We still can correct "The English Mistake"

Read Mr Tam Yeng Siang's letter to the Star today. He began by saying:

READING the letter by Dr Abu Bakar Abdul Majeed and Dr Megawati Omar of the Research Management Institute, UiTM, Shah Alam “Stick with English” (The Star, May 7), I was struck by what they said that our children lament that the moment they are out of school, they discover that they need English in almost every aspect of their daily and academic lives, especially if they live in cities.

You may continue reading here.

Mr Yam agreed with the good doctors that going back to teaching all subjects in Bahasa would be a step backwards. The decision by the Ministry to do so purportedly stemmed from the fact that rural students would be marginalised compared to the urban ones.

It is indeed true that the rural populace are less adept in English than the urban students. However I too disagree with the move. Here it means holding back the entire young population of Malaysia to try to solve this disparity of which I believe was a mistake done by our Government over the years. Tun Mahathir, much as I do not like his many other policies, attempted to correct this direction of making ourselves completely uncompetitive in the world arena, introduced some measures which began in 2003. It looks like now, this will all end in 2012.

Granted, it was proposed to increase English lessons in schools to try to make it work. I am convinced that this is an exercise in futility. It is pretty obvious that you do not learn to work the computer by learning how the computer works. You learn by doing!

I have a teenage daughter and a son in the later twenties. My daughter benefited from the English medium lessons in Math and Science whilst my son did not. Reading what their friends write in their blogs and on facebook, it is obvious (to me at least) that we have begun the process of a coming generation of English literate people. The younger ones win hands down in the command of the English language. We are now looking at a reversal of this small but significant improvement, utilising a mistake to correct a mistake.

Unless we have a convincing alternative, the decision to begin in 2012 will be at the very least a BIG mistake.

Mr Tam said. " .. But do we want our rural students to continue to lack behind even in the day-to-day life in Malaysia, not to mention that they will be severely handicapped when they leave the country?

Do we want to see Malaysians, especially the rural children, fall behind and live lives filled with insecurity and inferiority because of their deficiency in the English language?"