Putting some English on the ball- The Malaysian Insider
October 6, 2010 - My apologies for beginning this piece with an obscure phrase taken from the game of billiards, meaning to put some spin on the ball, but hopefully the reference (and pun) will be made clear shortly.
Education is a deeply emotive issue for all parents. The decision to abolish PPSMI and revert back to teaching maths and science in BM instead of English has resulted in impassioned debate on both sides of the divide, to the point of a set of parents setting up a pressure group called PAGE (Parent Action Group for Education Malaysia) to push for the option of having English as an optional medium of instruction for these two subjects.
A short time before this, it was announced that Malaysian parents could now send their wards to international schools if they so desired. The two announcements combined seem to suggest that the option of being schooled wholly or partly in the English medium is an option restricted to the affluent. The worst interpretation of this would be that we are trying to create two classes for the future; the children of the rich who would have access to learning in the language of the world, and the other who would learn in the languages of the country.
Whatever be the nature of our position on the above, one thing is a given; our parental instincts demand that we try and procure the best of everything for our progeny. Education is primarily an investment in the future of our children, and our choice of schools, the medium of instruction and the subjects we want our children to pay more emphasis on are largely the result of our outlook on what the future may hold for our children. To the best of our ability, we try and ensure that our children are equipped with the right educational tools to help them take advantage of the opportunities that may present themselves to them in the future.
In this context it seems self evident that in an increasingly globalised world English would be the natural choice, not just as a global language but as the language which allows our children to communicate specific skills in a way that makes them employable anywhere in the world. Concurrently, we need to find ways to improve the proficiency of the educators in the language too.
To a large degree, despite the almost whimsical way in which this issue has been treated by the powers that be over the decades, we have found a way to learn functional English to better our economic prospects. Not just professionals and specialists, almost all frontliners in the service industry despite their lack of higher education are capable of making themselves understood in English. Our taxi drivers, salespeople, waiters, delivery boys and security guards can all manage some Manglish at least. We almost intuitively recognise that in the private sector at least proficiency in English is directly correlated to better prospects. Of course this is not to make the case that mere functional grasp of the language is enough. Written and verbal proficiency is key to access a higher income trajectory. However, our youth are at the forefront of this realisation. Our most popular online media talks in English because young people learning to access and use internet based technology today know that English is the language of technology, now and in the future.
So why should something that should be a no brainer be so difficult to resolve? Maybe the place to look is how our notions of identity are linked to our race, culture, family and language. At a fundamental level, who we are is a function of where we come from. Identity development in children is primarily a function of what our parents teach us. What language we speak at home, which religion we follow, what values are transmitted to us, what groups and communities our families are part of are all the building blocks of a sense of self. As time passes, we layer it with our individual interactions with society as a whole to create an individual personality.
In our case, our feelings on language have come to be so closely bound up with our notions of racial, religious and political identity, that when we discuss language, we are actually discussing our views on government, race relations, religion as well as economics. Because we conflate these with language, the debate rapidly degenerates into a us vs. them slanging match.
This is why for a lot of people, promotion of one language has to be at the cost of the degradation of another. Even worse, it seems that our very identities are being degraded when that language is so tied to our sense of self. We need to come to the realisation that while we can link particular languages to particular races, languages per se are not the exclusive preserve of any one set of people.
When we truly feel that the languages we speak are only a part of who we are as people, when we are comfortable enough in our skins to allow languages to coexist in our minds, when speaking English is not an affront to my Chineseness, my Muslimness or my Tamilness, can we objectively address this issue.
Okay I know, three of the words in the last sentence are not English words at all. Waddup?
Education is a deeply emotive issue for all parents. The decision to abolish PPSMI and revert back to teaching maths and science in BM instead of English has resulted in impassioned debate on both sides of the divide, to the point of a set of parents setting up a pressure group called PAGE (Parent Action Group for Education Malaysia) to push for the option of having English as an optional medium of instruction for these two subjects.
A short time before this, it was announced that Malaysian parents could now send their wards to international schools if they so desired. The two announcements combined seem to suggest that the option of being schooled wholly or partly in the English medium is an option restricted to the affluent. The worst interpretation of this would be that we are trying to create two classes for the future; the children of the rich who would have access to learning in the language of the world, and the other who would learn in the languages of the country.
Whatever be the nature of our position on the above, one thing is a given; our parental instincts demand that we try and procure the best of everything for our progeny. Education is primarily an investment in the future of our children, and our choice of schools, the medium of instruction and the subjects we want our children to pay more emphasis on are largely the result of our outlook on what the future may hold for our children. To the best of our ability, we try and ensure that our children are equipped with the right educational tools to help them take advantage of the opportunities that may present themselves to them in the future.
In this context it seems self evident that in an increasingly globalised world English would be the natural choice, not just as a global language but as the language which allows our children to communicate specific skills in a way that makes them employable anywhere in the world. Concurrently, we need to find ways to improve the proficiency of the educators in the language too.
To a large degree, despite the almost whimsical way in which this issue has been treated by the powers that be over the decades, we have found a way to learn functional English to better our economic prospects. Not just professionals and specialists, almost all frontliners in the service industry despite their lack of higher education are capable of making themselves understood in English. Our taxi drivers, salespeople, waiters, delivery boys and security guards can all manage some Manglish at least. We almost intuitively recognise that in the private sector at least proficiency in English is directly correlated to better prospects. Of course this is not to make the case that mere functional grasp of the language is enough. Written and verbal proficiency is key to access a higher income trajectory. However, our youth are at the forefront of this realisation. Our most popular online media talks in English because young people learning to access and use internet based technology today know that English is the language of technology, now and in the future.
So why should something that should be a no brainer be so difficult to resolve? Maybe the place to look is how our notions of identity are linked to our race, culture, family and language. At a fundamental level, who we are is a function of where we come from. Identity development in children is primarily a function of what our parents teach us. What language we speak at home, which religion we follow, what values are transmitted to us, what groups and communities our families are part of are all the building blocks of a sense of self. As time passes, we layer it with our individual interactions with society as a whole to create an individual personality.
In our case, our feelings on language have come to be so closely bound up with our notions of racial, religious and political identity, that when we discuss language, we are actually discussing our views on government, race relations, religion as well as economics. Because we conflate these with language, the debate rapidly degenerates into a us vs. them slanging match.
This is why for a lot of people, promotion of one language has to be at the cost of the degradation of another. Even worse, it seems that our very identities are being degraded when that language is so tied to our sense of self. We need to come to the realisation that while we can link particular languages to particular races, languages per se are not the exclusive preserve of any one set of people.
When we truly feel that the languages we speak are only a part of who we are as people, when we are comfortable enough in our skins to allow languages to coexist in our minds, when speaking English is not an affront to my Chineseness, my Muslimness or my Tamilness, can we objectively address this issue.
Okay I know, three of the words in the last sentence are not English words at all. Waddup?
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