#504 Pakatan's stand on PPSMI

Two articles I read made me want to blog, so there.

1. “Educating students in a language that is foreign to them would benefit the English-speaking students at the expense of the rest, thus widening inequality,” says Nik Nazmi.

2. A couple of people also pointed out that PPSMI's reversal shouldn't be an issue as it is not the main problem, but we should talk about revamping the entire education system.

But let's stop for a moment and think.

Do we want Malaysia to be able to compete with the world, even though it's not the majority that will be able to grasp Science and Mathematics in English, or do we want to sacrifice global competitiveness for equality locally? Let's ask ourselves this. Even if we want to cater to the local students to bridge the gap of equality, how many students actually want to enter the science and maths world? I suppose a good number of them don't even have interest in science and maths, and are mostly forced by their parents to do science stream. So the medium of instruction doesn't actually make a difference. The dropping grades only shows that the grasp of English isn't there. Reversal of the policy wouldn't drastically improve the results.

Why don't we let the students that are passionate about science and mathematics decide - do they want to lag behind and face a tougher time when pursuing graduate courses, or do they want to be able to have a good start to prep them for their higher education?

Yes, it might sound evil to leave others behind. But as I have freshly graduated from high school, I know most of my friends in Science stream classes don't even want to be there. The excessive focus on the Science stream classes has cause them to be there. But if most students don't really want to be involved in the science field, it leaves only a small minority interested in the field, i.e. the ones who should voice out their opinion on the PPSMI field.

On a side note, the great number of students that are in science stream classes and don't want to be there could also contribute to the bad results. We definitely cannot blame it solely on English being the medium of instruction.

On the second point - yes, I admit. The education system isn't flawed. It's hopeless. A good number of it is propaganda. The standard is so low that it's kinda redundant to even sit for exams. And the syllabus doesn't challenge us to think critically. I mean, which competitive country still learns the topic of addition at 13 years old? That should be long completed at 6 years old.

If the education system is a mess, let's dream of our Utopian education system. At the end of it all - do we want it to teach science and maths in English, or BM? Bearing in mind that we can only influence local policy, the international language is still English, and a good 90% plus of reference material is still English.