KUALA LUMPUR, July 10 — Veteran politician Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah today welcomed the government’s decision to abolish the teaching and learning of Science and Mathematics in English.
He said when the policy to teach the Year One students in national schools was implemented in 2003, the country was not ready.
“So, are we going to sacrifice the future of our children in wanting to adopt a new policy when we are not ready?
“So, I welcome the decision for the sake of the children, but, by all means, we should spend more time and dwell on the future of English because that is the language of the future.
“And I think our people must be proficient in English as we were before we gained independence,” he said during a talk organised by the Public Relations Consultants’ Association of Malaysia here.
The former minister of finance said, as a person who represented two constituencies (Ulu Kelantan and Gua Musang) for the last 45 years, he had welcomed the change (the teaching and learning of Science and Mathemaics in English) which he thought could bring progress to the people.
“But unfortunately, it was done in such a hurry, we didn’t have enough teachers, we didn’t have enough equipment.
“In my area (constituency), we don’t even have electricity in those areas where we have schools, so how do you expect the children to follow the new system when we don’t have all the facilities . . . and the failure rate is very high,” he said.
Tengku Razaleigh was also asked on how he would rate Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s performance on the prime minister’s first 100 days in office.
He said the only way to determine a politician’s performance was on how well the person faced the election.
“But in terms of the country, I think he is making efforts to help improve the situation, he’s going all out, poor fellow, he’s working hard in order to bring in more investments, more money into the country in order to provide the environment and more jobs for the people,” he said. – Bernama
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“So, are we going to sacrifice the future of our children in wanting to adopt a new policy when we are not ready? "
Policies on basic primary and secondary education should not be driven by nationalism or other ideologies, or by economics, or even by what the universities want to see in matriculating students. The focus should be on how to teach children things at a level they understand. Improve English pedagogy first, THEN switch to Maths and Science in English once we're certain that Year Four kids can understand the language.
My opinion (I may be wrong since I'm not a professional educator or a linguist) is that the big mistake in the methods of English teaching in Malaysia is that they were originally designed for children who already knew English (the British system). The grammar drills that I remember from primary school may have been fine for _improving_ the grammar of kids who spoke English already, but I don't think they do anything for those encountering English as a second language at age 6 or 7.
Switching between languages in science is a separate question. If students were fluent in English when they hit university, even if they had studied science and maths in Bahasa up to that point, relearning the vocabulary should be a trivial problem, compared to the problem PPSMI creates of teaching difficult concepts in a difficult language.