YourSay: The math doesn't add up in language switch

"The statistics given by Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin to justify the scrapping of the language policy is questionable."

On Language-switch policy scrapped

Jason LKH:

The reversion of teaching Science and Maths to Malay language is indeed disturbing and not addressing the real issues of the day in our education system.

The statistics given by Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin to justify the scrapping of the language policy is questionable. The revelation of the statistics is definitely intended to link the language medium to the drop in percentage.

Having studied a little bit of statistics, I know that when doing correlation, there must be given the significant value (P value) of the data.

In other words, there must be allowance of figures to rise or drop within a certain range.

Anything outside the range would be significant in the correlation. From my simple calculation, I find that the correlation is simply by chance and insignificant.

Nonetheless, I must admit the limited data from the news feed affects my calculation.

I therefore urge the DPM to release the study which showed a significant correlation between the language switch and the drop of total grades A, B and C, and therefore render the figures valid.

If my gut feeling is true, whether or not Science and Maths were done in English or Malay, the figures will be the same. Remember, there are always ups and downs in life.

In any case, I believe the ministry is not answering the real issues faced by our education system as:

1. The revert will only do slight good to do the rural students. What is lacking is infrastructure and resources. THAT is the bigger gap between rural and urban schools.

2. The pursuit for A's is like pursuing exquisite taste in food rather than filling up one's hunger. In other words, there's no real thirst for knowledge and holistic development.

3. Our Science and Maths curriculum must be updated to keep up with the knowledge today.

4. The curriculum must encourage scientific thinking and investigation, rather than depending on text books for answers, allow students to put these skills to practice in exams.

Raja Rajendran: This is fabulous news. The Malaysian government has scrapped the teaching of Maths and Science in English. Maths and Science will henceforth revert to be taught in Malay, Chinese and English.

And it will continue to teach English in Malay, Chinese and Tamil. Wow, finally, the colonized are taking back their mother tongues. And the Asian supremacists are happy their races have triumphed over the English!

After all, these race supremacists say, the Germans teach Maths and Science in German, as do the French in French, the Belgians in Flemish, the Spanish in Spanish, the British in English, the Japanese in Japanese and the Taiwanese in Mandarin.

So Malaysians, being subdivided in their little racial groups like the Swiss, have every right to teach what ever they want in their respective mother tongues. Great!

Coming from superior civilizations from all over Asia, the Malaysian masses will reign supreme with their command of Maths and Science in their mother tongues.

I am so overjoyed. After all look at all those Japanese, Germans, French and Russians. With the supreme use of their mother tongues, they have showcased so many Nobel prize winners in various scientific categories over the last 100 years. Based on this spin, Malaysia too will soon produce Nobel prize winners. Malaysia Boleh!

After all, once the children go to national secondary school, most will be learning Maths and Science in Malay. And with the perceived consistently superior results of Chinese educated students at these national schools, no problem lah , the children will continue to be successful despite having their primary school grounding entirely in Mandarin.

And onwards to university, where of course we have all these local universities, both public and private, where the status quo remains the same for these children.

Then what happens? Malaysia is a trading nation. So these graduates will then go to work in Malaysian GLC's and foreign MNC's in Malaysia and Singapore. In the local GLC, tak apa lah , can converse in Malay.

In the foreign MNC, they end up reporting to Singaporean or foreign bosses but they might be unable or have limited ability to articulate and present ideas to decision makers who reside in Japan, Europe or the US.

I guess that the Malaysian masses will continue to be blinkered, stay away from the world at large and stay marooned under the coconut shell for the lack of articulation that real engagement requires in a trading nation.

So they'll continue to buy their 4D, have their teh tarik and gossip animatedly away in their respective languages, while the bigger adventure passes by.

Dian Abdullah: To revert the teaching of Maths and Science to Malay language is a step backward.

The world is changing and fast moving. We are talking about building nuclear power, using atomic energy, reprogramming adult cells into pluripotent stem cells etc. All these research and development information are documented in English.

In Malaysia we have business tycoons who cannot write or spell. Then we have professors who cannot converse in English and even spell.

Instead of taking necessary steps to improve the teaching of the English language, Maths and Science, the government chooses the easy way out, revert to BM and let the future be damn.

This is the kind of government that most Malaysians are afraid of. Our future generations will have no future. They cannot communicate with foreigners, they have difficulties understanding what they are reading and signing.

Malaysia cannot rely on foreigners to build this and that. We cannot continue to sit back and watch the world go by.

Knowing that our education system had been neglected, backward and used as experiment to test the power of whosoever is the education minister, many of the Ministers, Datuks, Tan Sri and Tuns themselves do not send their children to study in local schools.

Najib wants to get the Malay votes back for the next election and has sacrificed the future generation.

For a person who had been educated overseas and reads a lot, he should be the first to understand that without the knowledge of English, especially for Maths and Science, this country cannot compete with the world.

To say that the learning of Maths and Science in English had widened the gap between the urban and rural students is nonsense. The gap was already there.

The most important agenda in reverting to BM was because the government had found that more and more people were beginning to think and read. If this continues, the powers that be know that they cannot bully and control the thinking generation. This frightens them.

CH Siew: Since my first awareness of Malaysia's politics, there are a lot of things that I disagree with both Dr Mahathir and BN - the racial line governance, the mega projects and wasting of people's money, nepotism and cronyism.

Yet I have to come to agreement with Mahathir that the scraping of English for Mathematics and Science is a big mistake by the present government. I can't agree more with Mahathir that it is too hasty a decision.

Maths and Science are important subjects in school because these are the crucial building blocks for the study of engineering, architecture, science and accountancy.

There is no easy way to go about learning these two subjects other than hard work and more hard work. I am very sure that those who have gone through the whole system of education in these fields will agree with me.

Many can argue that the same results can be achieved through teaching using Malay language and it will be easier for locals to absorb the essence by learning through a familiar language or mother tongue.

However, these commentators have left out the most important fact of the issue, which being the source of these two subjects are based in English. Books are written in and research findings are documented in English.

Anyone who has gone for further studies overseas will find a vast number of reference books on Science and Maths written in English, and most of the universities overseas that Malaysians attend teach these subjects in English.

How many of these books can our Malaysian government translate into the Malay language to cater for local education? The act of teaching Maths and Science in other than English will not benefit the students and eventually Malaysia.

It is only through learning Maths and Science in English that Malaysia can nurture a stronger and more qualified team of engineers and scientist to push Malaysia a step closer to our goal of 2020.

Kashminder Singh: I am going to keep this short. I just want someone from the government to tell me why parents cannot have the option to send our kids to an English medium school, a school where deep attention is given to Bahasa Malaysia too. Tell me please.

Does anyone in the government know how many families count English as their mother tongue in this country or are keen to have their kids attend English medium schools? Any proper study carried out?

Someone please think of a way to get the fact that English is no longer looked upon as a colonial language everywhere else in the world.

Fool around with our kids' future and we will, I promise, teach these politicians a lesson real soon.