Bilingual 2030: For Better Or Worse?

Imagine 2030 is tomorrow. Imagine from tomorrow, anyone in Taiwan no matter the locals, foreigners who live here, and tourists all have access to any government service in both Chinese and English. That would be insane because that either means everyone from the government had been working hard to prepare for this for the past few years or that everyone from the government had been replaced by people who are in their 20s

ecause they are the closest to being or becoming bilingual people.

OK, end of imagination. Goals don't just achieve themselves as much as you wish them to be. Training to become bilingual isn't particularly difficult, especially for the fact that English has been the unspoken wish-to-be second language here. English courses in our education have gone from beginning in grade 7 to beginning in grade 1. Without major reform or transformation of the teaching methods, "Bilingual Nation" would be nothing but a self-hyped label.

The public education system already includes compulsory English courses. With a little modification, an English class could easily become "an English experience". How difficult is it if the MOE mandate all schools to make Friday "the English Day" in which every student experiences their school day as if they were actually in an English-speaking country? Moreover, how difficult is it if we have different themes on the event day such as "U.S. Day", "U.K. Day" or "Canada Day"? That is of course if the policymakers had listened to Andy and executed this plan from the top-down.

The truth is that no one could really say for certain whether the bilingual policy could really be beneficial or harmful because it's different in every country. It's not the policy; it's the people. Nevertheless, let's try.

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Diversity in languages, cultures, and ethnicities makes a person more open-minded, less stubborn, and friendly. Speaking more languages requires working on different parts of the brain, too. In a way, it makes a healthier brain. A bilingual person is more prone to problem-solving and multi-tasking because of the same reason. It is also said that learning different languages help make us more creative. All of the above are quite promising, except they are not about being made bilingual by a policy.

You can't force the masses to improve and you can't lead without visions. Here's what we often miss when trying to help. Extremity creates more hate and room for worse. A step-by-step guide that allows flexibility makes people feel safe and bring creativity. You may say "Andy, it's easier said than done. You're full of it because you don't actually have to do it!". Well, the first part is true and just because it's not easy, it doesn't mean it's impossible. Doing the right thing has never been easy.

Try this. Starting this year (2022), all government recruitment includes just one more essential, the ability to do the job in English. All current government employees will have three years to catch up to the new regulation or it will reflect on their annual performance evaluation. In 5 years' time, we will have a big shift toward the 2030 policy. How about this for a change?

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Nothing's perfect, and neither is this well-intended policy. We could foresee so far from the progress that once the goal is reached, we would have a more polarized society, the elite, and the left-behind. It could mean that in order to "boost the competitiveness", we created discrimination on a systemic level like racism. It could also mean that people who can not catch up, cannot get good jobs, get promoted, or be elected to be an official.

Isn't this the possible result from what Andy suggested? Yes, except that it was exclusively for the government. Leaders must lead by example. We're trying to be a bilingual nation; it doesn't mean everyone should or could be bilingual. Encourage, but don't cut off.

Furthermore, regional bilingualism should be considered a milestone. Who's to say that we cannot develop different languages in different cities? Well, as you can all see that in terms of language learning, the potential is limitless. There is so much to talk about. If only.

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Before we finish this discussion, we've got some information to refer to this subject. If you search for the list of bilingual countries, you would find that it was not as impressive as you thought as more results were for multilingual. Being bilingual in Taiwan is likely to be considered "more competitive" or "better". In a sense, yes, it is so if comparing the same aspects with a monolingual. However, frankly speaking, a language cannot be compared with another skill just like an engineer doesn't necessarily need a second language to do the job.

This is the list mentioned above. Note that it only shows those countries with English as one of the two official languages.

• Asia

India Hindi / English

Pakistan English / Urdu

Philippines Filipino / English

Singapore English / Chinese / Malay / Tamil

• North America

Canada English / French

• Europa

Ireland English / Irish

Malte English / Maltese

• Oceania

Palau English / Palau

Fidji English / Fijian / Hindi

Kiribati English / Kiribati

Nauru English / Nauru

New Zeland English / Maori

Samoa English / Samoan

Tonga English / Tongan

Tuvalu English / Tuvaluan

Vanuatu English / French / Bislama

How competitive are they compared with us?