Better, worse or different? A critique of 'Using language policies to highlight and contrast the values that shape multicultural societies: Examples from Singapore and Australia' by Beatrice Boufoy-Bastick (1997)

This paper examines the argument of a previous article published in this jo urnal by Boufoy-Bastick (1997). In that article, Boufoy-Bastick made some c omparisons between the language policies of Australia's and Singapore's edu cation systems. The author claimed that Australia's language policies are m ore egalitarian and promote multiculturalism, whereas Singapore's policies produce only superficial harmony and are, in fact, discriminatory. The pres ent article questions these claims on the grounds that they are either untr ue, contradictory or lacking in evidence to substantiate such serious alleg ations about the educational and social policies of one of Australia's clos est neighbours in Asia.