The UPSR result is out. Datuk Hisham says it has to be looked into carefully before we can say anything definite, but tentatively, he is giving the thumbs up for the teaching of math and science in English.
Now we are told, that the results are going to be further pored over by a host of experts. Meanwhile there is mounting pressure on him to revert to BM, to avoid the National Language being “sidelined”.
We wait with bated breath and hope that the decision will favour the future of our children. However, there is a bigger consideration, and that is we must act in favour of our country’s future.
Is our mind battling with our heart on this?
I say, our children are the future of this country, and we hold their future in our hands. And that perhaps is the singular merit of being parents.
Public education policy is a strategic vehicle to achieve social and cultural integration. It is politics-driven. That’s the reality of it. Eventually, the Minister will act on the best of intentions and advice, but on a quest this far-reaching , it is the imperative thing to ensure that there can be more than just one path to achieve our goals.
What actually are we aiming for? Is it to have a more educated population, or a population who can speak English? What I have read so far is that there is an overwhelming view that the idea is to achieve both, and some are using specious logic to assert that by teaching math and science in the English language we will have a more English-speaking population.
I think those two things are entirely separate, and that is the key to our discourse. Teaching math and science in primary school has more to do with cognition than with communications.
Basically, cognitive development, is about teaching our children to think, and in primary level especially, to develop their natural intelligence. This will only be possible if the child and teacher speak a common language.
To learn to speak English is about communicating with others, and this, all teachers will agree, needs a different set of approach altogether.
It will be a grave error on our part and a cruel injustice to our children, to bear the weight of an adult’s wishful thinking that they can accomplish both at the same time. It would give an ironic meaning to the proverb: to kill two birds with one stone.
Japan became a developed country long before it decided to have an English-speaking citizenry by embarking on an annual spending of USD322 million in 1987. (Look up their JET program).
Their education policy became a success an envy of many. Of course they have a conscious policy of training a cosmopolitan elite both as its buffer , and a conduit for assimilating and digesting foreign ideas to be recast and developed on their national mould. But more importantly, their system was pitched to the highest standards. The only Asian University in the Top 20 U’s in the world is Japanese.
Learning science and mathematics is an absolute must, but it remains of little benefit if it is not geared to achieve world class excellence. The worst thing we can do is to teach them in English to a child who is a total stranger to it.
There is a more tragic outcome of teaching math and science in English to a kid in say, Kampung Nasakot in Ranau, who has no TV or radio, and has never seen an orang putih, and that is creation of social stratification for his race, which we want so much to avoid. We can also later, chose to say, that they have a very low IQ in the first place. Whoever does that has a place in hell reserved for him.
What I am saying is that let us be more judicial in which place we have to introduce the policy of English to teach math and science to. If the child knows only Malay, let it be Malay, if it is Chinese let it be Chinese. If Dusun, let it be Dusun.
But I know, and I believe that Malay is an adequate language for that purpose, but I disagree if we must restrict ourselves to that language alone.
If we want so much to think forward of one day being able to teach math and science in English only, then there is no choice but to adopt it as the medium of instructions for all our schools.
Economic development is a function of other strategic policies and not dependent on language alone. Let us don’t deceive ourselves in believing that without English we cannot develop.
English is an important communication tool. But let us first make our children smart, then whatever language they choose to speak in, their genius will shine through.
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