July 9, 2009 - Mourning The Future of Our Children...

No lah, the kids are not doing MJ's moonwalk, they're moving backwards....pathetic!

My gut-feel told me that the decision would be the reinstatement of Bahasa Malaysia (BM) as the language of instruction for Science and Maths. It was obviously a politically-loaded decision. Rural parents complained that their children do not have a good grasp of the English language and hence do not do well in these subjects - and that could translate into a lot of votes in an election...read: Manik Urai!

Then, there were also calls by Nationalists (Malays, Chinese and Indians alike) pressuring the Government to preserve their bahasa ibunda (mother tongue). Hence, the Government gave in to these pressures by announcing that these subjects will also be taught in vernacular languages starting in 2012 - in the interest of 1Malaysia!

Teachers are also a factor in the equation - their proficiency rate was dismal and as such, many continued to teach these subjects in BM as well. Well, if teachers are not properly trained, how can the students fare any better? Should they be penalised because the implementation is flawed?

What happened to the billions of Ringgit the Government had spent on computers, LCDs and teaching modules to equip them to teach these subjects in English? Are they just being used to surf the Net during break time at the expense of taxpayers?

The quality of teachers today, based on my experience in dealing with them when my son was in a government school, leaves much to be desired. You can detect the lack of passion and dedication; compared to teachers who taught me during the '60s. Children are not encouraged to ask questions because I suspect teachers do not know the answers...when curious minds are just dismissed, you can guess what the outcome would be...they lose interest, they stopped asking questions.

Another side to the argument for the switch is that if the Chinese, Russians, Japanese and Germans, for example, can be technologically superior even though they are taught in their mother tongue, why can't BM do the same for Malaysians?

Well, it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that it is not only the medium of instruction that matters...the entire Malaysian education system needs to be revamped. We should not be too concerned with how many "As" our children score in the SPM examination....we should be more concerned with whether those "As" can translate into an individual that is competitive beyond secondary school level. The way I see it, our education system emphasises parroting facts rather than using your grey matter to think and analyse. As reported in the press, there is keen competition to see who can score the most "As" - never mind if the subject is Arabic instead of English!

The quality of teachers should also be improved. They should focus more on teaching with dedication instead of indulging in multi-level marketing, selling kain batek, or supporting political parties, etc. at the workplace.

In a corporate workplace, employees who do not have a good command of English will not be competitive and should we be surprised that our universities are churning out a high number of graduates who are not marketable in spite of their degrees! As an HR practitioner, I have come across many local graduates who cannot string a proper sentence in English. Read some of the Government web sites and you will find them peppered with grammatical errors.

I am all for preserving BM as the national language but let us not gamble with our children's future to achieve that objective. This is a global world folks...can you imagine our Malaysian professionals participating in global conventions in the future? They will probably be just observers sitting at the back of the room because they do not have the confidence to participate due to poor command of the English language?

Put politics aside. The most effective way to teach a language is to do so in the early formative years...English should be taught from Year 1 - like in the old days...and I am proud to say I am a product of that system!