The problems surrounding the nation’s language policy have lingered for decades. The endless debates continue, over the teaching of English, the positions of vernacular schools and of Bahasa Malaysia; the question of national patriotism and the rising unemployability of university graduates.
The constant debates demonstrate how self-centred and ethnocentric our leadership has been for decades.
For all the grandiose statements made by former prime ministers, and our vision to become a developed nation by 2020, 2030 or 2050, we are still unwilling to solve our education problems: we are still arguing about whether English is important, or if our Federal Constitution has provisions to promote bilingualism or multilingualism in our system.
Prof Shad Saleem Faruqi of Universiti Malaya recently alluded to the fact that our leaders need “the wisdom, political courage and educational vision”. They need to acknowledge there are no legal impediments to the use of English, vernacular and native languages in our schools and tertiary institutions.
There are provisions under the Education Act, the National Language Act and the Private Higher Education Act.
The US has never promoted English as its official language. For all intents and purposes, it has no official language. The country has also been a developed nation for more than a century, and the world’s superpower for more than half a century.
Its founding fathers did not see the need to declare an official language as English was the dominant language. There was no need to “protect it”. For the US, no official language was declared because they did not want to “offend their non-English speaking fellow Americans who helped fight for independence”. This represents the wisdom and political courage mentioned above.
On the flip side, our founding fathers declared Bahasa Malaysia as the official language. The majority of Malaysians are Malays, so the Malay language was already dominant. Hypothetically, the Malay language (like Islam) should not need to be “protected”. Rather, it should automatically be the patriotic glue that binds the nation together.
Language was used as a racial and religious tool
So, where is our educational vision?
Problems emerged when Malaysians started to politicise race and religion. Language was used as a tool to drive a wedge between the races and religions. The political game seeped into the education system. The situation was compounded when our nation began to trail behind in regional and global productivity and marketability. We have our leaders to blame for this.
Rising university graduate unemployment, backwardness in technological and scientific innovation and a diminishing role in global competitiveness have caused us to argue more about education policies. Instead of pooling our resources to rise to the global economic challenges, our leaders chose to bicker endlessly about which race and language is supreme, and which language and religion needed protection.
It is obvious that our leaders have a very selfish and narrow educational vision. Since 2003, the same issues have been highlighted, ad nauseum. We are forever reading about unemployable university graduates due to their poor command of English at job interviews.
Polls conducted over the decades have consistently indicated that the majority of Malaysians want their children to be more proficient in the language. Parents are frustrated that their children’s economic future will be in jeopardy because they lack English communication skills.
The problem is the ill-intentions of nationalists
The issue is not about our Federal Constitution, failure to understand it or fear about dwindling patriotism. The problem lies in the ill-intentions of nationalists, Malay and non-Malay, who use the issue of language to construct narratives which serve selfish political ends.
One narrative is that the Malays feel that teaching students in English will erode national identity and patriotism and make the students less Islamic, more immoral and westernised. In 2003, when former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamed introduced the teaching of science and mathematics in English (PPSMI), the grades for those subjects drastically fell.
Mostly, it was the rural Malays who were disadvantaged. However, this had a lot to do with the poor quality of teachers assigned, and poor infrastructural and supplemental facilities in the rural schools. The problems were very practical and not some ideological rejection based on patriotic sentiments or fear of abandoning Islam.
Recently, Perlis mufti Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin had suggested abolishing ALL streams, including religious streams at the primary level. Earlier, a rather inexperienced politician had called for the abolition of vernacular schools, saying they were a hindrance to nation building. He should have studied the matter in more detail.
Nation building is a complex phenomenon. The US has been a progressive and united nation, whose citizens are largely patriotic. This is despite having not declared an official national language. The young politician mentioned above should read more and learn to contextualise, not politicise his statements. All he has shown is his irresponsible, politically-motivated and hurtful intentions to many non-Malay Malaysians.
Where’s the evidence about integration?
Another narrative says vernacular education is necessary at the primary level. It would not be advisable to defer vernacular education to the secondary level. The view also suggests we lack empirical evidence that single-stream primary education leads to more integration compared to single-stream secondary education.
This is true. It shows that the decades of arguing about language and education has not been taken seriously. If it was, by now there would be an abundance of socio-psychological, linguistic, historical and anthropological studies and publications on the matter.
For decades there has been a steady decline in the quality of school and university graduates. A columnist recently wrote “a complacent public allowed extremist leaders to dominate almost every area of our lives, including education, and today, we reap the benefits”.
This is not true. Our public has not been complacent. In fact, we have been continuously upset and confused because our leaders keep changing the language policy every few years. They keep grabbing “the wrong end of the cow”. Our leaders are complacent, not the public.
The fact that Malaysia is falling behind in global competitiveness, scientific and technological advancements is not because of the decline in the quality or use of Bahasa Malaysia. It is also not because vernacular schools have produced more unpatriotic Malaysians.
Backwardness caused by unethical leaders
The crux of the matter lies in the overall backwardness of our people, led by a regressive and unethical leadership. More than a thousand years ago, the Arabic language advanced the subjects of science, mathematics, engineering, physics, philosophy and medicine. Today, it is English that does this.
The Arabic language is not to blame, but rather the moral decline of Muslim leaders and their over indulgence in the material aspects of life. Neither language nor religion should be blamed.
Since we have a national language, the language of instruction should be in Bahasa Malaysia. However, a large quota of our mental efforts and physical resources should be directed at how we teach English as a second language. We must acknowledge that educators have to be able to teach a high level of English as a second language, the way it is done in the Netherlands, Finland and China. It is also insufficient or half-baked to focus the teaching of English only for certain subjects such as science and mathematics.
Our educational vision should be to develop Malaysians who are truly bilingual in Bahasa Malaysia and English. Since Malaysia is naturally a multicultural and multi-linguistic nation, our vernacular languages are part of our national identity and should not be silenced.
Our leadership should prioritise bilingualism, but not be fanatical about abolishing our vernacular languages. Find the political will, intellectual capability and financial resources to do it. Stop the endless debates.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.
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