English — the need for balance
The importance of English, it seems, cannot be emphasised enough and nobody perhaps understands this better than Siti Nurhaliza. Quite a few people think that she is a national disgrace for not being able to hold a small talk in the language at the world's greatest cultural event in Singapore recently — the MTV-Asia Awards ceremony.
You see, English, along with fair skin and brown hair, is everything these days. Knowing the fervent nationalist that he is, my father would have scoffed at such silliness and taken pity on poor Siti. How could they do this to her, the innocent, sweet maiden who has given traditional Malay rhythms and melodies a modern sound and brought them into mainstream popularity?
Until a few years ago, my father's nationalism was such that we could not criticise our Malay leaders, i.e. Umno, without hurting his feelings. But in matters of education however, he exhibited an uncharacteristic pragmatist streak.
In the early 1970s, as the government was priming the education system for the changeover from English to Bahasa Melayu, he resented the national leaders for what he perceived as their hypocritical stance towards the national language.
Gateway to greatness
They urged the Malays to send their kids to Malay medium schools, assuring them that such an education would open the doors to greatness and success, while they themselves never really believed in it.
The Malay elite continued sending their kids to English schools and used English socially among themselves. My father knew that with a Malay medium education, Malay students could only aspire to become school teachers and low-ranking government functionaries.
In the 1990s when English made its resurgence in the job market and in private education in the wake of liberal economic policies, the repeat of the old phenomenon did not escape my father's scathing comment.
The Malay elite would send their children to private schools and colleges and then on to foreign universities while lecturing the Malays on nationalism and the primacy of the Malay language — ' Bahasa Jiwa Bangsa ' (Language, the soul of a race), they would say.
If the Malays do not support their own language and the public educational institutions, who else would?
Bahasa Kebangsaan as the language of instruction is like the Proton Saga. It is only meant for the ordinary Malays and Malaysians — the factory workers, government functionaries, small traders — to feed their nationalistic pride and keep them in a fantasy world of achievement, progress and greatness while the Malay elite never really believed in neither of them.
The Malays are indeed paying a heavy price for this misplaced nationalism. A big chunk of their income goes into servicing the loans for this over-priced, over-protected national pride, but the price they pay in mis-education is intangibly much higher &38212 the unemployable graduates, lack of competitiveness, the deterioration of our public universities and institutions.
Of course not everything should be blamed on Bahasa Melayu as the language of instruction. Defenders of the Bahasa Kebangsaan policy would time and again point to Japan and Korea's spectacular progress relying on their own language while India and the Philippines remain firmly in the ranks of Third World nations despite their embrace of English.
The malaise and confusion in our education system have much to do with the absence of a long-term, consistent, coherent policy formulated by experts in the field rather than the language used as the medium of teaching.
Every newly appointed education minister wants to stamp his mark and overturn his predecessor's policies and important decisions are made solely to score political advantage without engaging the public, interest groups and the experts in open debates and dialogues.
Fairly successful
To be fair, the national language policy had been fairly successful in forging unity, installing a sense of national identity and in nation-building, remedying to a certain extent the earlier situation when Malays were largely excluded from the educational, administrative and economic mainstream.
Rahman Talib and Tun Abdul Razak, former education ministers who headed the commission that framed the Bahasa Kebangsaan policy, had the noble vision of elevating the status of Bahasa Melayu as a language of knowledge and a vehicle for nation-building and racial integration in an élan of post-independence self-confidence.
But what they could not have foreseen was the end of the Cold War and the ensuing phenomenon of economic globalisation. It just happens that English is part of the package of globalisation which is corporate-driven and American in origin, a manifestation of American economic and political domination over the whole world. It could well have been Arabic or Hindi. Our liberal economic policies inevitably opened the doors for the resurgence of English, as the language for business in the corporate world and as the medium of teaching in private educational institutions which have mushroomed in response to the demands of the job market.
But the Malays are not the only people whose language is threatened. In Malaysia, sections of the urban, middle-class Indian and Chinese have no qualms abandoning their mother-tongues even at home for the advantages that English as first language is perceived to confer.
The language-proud French have taken to learning and using English to what was previously an unthinkable level to compete in the global market. Speaking about something I am more familiar with, for career advancement in medicine, the Japanese, German and French, like all the rest, have to publish in world-class journals and present their work at international conferences, both requiring proficiency in the English language. To varying degrees, I think this is a universal phenomenon in the various branches of science.
