Thursday, July 9, 2009

A self-fooling action - Abolishment of PPSMI

‘I’m now announcing that we’re going to abolish our dearly revolting PPSMI,”.

PPSMI stands for Pembelajaran dan Pengajaran Sains dan Matematik dalam Bahasa Inggeris, literally translates as Learning and Teaching Science and Mathematics in or using English. It’d been introduced since 2003 and was a proposal of our dearest ex-prime minister, i.e. Dr. M. Students who had done their UPSR in 2002 or started their primary education would have been the first to acquire their scientific and mathematical knowledge in secondary language.

English is indeed a secondary language in Malaysia and it’s really enjoying its privilege of the middle class. We don’t talk about other languages, which are either of upper class or lower class in the society as they are unrelated over this topic.

Reestablishment of PPSMM has, again, downgraded the status of this language.

It’s alleged that the implementation of PPSMI over this half decade had degraded its students, particularly in Science and Mathematics, which are currently learned and taught in English. And some politically correct social members are reckoning that this measure itself has been a failure of Malaysian schooling system since 2003 as it’s not hitting the spot, i.e. to polish up the ability of young citizens in mastery of this language.

It’s just a matter of time and I would regard them as teething troubles which would predictably happen in the early stage of this introduction.

I’m saying this in my experience. I’m the first secondary batch receiving this special treat. Candidly, I think the benefits brought by this scheme outweigh the disadvantages. At the very least, it has allowed its students to have more references from other resources. For instance, the textbooks used in other English-speaking countries can be treated as reference books for Malaysian students. Add to that the English scientific terms from those books would be easily comprehended without the need for translation; we can actually have all the latest facts and figures at our fingertips.

Not to trigger off a feeling of racial inequality, the legislation of learning those subjects in Bahasa Malaysia would be just an unreasonable and unjust option for non-bumiputras.

Let’s take a look on what happened before 2003. In our six-year primary schooling, we’re firming up our foundation in the basics of languages, sciences and arts using our own mother tongues. Apart from endeavoring to get a grasp on the arithmetic and sciences, we would have to master own tongue as well as other lingoes.

Soon after this, we learned everything in our national language, which’s still considered a somewhat unfamiliar language for non-bumi like us, even after six years of learning. It’s when we’re undergoing a significant shift in our means of acquisition of new and more advanced knowledge. It’s also when many among us had dropped out as they’re not linguistically strong enough to be selected for.

As for those who’d luckily been selected for, the selection did come at a price – we did sacrifice our time, money and strength to make firm our grip of this language so that we could excel in other subjects through this language.

Nevertheless, the percentage of sacrifice makers is less than thirty percents. Most among us were using the national language throughout their 11 years of compulsory education. It’s therefore explicable that even more had dropped out after the establishment of PPSMI.

Meanwhile, this scheme had caused not much affliction on the thirty percents as they still have to accommodate to the transformation and this transformation does not differ much from the one happened formerly.

From a student’s standpoint, I would prefer to suffer now than to suffer in the future for a longer time, perhaps the whole life ahead of me.

I don’t fancy our Ministry of Education to exterminate the scheme as well as to carry on with the scheme for primary education.

It’s after all making the young pupils more stressful as they need to master all three languages fully together before they can do well in others. I suppose letting the native language to predominate among the small children would be a better way of building the all-important foundation.

We should keep on with the scheme for secondary education as the children should have learned how to adapt as they are moving from childhood to adolescent stage of growth. Otherwise, they won’t be competitive enough to take on the oncoming challenges.

The decision of the ministry on increasing the number of English teachers as well as the length of time or period for English classes in primary, secondary and tertiary educational institutions is indeed commendable. This is rather a practical action of achieving greater English level among Malaysian students.

We should always take peeks and emulate the successes of other countries in their education system. Positive attitudes towards our education are also of crucial importance. Stop behaving as if you deserve better. You should muse on what adaptations you should have to every single problem that hits you.

There are still 2.5 years for the ministry to change their mind.
Don’t be an escapist or the fox that described the grapes as sour just because it couldn’t reach them.

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