No, I am not dead. Perhaps some of you out there thought that I’m already six feet underground. Sorry folks, yours truly is still alive. I haven’t been blogging for a while now, have I? My apologies to those who are expecting me to come up with an entry or two, but time and work have been a bitch, demanding my attention all the time these days.
I have so many to say, but not much time to do so. A lot of things disturbed my mind lately. I feel stressed up again when I think of the future of the next generation- our children, and our grandchildren in Malaysia.
Like most of you, I was extremely irritated and aghast to hear that the government had decided against teaching science and mathematics in English, and therefore, the PPSMI policy have been reverted, and consequently, our children will once again be forced to adapt to an environment where they will be learning science and maths once again in their mother’s tongue.
While I admit it will be more effective teaching children knowledge in the language that they use to converse on daily basis would improve their comprehension on certain subject, I doubt the children would manage extremely well when they pursue further education in college or university, where most subjects are taught in English.
Thinking in the long run, I seriously think that we won’t be able to compete globally as English is an international language. You can’t seriously think that every goddamn subject in local and international university is taught in your mother’s tongue?
Without a doubt, the children who learn mathematics and science in their mother’s tongue would be having trouble when they are in college or university, as the scientific and mathematical terms are different in English. The children soon will slack behind abit when they are in college or university,and if their command in English language are mediocre, they will soon be required to take language improvement classes, which I think, is a complete waste of time because if the children has already mastered the language, the said classes would no longer be necessary, unless they are pursuing language courses such as TESL, Literature, Drama, etc. AÂ complete waste of time, money, and effort, without a doubt. A stitch in time saves nine.
I don’t understand why must all of us here in Malaysia must slack behind just because certain people play the racial card just to win the approval and the heart of a certain race in Malaysia who always think that they are the most supreme being in Malaysian universe, we have to sacrifice the future of our children? That is a bit too much, isn’t it, dear readers.
I am more than sure that once science and mathematics are taught in Bahasa Melayu, Mandarin and Tamil once again, the children as well as teachers will somehow take things for granted and English will soon become not important anymore, and mastery of that language will decline. And because children of certain races would no longer feel that they need to constantly improvise their mastery in English, they will soon neglect to converse and mingle with children whose language mastery is better than them(not to mention that the children’s ethnicity are usually different too) and sooner or later, we can see once again the racial barrier-where Malays only sticks with Malays, Chinese with Chinese and Indians with Indians. I do not doubt this will happen. Universal language plays an important role in racial unity. How many of you can vouch that every bloody children in school would speak to each other in a language that other races could understand all the time during schooling sessions?
I doubt you can. You can always see the Chinese speaking in Mandarin and Indians speaking in Tamil with each other in national schools where the communication is supposed to be in Bahasa Malaysia. Abolishing PPSMI would make it worst, no doubt.
Malaysian’s mastery in English language is laughable enough at the moment. I shudder to think the damage that will be done by abolishing PPSMI policy. Well, if the next generation could even speak in ‘rojak’ English at all in the future, I guess all of us should thank heaven and earth. At least Malaysians everywhere are conversing in broken English today. I am not so sure even broken English would even be a practice in the coming years.
In Malaysia, we are our own enemy. We are the prisoner of medieval and barbaric mindset where no one is equal, and we are constantly influenced by the people who are power thirsty not to advance and be united. We are taught that the yellow, black and white can never be in harmony and have to be aware of each other. Last but not least, ladies and gentleman, we are compromising our children’s future by adhering to such un-liberalized mindset as we are no better than a human puppet to those who want to take away the mastery of language, knowledge, advancement just because they need us to be that way in order for them to always be in power.
This is not all that I have to say, but, I’ll just stop here for the moment. I say, we are taking more than thousands steps backwards by abolishing PPSMI, what say you, dear readers?
Cleffairy: In Malaysia, we always take one step forward only to find that soon, we’ll be forced to take thousands of steps backwards.
ps: Aww, come on, you think abolishing PPSMI will win the hearts of Manek Urai voters? That is rather immature decision, isn’t in, UMNO?
personally, i think the focus should be on ‘maths and science’ instead of ‘english’. they demolished PPSMI and compensate by increasing hours in english learning. i dont see how that helps students in dealing with maths and science in the future. we dont learn scientific or maths terms in our english classes.
Hi Cleff.
I totally sad, angry when I heard about the news. WTF?! That’s crossed my mind immediately. Hell yeah, it’s just so stupid when I think about it. I’m looking forward to be posting somewhere in November and I’ll be teaching Chemistry or Science or Math (who knows if I can’t get my option btw). Darn! I cant accept that decision.
You’re disheartened about it. And you disagreed with it.
But what can you do??
You will allow your children to follow the system, but I bet you will educate them otherwise. Like.., speaking English at home, attending Mandarin/Tamil classes after school. That’s good enough already, because your kids will go far in education and career in the future compared to those kids who only know ONE language which no countries will understand except THIS country. Oh , maybe if we twist /slang alittle..probably Indonesia might understand. 😉
Great post. Have a nice day! 🙂
actually, there was an incident that i can remember vividly untill today, there was this reality show, one participant (under grad) from one local U, race not mentioned here lah,, when she was asked what is a neurosergeon,,, she replied “tak tahu”
And to be fair, i cannot agree with those so called chinese association calling for the abolishement of teaching science and math in english, to me their intention is not genuine, they jus want to be a race champion rather than children champion or nation champion.
too sad lah
heartpain…. irritated… saddening..
this is what we will always feel when we r here living in this land… they r “destroying” our offsprings indirectly…
do we have an option? yes.. the only way is to “uproot” .. and…i will continue to encourage my kids to find their way …
Not easy to switch to learning Maths and Science in English when one enter varsity, have to learn all the terms again, everytime have to use dictionary!
It’s the stupidest decision I’ve ever heard of. While other countries are making scientific discoveries and conquering their own pieces of the world economy, we’ll be translating English scientific journals into BM.
I’m a product of the BM and English system… did my Std 1-Form 5 Math and Science in BM, and recently Form 6 in English. I was lucky to be raised in an English-speaking household (ok maybe the downside is I’m kinda a “banana”? haha). Most of my classmates in F6 were from Chinese schools. They were brilliant students but couldn’t understand English sentences… so when it came to stuff like “vertices” and “describe chemical reactions that display so-and-so characteristics” questions, I was their dictionary.
Besides that, they wouldn’t have needed to state that the PPSMI scrapping was not a political decision if it wasn’t in the first place ><. Wonder what the next generation of Msian students will be like!!!
Good 1 sis. I also have a post similar to yours but of course mine is ulterior inferior.
However, that was not my point. I am completely clueless about what has the government been thinking about new generation’s future. This will only bring them harm more than good.
Statistics have already show us that laxity in English has led graduates to unemployment. I dare to say that it is the government’s fault/ministry’s that make this situation.
And I am totally agree that this has something related to political move. They rather seeing their child perish in the future, that is what it is about.
Ehhhhh…come to think of it again, it is not that they send their children to public school, are they?