Will that flickering flame ever shine more brightly?

ARCHIVES 2013

By admin-j On Oct 13, 2013

Towards this end, See said it was opportune for Malaysians to voice out and tell the government to be serious about our children’s education and the future well-being of our nation and state.

Peter Sibon and Phyllis Wong, The Borneo Post

THE Education Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin has said it again — that the use of Bahasa Malaysia should be expanded on a larger scale at institutions of higher learning.

His statement comes at a time when the nation is beginning to see a glint of light on higher learning institutions putting on more emphasis on the use English; when private colleges and universities are gaining foreign recognition with the use of English in teaching as evidenced by the sizeable number of foreign students and when renowned universities are setting up campuses in Malaysia,

The Minister justified his statement by saying Malaysia could learn from China, Japan and Korea which are giving high priority to the use of their national language while mastering other languages in developing their respective countries.

However, by comparing Malaysia to Japan, Korea and China, Muhyiddin has failed to realise that these countries have fully developed their languages and that many academic journals and papers — be it literature, science, medical or technical — are also readily available in their respective languages.

In stark contrast, there is a miserable lack of academic papers and journals written in BM in Malaysia. So how will our students be able to compete globally when they cannot read or thoroughly understand all these papers written and presented in English?

On the international stage, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak has admitted Malaysia has lost some of its international competitiveness.

“We invest heavily on education and have decided to focus on the learning of science and mathematics,” he told the recent Asia-Pacific Economic Corporation CEO Forum.

“We also realise that to compete internationally, our people must master the English language because when we switched to a fully Bahasa Malaysia education system in the 1970’s, we lost some of our international competitiveness,” he stressed.

Similarly, former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad revealed at the 12th Asian University Presidents Forum that 333 graduates of higher learning institutions were called for an information technology job interview but “only seven were recruited as the rest did not have a strong command of English.”

He pointed out that some even requested that the questions during the interview, which was conducted in English, be translated to Bahasa Malaysia

Dr Mahathir lamented that the decision to revert to Bahasa Malaysia was politically motivated following protests from Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka in 2008 but it failed to translate into support in the recent polls.

Undoubtedly, English, as a medium of instruction, has become more than just about its effectiveness as it has been politicised to the extent that all kinds of claims have been thrown into the mix.

These include threats to national unity, the position of Bahasa Malaysia as well as the erosion of mother tongue, culture and education.

Are we not involving politics in education?

Are our leaders using the issue education to consolidate their positions in their party by playing to the gallery — or a select group of people?

Batu Lintang assemblyman See Chee How raised a salient point when he said: “It’s clearly political propaganda to woo the Umno delegates ahead of the party assembly.

“It’s political rhetoric because such a rear-ward proposition has not been included in the National Education Blueprint 2013-2025.

“But for as long as racial politics dominates and Umno remains the backbone of the federal government, we will continue to be entertained with such unintelligent propositions.”

Making the call to “free our universities,” See said: “It’s the duty of all Malaysians to stop the rot in our education standard by vociferously and forcibly rejecting political rhetoric and interference which inhibit academic freedom.”