Impassioned debate
The prime minister's suggestion of re-introducing English medium schools as expected, generated an impassioned debate, receiving strong support from mainly non-Malay voices, whereas opposition to it predictably came from Malay language nationalists, academics and public figures.
I think Umno supreme council's suggestion of teaching Mathematics and Science in English and keeping Bahasa Melayu as the language of instruction for the other subjects offered the most reasonable compromise, striking a delicate balance between the need for development, competitiveness and integration with the globalised world on the one hand and preserving national identity in keeping with the nation's demography and history.
At the same time we must actively encourage the preservation of other ethnic cultures and languages, something uniquely Malaysian that would be sad to lose.
Today, to use the examples of Korea and Japan on the one hand and India and the Philippines on the other, to judge the efficacy of national language versus English in nation-building and development is misplaced.
This argument might have been persuasive in 1970s and 1980s, but today, India's harnessing of English education has produced enviable results in certain areas of sciences and technology. Language nationalism cannot be the main factor why Korea, Japan, France and Germany progress. We have had 30 years of experimentation with that idea and we can't afford to have another generation who will feel robbed of a good education after another 30 years.
In acquiring knowledge in the sciences, nationalistic passion needs to be tempered with the realities of today's competitive, interconnected world. It is probably safe to assume that those who fervently oppose even limited use of English for teaching science subjects are those who did not come from the science stream themselves and therefore do not understand the difficulties and disadvantages of not using English.
At any rate, the teaching and practice of clinical medicine have always been in English because of the insurmountable difficulties of switching over to Bahasa Melayu even during the period when language nationalism was at its peak.
Even if the proposal to use English in the sciences is stalled, there is no stopping well-to-do parents and the Malay elite from sending their children to English private schools and colleges, and paying for extra tuition. English language centres will continue to reap profits from this fear of losing out without proficiency in the language.
Will we then have an English-speaking elite and the ordinary and poor Malaysians who don't speak English well, on top of existing divisions along racial and religious lines?
At least, the democratisation of English by the limited use of the language in the sciences will go in some way towards toning down this language apartheid.
Political points
The government proposal could well have been done to score political points, but it is about time that we confront the language debate rationally. It certainly requires a great deal more in-depth discussions. If it were to be implemented, the major problems of a severe lack of qualified teachers who can teach effectively in the language and the disturbing urban-rural divide, need to be addressed.
I could understand the opposition to the proposal by Malay cultural leaders, academics and public figures, concerned over the loss of national identity and the undermining of the Malay social fabric, culture and religion. But this is still very much up for debate.
But I think the cultural dislocation that has been a source of great concern among the Malay community and religious leaders — moral decadence, disruption of traditional social fabric, weakening hold of religious values and enfeeblement of religious practice, have very little to do with the English language.
The entertainment pages of Utusan Malaysia and Berita Harian and our local TV programmes are copycat pop culture hedonism in Bahasa Melayu. The Malays' cultural confusion is a result of failed nation-building policies, especially in the sphere of culture and to a certain extent reflects our failure to manage the downside of globalisation and modernity.
Poverty and poor education will perennially exact a high social cost. Just as we lack a coherent and consistent long-term policy on education, we likewise lack the same in the area of culture. Our skewed emphasis on science and technology, which we have not been very successful in except as consumers, has neglected the social and spiritual aspects of development.
A nation that upholds social justice, openness and democratic values as paramount, and is confident in the positive aspects of its culture and language has no need to fear a limited use of English in the sciences and business.
You see, English, along with fair skin and brown hair, is everything these days. Knowing the fervent nationalist that he is, my father would have scoffed at such silliness and taken pity on poor Siti. How could they do this to her, the innocent, sweet maiden who has given traditional Malay rhythms and melodies a modern sound and brought them into mainstream popularity?
Until a few years ago, my father's nationalism was such that we could not criticise our Malay leaders, i.e. Umno, without hurting his feelings. But in matters of education however, he exhibited an uncharacteristic pragmatist streak.
In the early 1970s, as the government was priming the education system for the changeover from English to Bahasa Melayu, he resented the national leaders for what he perceived as their hypocritical stance towards the national language.
Gateway to greatness
They urged the Malays to send their kids to Malay medium schools, assuring them that such an education would open the doors to greatness and success, while they themselves never really believed in it.
