KUCHING: Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP) Central Youth chief Michael Tiang (pic) says he is not against the learning of Jawi but the idea of introducing it in the Bahasa Melayu syllabus of Chinese schools next year.
He opined that the Malay Jawi alphabet is more relevant to the religion of Islam with regard to reading and understanding the scriptures.
Besides that, he thinks there are no other practical functions for others to learn to write Jawi.
“Why burden our primary school students by spending additional time to learn something that won’t better equip them for the digital era?” Tiang questioned.
“As far as Sarawak is concerned, the state government has long acknowledged that it is pertinent for Sarawakians to catch up with the digital world by looking into developing its own version of digital economy.
“When it comes to digital economy, there are two lingua franca we need to be well-versed in: English and computer programming language. The state government will begin to train teachers to start teaching mathematics and science in English next year.
“As we have heard from recent news, both our neighbours, Singapore and Thailand, have announced their plans to introduce their kindergarten and primary school students to computer programming language as they acknowledge that in this digital era, they should prepare their students to stay competitive.
“Why is our Education Ministry so blind to the landscape of the real world that nothing about teaching coding is on its drawing board?” he questioned.
Tiang said he had hoped to see the new government focus more on boosting the nation’s economy, integrity and welfare instead of coming up with such policies as replacing white school shoes with black ones, and now, introducing Jawi into the Bahasa Melayu syllabus thus ignoring practical needs for the 21st century.
He also chided Pakatan Harapan component party, Democratic Action Party for keeping mum over the controversy.
“This is not the first time Sarawakians are fed up with the constant flip-flop education policies implemented by the Education Ministry.
“This recent episode will only further reaffirm our party’s insistence to take back education autonomy for Sarawak through Gabungan Parti Sarawak so that we can prepare our future generations better with education that actually helps them to stay competitive and innovative,” Tiang stressed.
