On the issue of the medium of instructions at schools and universities

Many people have thought that the earlier political leaders were wrong in changing the medium of instructions in schools and universities from English to Malay.

I for one think that it is not right to say that they were wrong in coming up with the national language policy that resulted in such a change. It was one of the means to unite the nation. On the contrary, I applaud what the earlier leadership has done. Nowadays, the people of our nation, especially the younger generations are fluent in the national language.

However, among the older generations of non-Malay Malaysians, even among the current politicians, you can still find some who are not able to converse in the national language fluently and I for one found this to be something that he/she ought to be ashamed of.

Now, while it is good for us to know as many languages as possible one should not be ashamed if one is not able to converse in those languages as fluently as the national language. Why should she or he be ashamed of, after all the language is not her or his mother tongue or national language? It is a bonus if one can speak other languages.

Conversely, I am really pleased and proud to see most, especially among the younger generation of non-Malay politicians, are able to deliver their speech in the national language fluently. They can now deliver their message in the language that the whole population can understand regardless of whether their audience is located in an urban or a rural area. Obviously, this is one of the proofs that the previous leadership has done something right.

Now, with so much changes that have occurred in the world since our independence and now that our country is more matured, let us examine the issue of the national education policy in perspective so that we can understand its evolution better. Here, I would like to share my own experience with respect to this topic of the English language usage in schools.

I was among the last batch of students who went through the school system with English as the medium of instructions right from Standard one to Form five. My classes through out the period were multi-racial, even though the majority of the students were Malays. In my schools, everyone in my classes spoke fluent Malay, particularly the Kelantanese dialect. So, the problem of our inability to talk to one another in a common language was not there.

However, the same is not true throughout the nation at that time. When I went for further my studies in Kuala Lumpur for the first time in 1970 things were different. When you went shopping or talked to non-Malay Malaysians on the streets it was difficult to find one who could converse in the national language fluently. Most could only speak the so-called “bazaar Malay”. Obviously, it was not good for a young and growing nation of ours to not have a common language then.

So, the gradual switch to the national language as the medium of instructions in school that had just been introduced by the political leadership then was the right move. I left Kuala Lumpur to further my studies overseas in late 1974 and came back to Malaysia in late 1979. The complete shift in the medium of instructions to the national language in schools that had started in 1970 has produced the expected result. Most of the younger population could speak the national language fluently.

Nowadays, everyone can now understand whatever message delivered by the nation in the various media. Of course, the shifts to the use of the national language in schools and later in the universities have resulted in declining standard of English among the population.

As a college professor in one of the local universities in Malaysia for 22 years before I decided to take an early retirement in 2002, I could really notice the deterioration of the standard of English among the students. On many occasions, I thought the students were better off writing their project papers in Malay rather than in English even among the non-Malay students. We made them write papers in English because we wanted them to improve their level of English.

Over the years, I have also read many business letters written by executives and managers from the industry which were written in English. Those letters were so poorly written in English so much so that they would have been better off written in Malay instead, since I thought most of the writers had better command of Malay than English anyway. I thought they should write in English only when they were trying to communicate with foreigners but not with their fellow Malaysians.

Incidentally, this practice of writing in their national language is very common in other countries such as Thailand, Japan, Germany, and Finland. Somehow, even to this day I do not understand why business correspondence among Malaysians have to be written in English when practically everybody, especially among the younger executives and managers can write and understand better in Malay than in English.

Admittedly, the deterioration in the standard of English among Malaysian students is one of the side effects of the national language policy. With the coming of the era of globalization in the late nineties, there was a new realization among the political leadership, that there is a renewed need for the nation to reemphasize the use of English, since our nation depends so much on international trade to obtain revenues.

Thus, the nation needs to be competitive. With the coming of the information age, there is a vast amount of knowledge that is available to the nation, and most of this is available in English in various print media including scientific and scholarly journals as well as those that are available at the touch of a button, i.e. via the Internet.

Hence, it is only natural and logical that the current political leadership began to see the increase in importance of English that led them to wanting to bring back the use of the language as the second medium of instructions in schools. But, this does not mean that the past political leaders have been wrong in their decision. There is no doubt that our nation still needs a common national language that is understood by all its citizens. Every nation does.

Therefore, the bringing back of the English language instructions to schools and universities through out the country has got to be done not at the expense of the national language. It has to be done is such a way that the national language can still be understood well by all the population while the standard of English is upgraded.

Thus, the modus operandi of how this can be achieved must be right. This is one aspect the current leadership needs to be careful in their attempt to revive the standard of English among Malaysian students.

The fact of the matter is, knowing as many languages as possible is a good thing for anyone. When I was visiting China, I had wished that I could speak Mandarin. I wish someday the government can make Mandarin a compulsory third language, or at least make it accessible to students in most if not all the schools and universities in the country. After all, Malaysian Chinese is the second largest ethnic group in the country and the Chinese people represents a substantial proportion of people on this planet. Also, China is now thought to be the next superpower of this 21st century.

My daughter who is now studying in a university in California is learning Spanish since a large proportion of the people in the state speak Spanish. Most non-Malay Malaysians now are bilingual, many are trilingual; whereas most Malay Malaysians are monolingual. Now that I am living in UAE, I also wished that I could speak Arabic.

I therefore think, most of the local universities in the country should follow the step taken by UPM in setting up the Faculty of Modern Languages a few years ago. This has given its students some options at learning other languages, if they so wish.

Al Ain, United Arab Emirates
11 February ‏2003