This is a phrase let out by my friend, Hazlim. I was rather captured by this sentence that I decided to write about it.

Let me start with what happened recently. The Ministry of Education implemented PPSMI (Pengajaran dan Pembelajaran Sains dan Matematik dalam Bahasa Inggeris, if I get this correct) some six years ago, in aiding students to acquire English better for competency purposes. So, the future teachers at that time, including me, were being prepared to face this new trend in education. We were shaped and trained to be an English teacher and a Maths/Science teacher at the same time. See, the world has changed, if back then people believe that language and Maths are two different fields that both can’t be acquired successfully, simultaneously. Some even said, Maths and Science are for boys and languages are for girls. Now our education system has proven this wrong. The language teacher can also become the Maths teacher. Boys and girls are proven to be arithmatically and linguistically intelligent at the same time too. However after six years of implementing this new aspiration, I think our education system has started to smell its failure. This year, they had come to a decision by which, if improvements are not seen in students’ performance regarding these two subjects, they are going to revert the medium into Malay Language, again, next year.

The first question came to my mind upon knowing this:

WHAT THE HECK???

The second question:

What’s going to happen to the remainder 5 cohorts which have not graduated yet, but are being prepared to teach Maths and Science in English?

I myself do not get to teach Mathematics in English yet, although my second option has allowed me too. And now they are changing it again! Mana aku tak membebel?? This makes me wonder about  the efficiency of the education system. Don’t the BPG and the exam syndicate or whatsoever communicate among themselves? Some schools have even distributed text books to be used next year. So are they going to throw all the books and wait for the new ones and by that time, asking teachers to modify pupils’ minds to suit the decision comes from the brains of the MOE people? I’m so glad I was born 24 years ago.

For me, this idea is ridiculous and thanked God it will not happen as percentage increase has resulted in student’ performance this year. Yeah, although it is not so vivid, it proves to be adequate enough to make a hindrance from a new phenomenon to arise. Pity the students who are at stake when this happens. You see, Malaysia has used Bahasa Melayu as the medium of teaching and learning Mathematics and happened to involve too, Science and Alam dan Manusia for more than 30 years before its conversion. And we should not forget, we still have teachers who have been teaching more than 20 years in our system. A year of preparation will not be enough to change their 20 years’ butter and bread. A drastic transformation involved in their career will bring a lot of differences that they have to face. I’m not saying that failures come from the teachers 100% but we contribute a lot for that too. Our education system should give the teachers opportunities to develop themselves in teaching using English after they have got used to teach in Malay. 6 years will not be enough to prove anything. And we should not be expecting a sudden change in pupil’s performance. Only time will tell whether the decision our education system has made is the right one, but no pain, no gain man. It’s time for them to realize again that lives involve a lot of gambling.

Academicians agree that teaching must be in a language that teachers are comfortable with and have confidence in using it. So to make the teachers comfortable and to gain confidence in using English needs time. The pupils too, on the other hand need a lot of time to adjust themselves to learning using English as Malaysians are the second users of English, and in some cases, English might be totally foreign to them.

I just hope we could be given a little more time to measure the effectiveness of this major decision our education system has dared to make 6 years back. Hold on a little longer and I’m sure rainbows will appear in the midst of the turmoil.

Better stop now before I get sacked for not being in favor of the government! Hehe…

Message to dear Hazlim:

You are a risk taker as far as I know. Don’t lose that, even thousands of problems fall onto your head. Good Luck!