a basic question. To be Singaporeans together, do we have to be identical? In talking about integration, do we have to go all the way? If we were totally segregated, that would be very bad. All the Malays on one side, all the Indians on another side, all the Chinese on the third, and the three never mix, exchange views or just work together. That is a recipe for disaster. On the other hand, if you forcibly stir everybody together, that may not be a good solution either. In America, they have tried this with busing. Some schools were more white, and some schools were more black or more Spanish. By law and compulsion, they mixed the students together so that each school had an equal proportion of all the races. If necessary, they bussed the children, ie, put them into school buses and transport them to some other place so that the proportions will be equalised. It has not led to happy results. So as we make our own efforts at integration, we also have to allow a certain range of activities. This is the way our policies have been pursued. We talk about integrating HDB estates, integrating so that all the neighbourhoods have a representative racial mixture. But we did not specify a fixed mix, exactly 70% Chinese, 15% Malays, so many per cent Indians, so many per cent Eurasians. We specified a range, so that an extreme of 95% Chinese is out, an extreme of 50% minorities is also no good, but in between there is some free play. In the blocks too, there is free play. We do not require every fifth household to be a minority. In the integrated neighbourhoods, if you go and take a look, all the Malay households are on the lower floors, many of the Chinese households are on the upper floors. Should we interfere? I do not think so. These are personal preferences which we should respect. In the case of minority activities, an Indian cultural group, a Malay mosque community activity, should we say no, you are not be allowed to do this because it is bringing you away from the mainstream? It would lead to a lot of trouble. We say, yes, do this, but at the same time try to do other activities which will bring you into the mainstream and which will give Malay kids, Chinese kids and Indian kids the opportunity to mix, to get to know one another, and to accommodate one another. So that if you are from a Chinese school and you go into an Indian restaurant down Serangoon Road for the first time, and somebody pours the curry from the pail onto your banana leaf, you feel perfectly comfortable and tuck in with your fingers. I think it can be done. One of the concerns of the non-Chinese when we talk about SAP schools is that it sounds like more and more Chinese culture is being expanded and emphasised, and is encroaching upon the non-Chinese cultures and traditions in Singapore. I can assure you that that is not the way the Chinese schools or the Chinese teachers look at it. I am not a Chinese teacher, but if you read what they have written about this issue of SAP schools, they feel beleaguered. There is a certain desperate assertion of how important these schools are, and how we must never let them die. It does not say they will take over the world. It says we must never let them die. And they have a point, because even in SAP schools today, the kids are speaking more English than Chinese, despite everything the parents can do, or the teachers can do. The kids often come from professional backgrounds. They speak English at home, they chatter with one another in English. Certainly, they read a lot more in English than they do in Chinese. So what we are looking for is the preservation of some aspects of Chinese culture, just as we should preserve the best aspects of Indian and Malay cultures. It is a bigger problem for the Chinese population than for the Malay or the Indian population. Because quite frankly, the Malay population does not have difficulty with their children learning ML1. A lot of Chinese parents have great difficulty teaching their children CL1. And even Chinese parents who are originally Chinese-educated and who try to start off their kids using Chinese as well as English, when the kid is a little bit slow to learn to speak, and after 15 months still has not gone beyond "papa" and "mama", they take fright and convert to English so that the child will start talking. Malay kids do not have that problem. I am sure Indian kids do not either. So there is a reason to preserve the tradition and I think the SAP schools are one way to do it. We will find ways to mix the SAP school kids from other schools with kids from other racial backgrounds. It can be done. It must be done. Dr Tan Cheng Bock has suggested some ways to do this and the Ministry of Education will follow it up. But to say that we are better off without that pillar of our tradition, then we are cutting off one significant leg of a stable tripod and I am not sure that just with the remaining legs the balance will still stand.