As PR is putting themselves up to lead the government, care to share what is PR’s collective stand on this matter? And oh yes, please don’t make excuses and say that PR members can agree to disagree on matters compared to BN. Such `excuses’ don’t work when you are leading a country – you must come to a consensus and make a decision or else the state will stagnate!

The students who had been made to accept PPSMI over the past 6 years had gotten used to the English term, and they certainly do not want to switch language midway. But PPSMI is not about the preference of those who have been in it. It has to take into consideration of the choice if the students had not been forced into it.

Students in the secondary schools might have been able to accept PPSMI because they had sufficient grounding of the language to follow the teaching in English.

But PPSMI is definitely a bad policy for primary school. Those who had supported the reversal of PPSMI are parents in the primary schools. There are necessarily smaller in number who would vote on TDM’s blog. It is to be expected that students who are in the secondary schools would prefer status quo. Further, it has been generally accepted that English is important because of its wide reach and use in all spheres of live. Voters are worried that a reversal of PPSMI would see the rise of Bahasa Malaysia nationalism, as TDM wanted to convert the technical issue into ideological dispute.

The government is certainly right to oppose PPSMI for primary schools. If they still accept that it is the lack of teachers who could conduct proper oral teaching in English, then they should modify it to accept the use of English textbooks, but allow the teachers to choose the medium of oral instruction in secondary schools. Students should be given a choice to answer them in either language, English or BM.

Taiwan adopted English text books for science and mathematics since 1950s, and students from Taiwan went on to collect Nobel prizes. That should be the revised PPSMI the government should look into.

High income nation? Malaysia? When? 2020? 2030? 2120?

Sorry, but I really do not see this coming to pass any time soon.

oops typo above.
I would like your clarifications on a few of your points. This is directed to Kasim Amat.

I would your clarifications on a few of your points.

1. Is it true that in India, English is not the medium of instructions for Science and Maths? Would you please provide references to collude with this point of yours.

2. Is is true that the power of China and Korea is related to their teaching of the Science and Maths in their mother tongue?

Another consideration is a multi-lingual country like Singapore. Can Singapore be considered a failure because they teach Science and Maths in English?

Is the teaching of Science and Maths in English the critical factor in the degree of success between Singapore and Malaysia. I like to hear about Singapore-Malaysia comparison because as dissimilar as they are, there are still a significant degree of similarities.

Keen to hear the forums opinions on these points raised.

Thanks.

if you say so and is 100% sure all students should be taught in bm, i challenge you to a trip to taiwan or even india with me using english and you using bm to communicate .

learning more languages is wise but it must be learned and taught properly. some students failed bcs they have un-qualified english teachers !!! even if you ask a chinese to teach jawi,he will go no-where bcs he’s BLANK with that language & in turn, his students will be as stupid as him.

wake up,kasim. don’t be like the fish in the bowl. jump out and dare to face the challenge of the real world when it comes to knowledge and languages !!!

This is all political to satisfy those who cannot compete! BM as a language of the world for a population of 26 Million? or we try to include the indonesian and Bruneian?

Let us have a choice, and let the market decide what is best. Not a few Egoistic MORON!

http://shiokguy.blogspot.com/2009/07/freedom-of-choice-for-education.html

Shiok Guy

That is because Malaysia has too many morons like you, got it?

Yes, these are the so-called vernacular schools (state-funded) catering to the fanatical Chinese and Indian minorities where subjects are taught in the mother tongue. Then there are privately funded secondary schools which also teach in the mother tongue (so far the only ones I can think of are Chinese) whose qualifications are recognised by Taiwan.

Do we have the capabilities to draft our own English curriculum ? I would think so, but maybe with the assistance of some advisers from the UK or Australia. Will the government agree to it ? Unlikely, because (a) the teaching profession has been so badly corrupted by years of neglect and lack of meritocracy that it would take another decade to put things right and (b) the swing from the other schools to these English schools would be so great that the dislocations would not be controllable (see Mahathir’s poll).

I think the rules restricting locals from enrolling in international schools will be relaxed gradually, but of course the long term effect would be the creation of another category of have vs have-nots.

No.

Did they ask the teachers?

No.

Did they even finish the experiment?

No.

