Sunday 9 August 2009

Drop PPSMI only at primary school level.

The other day, a friend just lamented his son's plight when he will be in Form 4 in three years time. Yes, he's in Form 1 now and both Maths & Science are taught in English; come 2012 and presto!, it will be in Bahasa Malaysia again (or is it Bahasa Melayu? er...).
The Govt has been flip-flopping the PPSMI issue and the ultimate guinea pigs are our budding future leaders of the country. Of course, all these smack of political and racial undertones which could have been a win-win situation if PPSMI has been allowed to be continued at the secondary schools.
As it is, both the Malays and Chinese ( and to a certain extent, the Indians) wanted to retain their mother tongues and thought it would be better and easier for their kids to study in their mother tongues.
One thing though, the Govt went one step further and will drop PPSMI altogether all the way till Form Six. Then the Govt just announced that the Universities will carry on as usual in the English language.
My personal observation and experience tells me that the people who are going to suffer are the Malay students. Traditionally, most non-Malay students have propensities to do well in multi-languages, given their unique situation in a multi-racial Malaysia. They have to converse with their Malays friends in Bahasa, to their Indian friends in English and to their Chinese friends in Mandarin or the various Chinese dialects! I have interviewed scores of job applicants in the private sectors and sad to say, even with the current PPSMI policy, most of the Malay graduate (at tertiary level) applicants did not present themselves well in English ( in a score of 1 to 10, 10 being the most proficient in the English language, 98% of the Malay applicants marked 3~4 ). Of course, there is no problem in speaking in our Bahasa but the fact remains that in the private sector, most of the dealings and documentations are in English. We deal with the Japanese, Italians, Americans, British, Chinese, etc all in English ( and you wonder why these foreigners also deal with us in English, right?) and it would not benefit the employer and their business if it were not so. This is the real business world.

Unless one is looking for a Govt job.

I say the Govt has erred in dropping PPSMI at the secondary and tertiary educational levels.
maybe there's still time to reverse the decision ,before 2012.