Is Mandarin our Mother's Tongue? Not quite

To Chinese Singaporeans, who are mostly Hokkiens and Cantonese, our true mother's tongue is actually our dialects, not Mandarin. Forty years ago, in those days, our parents referred Mandarin as China national language (国语), not our mother's tongue (母语). I believe our Ministry of Education is making a very serious mistake when they introduced the learning of Mandarin as our mother's tongue.
From personal experience, having mastered Cantonese and Hokkien in my childhood made learning Mandarin alot easier when I entered primary school.
Since the launch of the "Speak Mandarin" campaign, sad to see that many of our youths who grew up under Singapore elitism education policy, are struggling more with learning Mandarin. Instead of being bilinguals, our youths are reduced to monolinguals. Even worse, we are speaking Singlish instead of proper English. Something is seriously wrong here!