Before we get into all this, let me just say that culture is a feeling. And before we get into that, let me tell you a story.

From Victoria Street To Ang Mo Kio (FVS2AMK) is a film about loss, which permeates the 70-minute documentary. Commissioned by the St. Nicholas Girls’ School (SNGS) Alumnae Association, it’s also an archive of Singapore’s Chinese schools’ precarious history.

Loss of language, hence the loss of culture; although a colourful cast of characters prevents the film from wallowing in gloom and doom.

First we have the students: inquisitive, vibrant, and always up to something. Amongst the staff, there’s the headmistress Sister Francoise. A personality larger than life, she is brusque, authoritative, and—as director Eva Tang tells me—very Cantonese. The mischievous interplay between students and teachers gives the film much needed breathing room and, more importantly, imbues it with heart.

The film’s central conflict makes itself known within the first few scenes. The English schools are getting everything, and the Chinese schools are left with zilch. Educational policies heavily favour English speaking schools, with English becoming the official language of Singapore.

The girls can’t even play ball during recess without those pesky students from [unnamed English school] driving them off the court.

This is especially heartbreaking when a promised new campus gets allocated to an English school instead. The camera lingers in these reaction scenes, allowing expressions of hope and disappointment to bloom in their entirety. The black and white grading of the film’s first half doesn’t just evoke nostalgia. The hard lights and deep shadows emphasise the emotional weight of the characters.

Even Sister Francoise’s disciplinarian facade crumbles away when faced with the indignant tears of her girls. As the students’ quivering voices sing the St. Nicholas’ school anthem, she embraces one of them, strained smile on her face. The moment feels poignant instead of cheesy because we’ve seen these students treated like second class citizens in their own country.

The documentary also makes it clear that it wasn’t just Chinese speakers who suffered. All non-English speaking communities were affected by these policies. Forget Chinese privilege—the true elite were those representing the Western world. Thanks colonialism! It’s like you never left.

As policies became stricter, it was time to adapt or die. This was the beginning of bilingualism, which the film’s second half captures by splicing interviews with images from the late 70s and 80s.

Though we’ve written about how Special Assistant Plan (SAP) schools are no longer relevant, back in the day there was a pressing need for it. In order for the Chinese speaking community to transition into one that could speak English yet retain its linguistic roots, special assistance had to be given to the secondary school students. This radical restructuring metastasised as the Immersion Program.

Language immersion is specifically employed in bilingual language education, where two languages are used to teach various subjects. Imagine puzzling over trigonometry in language A, while scrutinising the Treaty of Versailles in language B. This was achieved in Singapore by pairing up SAP schools with an English school counterpart. In the case of SNGS, Raffles Girls would be their ride-or-die.

Every day, after school, the St. Nicholas girls would be shuttled en masse to RGS for extra lessons conducted in English. Think of it as a more intensive remedial.

For two to three years, this was the drill.

This bizarre, convoluted arrangement would act as a bridge to the status quo we know today. The language of instruction for all schools would be in English, and for Chinese students, Chinese would be offered as a mother tongue.

We can see the effects of these policies today. Singaporeans are supposed to be bilingual, but we have an entire generation of Chinese Singaporeans who aren’t proficient with their ‘mother tongue’. Times have changed, and our people with them. But when we can no longer speak a language, we are limited in our understanding and expression of cultural experiences.

Singapore has truly come so far, and we’ve sacrificed as much in kind. Was it worth it?