Wrong decision Muhyidin

In my opinion, yesterday, July 8, 2009, was the day when Muhyidin ultimately gave the rich and have ones the upper hand to maintain their status quo, while the poor and have not ones will have to remain in their circle if no supports are given.

Why? It is simply because the rich can just send their children to private schools. Even now, the rich are sending their children to overseas universities in the UK, US or Australia. Just look a the top 20 universities in the world. Most of them are using English as the medium.

The irony of this debate whether to use English as the medium of instruction or not is that those people who made the decision for the government also have the means to send their own children to private schools, local or abroad. And, they will do before 2012.

I'm pretty sure about this. Ask any parents. Ask them, if they got the money, which schools are they going to send to children? I bet it's gonna be the international schools or private schools. This is again another wrong decision made by the government.

The problem is while the government acknowledge that English is important, the government do not know how to teach English to children in the government schools. I really thought the quality of English among students has improved, but actually it is not.

From my short experience of being a tutor in the oldest university in Malaysia, my conclusion is that the quality is not improving which could be due to the wrong pedagogy used in the government schools. I can say this because out of, say, 10 written papers that I had examined and marked, students still do not know how to construct a proper English sentence. They do not know which one is verb, which one is noun, etc.

It was a frustrating experience because that was my first experience of teaching after finishing my Phd. I could not understand what they were trying to tell in their assignments. I'm talking about university students who are studying at supposedly the top university in Malaysia. The quality of writing is not there yet.

In fact, it is not wrong for me to say that university lecturers who failed to pass their Phd in the UK are the ones who are poor in English. Accept the fact that Phd is about putting your ideas into words. If your English is not up to standard, you will fail your Phd.

In conclusion, I resent the decision to scrap off PPSMI. The government are not bold enough to stand up to say that PPSMI is indeed a brave decision the government ever made. PPSMI has the potential to pave the way towards a better commonly unified version of government schools. To establish the link between the poor examination results and PPSMI at this infant stage of implementation is not fair. Improve the pedagogy and the result will prove it.