JEWELLE TAN

Still on the recent controversial policy change on Math and Science, everyone should read this - especially those who voted YES.

Chaining The Children Of The Poor (click to read in full) by M. Bakri Musa, a Malaysian surgeon living in the USA

Make no mistake about it. The government’s professed concerns for the poor and those from rural areas notwithstanding, reversing the current policy would adversely and disproportionately impact them. The rich and those in the cities have a ready escape; the rich through private English classes, urban children from the already high levels of English in their community.

The idiocy of the new move is best illustrated by this one startling example. In 2012 when the new plan will be implemented, students in Form IV will be taught science and mathematics in Malay, after learning the two subjects in English for the past nine years. Then two years later when they will be entering Sixth Form or the Matriculation stream, they will again have to revert to English.

.Pupils in the vernacular schools would have it worse. They would learn the two subjects in their mother tongue during their primary school years, then switch to Malay for the next five while in secondary school, and then switch again, this time to English, in Sixth Form and university!

It is a great policy in the short run - everyone will pass their secondary school and every students will have a Form Five certificate.

National literacy will be 100% - every Education Minister’s goal.

In the long term, when a majority of students stumbled at Form 6, what more universities - we will then have a nation of mostly Form Five leavers. Let’s just hope these future students will have that rare spirit and willingness to work extremely hard to overcome this.

Popularity: 7% [?]

After much dilly-dallying, it’s a relief that they have finally made their decisions.

Out with English - and in with Malay, Mandarin and Tamil for the teaching of Maths and Science subjects for Primary 1 to Form 5 students in Malaysian schools.

Actually, despite the uproar of protest, not least from the former PM, I think it’s a wise decision.

The way I see it, most Malaysian kids are not keen on Maths and Science - what’s more when it’s taught in English. How can they ever pass their exam! So we have to make it easier for them. Kids from rural areas with limited access to learning English or students from urban areas who cares nothing about Maths and Science - they are the priority.

It’s their interest that has to be protected.

All we want is for them to pass their Form 5 exam. Of course, they don’t want to  go to Form 6 or even universities. Besides most want to be singers or poets or actors anyway. What do they need Math and Science beyond Form 5 for.

Why worry about the small minority of Malaysians who wants to go beyond Form 5. Who cares if they struggle with the terminology when they reach Form 6. There can’t be that many who aspires to be technicians much less engineers, or draughtsman much less architects or nurses much less doctors.

Students simply need to pass their Form 5 exam. And they can only pass if English is kept to the minimal.

It’s all about making things easy, right?

Of course, it is also important to preserve our language. Who wants to read that latest scientific discovery or research papers, usually in foreign languages? Even those English encyclopedias with its wide range of knowledge and information - why read them? Or if we really need to, we can always wait until someone translate them to the local language.

The teachers who protested against this are a mere handful. If they really want to contribute to nation-building, let them find another way.

Ways that does not involve and trouble the majority of teachers who just want to work and get paid. These poor teachers have been made to suffer terrible injustice of having to teach hard subjects in a language they themselves are not so confident in. All they want to do is go to work and get paid, for goodness sakes. It is not their fault if the program failed because the government forget to consider their motivations and capabilities in the first place.

Things have to be easy, remember?

So parents of school going kids, make sure you place your support to this important change of policy. Don’t let selfish parents or educators force you or your kids to learn something that is useless after students turn 17. Scientific journals in English? Research papers in English? Who needs those!

Go and vote YES to teaching Math and Science in Malay for Malaysian kids.

I might not know much but I do know that it will make it a lot easier for my Malaysian kids, who will be raised outside of Malaysia and who will be learning Math and Science in English since KG, to compete with Malaysian kids back home when they reach Form 6, universities and beyond.

*By the way : When it comes to the English language, who says rural communities will not make it?

Popularity: 8% [?]