They asked a bunch of statistics.

During the primary school stage, most Malaysian children are still too weak in verbal and written skill in language. Therefore it is best for the primary school students to use as much mother tongue of theirs as possible for learning anything in school.

However, when the school children have entered the stage of secondary school, they are deemed to have a good command of their mother tongue already. Therefore there should have no more need for the secondary school students to spend too much time on learning their mother tongue except for cases that the students want to choose the literature of their own mother tongue as the major course of study in the stage of university study. Since there is a new need arisen during the stage of secondary education, the students are required to learn at least an international language such as English or Chinese in order for them to build up the competitiveness in order to compete with the international business world in global economy. Therefore, it is advisable for the Federal Government to set an educational policy which requires using an international language such as English or Chinese as the medium of instruction for learning Science and Mathematics in secondary school with immediate effect (don’t delay until 2012 because it is tonight and not tommorrow that the cow needs to come home before it gets stolen).

Ramesh is right. Language is only a tool. However, some language is a much more effective tool than the other language. Why did Ramesh think that the Indian people of the India subcontinent wanted to choose English, instead of other native language of Indian people, as the official language? Is it not because that English is a much more effective communication language and easy-to-learn language which makes it qualify to be an international language? I favour any international language be chosen as an medium of instruction for Science and Mathematics, whether it is English, French, German, Spanish, or Chinese!

If we continue to govern based on polls and public opinions, we can get no where. Please, leadership is about the ability and tenacity to do the right things. Check out Singapore’s LKY and see the number of unpopular but right decisions he had made for Singapore.

In order to qualify as an international language, the language itself must have adequate phrases in order to generate newly invented terminology in the field of Science and Mathematics. Both Chinese and English are qualified in this aspect but according to Tun Dr Mahathir’s several examples cited in his blogsite, it seems that Bahasa Malaysia fails to become an effective communication language because there are simply inadequate phrases in Bahasa Malaysia which can tell the differences among the following English phrases:

• Oxygenation

• Oxidation

• Oxide

• Oxidants

• Deoxydation

• Oxidise

• Oxidification

• Dioxide

• Monoxide

• Peroxide

BN Cabinet has made a questionable decision on requiring the secondary schools to use Bahasa Malaysia as the medium of instruction for Science and Mathematics!

What is the point of having an official policy but no body is following it? Surely the policy was not effective at all.

To solve all the problems, just bring back the English schools.

Language is only a tool. Do not turn it into an ideology.

Godfather is saying the truth. This may be the reason why each morning of school days we can find that in Johor Bahru there are thousands of Malaysian primary school children boarding on school buses crossing over to Singapore for attending a Singapore primary school or an international school in Singapore. The Malaysian educational policy has caused a lot of outflow in international currency exchanges for Malaysia.

Jeffrey,
You may be trying to speak from the viewpoint of BN in the matter of choosing Bahasa Malaysia as the medium of instruction in Malaysia’s schools. However, for a vast majority of Chinese Malaysians, the economic prowessness of Mainland China and Taiwan had made them decide to send their children to study the Chinese Language in the National Type Chinese Primary School and the privately-run Chinese Independent Secondary School.

Did you ever notice that some Chinese Independent Secondary Schools in Malaysia were only having 2,000 students during 1970s but their student population had tremendously increased to about 8,000 heads as at todate? The economic value of an international language is still the major determinant factor which helps the parents to choose among different schools which use different languages as medium of instruction in the classrooms. The general trend in Malaysia is that most Chinese Malaysians will choose Chinese as the first language for their children while majority Malay parents will choose Bahasa Malaysia as the first language for their children. Only a small number of elite group people who live as an upper class people in Malaysia will choose English as the first language for their children and decide to send their children to study in the exhorbitant International School.

Najib Razak, Muhyiddin Yassin and Hishammuddin Hussein are all not qualified to make a decision to choose Bahasa Malaysia as the medium of instruction in school because all these three hypocrites chose to send their children to study in the International School which used English as the medium of instruction. Why must they choose Bahasa Malaysia as the medium of instruction for Science and Mathematics subjects in the national secondary schools after 2012 when they themselves never trusted the National Schools which used Bahasa Malaysia as the medium of instruction?