All Men are Created Equal; Some Just Speak Better English!

It is that time again – time for me to divert from my usual staple to something that I carefully avoid – political stuff. Once in a while, when something stirs in society which I feel has far deeper repercussions than your everyday Malaysian-styled politics, I can’t help but ponder about it.

Yesterday was one of those moments. The cabinet has decided to revert back to the ‘old’ policy of teaching Science and Mathematics in Bahasa Malaysia. The reasons given was that the ‘new’ policy which was ‘tried’ for a full cycle was found to be ineffective in improving the standard of English among students. Also, it seems that students’ grades too have fallen dramatically compared to before the policy was implemented.

I will be blunt, the present administration has done nobody any favours although it may have earned some votes for the coming by-election in Manik Urai. It is a huge miscalculation and misinformed move to mothball a policy, with all its defects, had a fair chance to improve the command of English language among our new generation of school children.

When Tun Mahathir pushed through the policy of teaching English and Mathematics in English, I thought it was crab! I just could not see what exactly was the intended outcome. Some parrots (then) of the government said that it was the best way to improve future Malaysian’s command of the language (today, the same parrots say that the best 'policy' is to revert to the 'old policy'). Others claimed that it was intended to enable Malaysians become more knowledgeable and able to acquire the latest in terms of science and technology as most of these are written and communicated in the English language. Now, I am confused. Is the whole idea to improve the command of the language or was it to be used as a specialized tool to acquire knowledge and information. I am not a linguistic expert but I believe that the answer to this question will determine how the language is taught and how the policy is implemented. Just ask those who teach Business English and English for Business; they will tell you that there is a world of difference. Anyway, I was just glad then that finally the administration had the political will to push through something that was understandably not popular among the race and cultural ‘champions’ of Malay, Chinese, Indian, Kadazan and Iban groups. I just thought that, no matter how you look at it, our kids will be forced to spend a little bit more time learning and using the English language and our teachers will be forced to lead by example by becoming more proficient in the language. That can’t be bad.

Language acquisition is a complex issue in it’s nature and a complicated matter in its cultural context. But, as a man on the street, I will say this : One will not learn and master a language without a strong reason to do so. Yes, there are those who are able to and want to learn a new language for the fun of it. Unfortunately there are very, very few of them among us. For most of us, we are moved to learn a new language when there is a compelling reason to do so. This could be economic, cultural adaptation or simply for survival. The multitude of foreign workers who seem to be able to converse in Bahasa Malaysia is not a surprise really. They have an economic/survival reason to do so. Would you learn Swahili for the fun of it? Probably not. But what if your next promotion depends on you being able to go to Africa and close a oil-drilling contract with a bunch of local chieftains? There is a reason right?

Now, making it compulsory for our SPM students to pass their English paper might be too little too late as the best years for 2nd language acquisition is during the early years...or at least that was what I learned in my Language and Culture paper back at the university.

So, our kids are not going to go the extra mile to improve the command of their English language if we don’t ‘give’ them a compelling reason to do so. As I read the news reports today, I find that there are so called new measures being planned. One of it is an emphasis on English grammar! Come on! You got to be joking. This is a NEW measure? Oh yes…Gapena is so kind to offer the government free service to help set up English language clubs in schools and they have made this offer as if this is a panacea. More foreign English language teachers will be imported. As I recall from my days as an academic staff of a local university, our kids can hardly understand our very own TESL graduate teachers. I wonder how they are going to manage native speakers. And, most of the reasons given by the minister to justify a change in policy, at least to me, seems to lie in its implementation NOT in the idea of teaching more subjects in the English language.

In all honesty, how many of us would have taken the trouble to learn Bahasa Malaysia for that matter if not for some real strong reasons to do so…like being unable to get a full school leaving certificate or being accepted into a local university? If not for this ‘compulsory’ requirements we all will be in our own linguistic cocoon speaking in our mother tongue to death. So, the same applies for English. Make it compulsory. Make it mandatory....but make it so from Standard One. That is the only way to make our kids learn the language. That is the only way to gain back our lost grounds to regional competitors.

I am not sure if I have blogged about this but I think it is worth sharing here about a documentary that I watched recently on YouTube about Thomas Friedman researching his concept of the flat world. Apparently it was Aziz Premji who first got him thinking about the ‘flat world’. So he went back to India to research on Indian IT and outsourcing workers and their bosses. I am not kidding here but I actually had tears in my eyes as it dawned on me that we Malaysians have been left so far behind that we can’t even see our nearest competitor so much so that we are deluding our selves that we are actually up front! Guess what...all men are created equal...only their command of the English language differs and that's why countries like India, China and the Philippines are surging ahead in the knowledge economy.

Well, as the decision is apparently final and not subject to appeal, let me just say that I am devastated by the shortsightedness of it all.

We have dug the 1st feet of our national grave. To all those ministers and decision makers who are 'loyally' behind this new move, let me ask you this : " Where are YOUR kids schooling?"

To all those Malay, Chinese and Indian educationists who have championed the 'mother tongue', let me ask you this : " How many bio-technology and bio-medicine related books can you translate in a year?"