KUCHING: Why limit the use of English to teach just Mathematics and Science? Why not include all other subjects?
After all the Malays have a saying, “Alang-alang mandi biar basah” which literally means if you’re going to have a bath you shouldn’t just wash only part of your body. You might as well just get all wet! The idea is to go all the whole way when doing a task.
On this, Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak (PBDSB) information chief William Mangor suggested that English should be used in the teaching of all subjects except Bahasa Melayu.
“The purpose is not to turn us all into English people (orang putih) but to get our students to master the language. I bet if we teach everything in English even the worst students would be good in the language. Better than our students now, that’s for sure,” he said.
William asked if the introduction could start from kindergarten and what about including Pendidikan Agama Islam and Bahasa Jawi? Would that be too preposterous?
He also thought that it would not be outrageous if the major religious subjects like Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and even native beliefs could be introduced as selective subjects.
Since the state government has decided to use English to teach Mathematics and Science to Primary 1 pupils next year, PBDSB is supportive of the move and William described it as a good start “but we need to move to the ultimate step of reclaiming our autonomy over education”.
“Once we have autonomy, we can do what is good for Sarawak,” he said.
In the meantime, William urged the state government to do everything possible within its power and means to complement the efforts of the education authorities to aggressively implement proven programmes (as opposed to experimental ones) to shape and sharpen young Sarawakians into super confident “come what may” generation.
Ultimately, education autonomy should be a goal, but autonomy by itself would be useless if the leaders and ordinary Sarawakians themselves don’t know how to make full and proper use of it.
“It is more than just planning school syllabi and grading systems, building schools and training teachers. It has to do with a totally different and aggressive paradigm shift culminating in something akin to a revolution mentally, socially, politically, economically, everything!” said William.
He suggested that Sarawak could even emulate other countries that have outstanding education systems. Singapore is a good example whose education system is one of the best and most effective in the world.
He wondered if the state minister in-charge of education could collaborate with the Singapore Education Ministry, but then he added that this would make only sense if the state has education autonomy.
William said he was fed-up with the many change of plans and U-turns made by the Education Ministry over the years since the country’s independence, treating students like “lab rats” which mad-scientist-like political leaders use to test their ideas and hypotheses.
“It’s like every time there is a new education minister, the modules also have to be new. This naturally triggers a frenzy of change of text books and other teaching-learning materials leading to increased costs, relearning of this and that, and all the while the teachers become stressed out. As for the students they become confused and even lose interest. What a mess!” he said.
William also urged the state government to continue negotiating with Putrajaya on the devolution of power without being too belligerent with the ultimate goal of making Sarawak an autonomous region of Malaysia.
