Last month, there was an announcement that the Education Ministry would reverse the teaching of Mathematics and Science in English to Malay, and now there will be an MoU signed with an Australian University as a step to improve the English language proficiency among students and teachers.
Check out this statement: "The university trains teachers who specialise in teaching English and the ministry wanted to learn from their experience. We want to look at the techniques used for helping people master English and their experience in sending teachers to rural areas as Western Australia is a very large state and has many schools there."
On one hand, those people are trying to be patriotic (??), re-emphasising the usage of Malay language and other mother tongue (btw, I still cannot understand how mastering the English language will make us less patriotic). At the same time, they are also looking for ways to improve the standard of English in this country which has apparently dwindled down the drain. I'm "confuso maximo"!
Hmmm...if you want to produce better English teachers, you need to reconsider looking into the quality of the trainee English teachers. Please do make sure that the trainees are those who are proficient in English. As for posting to rural areas, I guess IF the government were to pay these teachers better salaries and give them better incentives, I bet they wouldn't mind going there. After all, the teachers who teach in rural areas deserve such "compensation".
Now, why am I writing this post here when this blog is meant to be a space where I keep the fondest memories of my lil' heroes? I guess I'm blogging this issue out of frustration knowing that the future of my lil' heroes' education lies in that lil' brain of whoever who heads the Ministry of Education.
2 comments:
One thing I know, to survive being studying in Malaysia, we must know our English and BM. BM is getting tougher these days. So we just have to buck up and follow whatever those people want to do and change their mind again and again..
I have to agree about the incentives, you ask (force) people to leave their family or move with their family to a new place, the least is to compensate them. If its rewarding enough, definitely there will be no more left in the city.
For me, I always prefer using mother tounge in Primary school while English in Secondary, and this was since I was young.
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