The Malay elite continued sending their kids to English schools and used English socially among themselves. My father knew that with a Malay medium education, Malay students could only aspire to become school teachers and low-ranking government functionaries.
In the 1990s when English made its resurgence in the job market and in private education in the wake of liberal economic policies, the repeat of the old phenomenon did not escape my father's scathing comment.
The Malay elite would send their children to private schools and colleges and then on to foreign universities while lecturing the Malays on nationalism and the primacy of the Malay language — 'Bahasa Jiwa Bangsa' (Language, the soul of a race), they would say.
If the Malays do not support their own language and the public educational institutions, who else would?
Bahasa Kebangsaan as the language of instruction is like the Proton Saga. It is only meant for the ordinary Malays and Malaysians — the factory workers, government functionaries, small traders — to feed their nationalistic pride and keep them in a fantasy world of achievement, progress and greatness while the Malay elite never really believed in neither of them.
The Malays are indeed paying a heavy price for this misplaced nationalism. A big chunk of their income goes into servicing the loans for this over-priced, over-protected national pride, but the price they pay in mis-education is intangibly much higher &38212 the unemployable graduates, lack of competitiveness, the deterioration of our public universities and institutions.
Of course not everything should be blamed on Bahasa Melayu as the language of instruction. Defenders of the Bahasa Kebangsaan policy would time and again point to Japan and Korea's spectacular progress relying on their own language while India and the Philippines remain firmly in the ranks of Third World nations despite their embrace of English.
The malaise and confusion in our education system have much to do with the absence of a long-term, consistent, coherent policy formulated by experts in the field rather than the language used as the medium of teaching.
Every newly appointed education minister wants to stamp his mark and overturn his predecessor's policies and important decisions are made solely to score political advantage without engaging the public, interest groups and the experts in open debates and dialogues.
Fairly successful
To be fair, the national language policy had been fairly successful in forging unity, installing a sense of national identity and in nation-building, remedying to a certain extent the earlier situation when Malays were largely excluded from the educational, administrative and economic mainstream.
Rahman Talib and Tun Abdul Razak, former education ministers who headed the commission that framed the Bahasa Kebangsaan policy, had the noble vision of elevating the status of Bahasa Melayu as a language of knowledge and a vehicle for nation-building and racial integration in an élan of post-independence self-confidence.
But what they could not have foreseen was the end of the Cold War and the ensuing phenomenon of economic globalisation. It just happens that English is part of the package of globalisation which is corporate-driven and American in origin, a manifestation of American economic and political domination over the whole world. It could well have been Arabic or Hindi. Our liberal economic policies inevitably opened the doors for the resurgence of English, as the language for business in the corporate world and as the medium of teaching in private educational institutions which have mushroomed in response to the demands of the job market.
But the Malays are not the only people whose language is threatened. In Malaysia, sections of the urban, middle-class Indian and Chinese have no qualms abandoning their mother-tongues even at home for the advantages that English as first language is perceived to confer.
The language-proud French have taken to learning and using English to what was previously an unthinkable level to compete in the global market. Speaking about something I am more familiar with, for career advancement in medicine, the Japanese, German and French, like all the rest, have to publish in world-class journals and present their work at international conferences, both requiring proficiency in the English language. To varying degrees, I think this is a universal phenomenon in the various branches of science.
Impassioned debate
The prime minister's suggestion of re-introducing English medium schools as expected, generated an impassioned debate, receiving strong support from mainly non-Malay voices, whereas opposition to it predictably came from Malay language nationalists, academics and public figures.
I think Umno supreme council's suggestion of teaching Mathematics and Science in English and keeping Bahasa Melayu as the language of instruction for the other subjects offered the most reasonable compromise, striking a delicate balance between the need for development, competitiveness and integration with the globalised world on the one hand and preserving national identity in keeping with the nation's demography and history.
At the same time we must actively encourage the preservation of other ethnic cultures and languages, something uniquely Malaysian that would be sad to lose.
Today, to use the examples of Korea and Japan on the one hand and India and the Philippines on the other, to judge the efficacy of national language versus English in nation-building and development is misplaced.
This argument might have been persuasive in 1970s and 1980s, but today, India's harnessing of English education has produced enviable results in certain areas of sciences and technology. Language nationalism cannot be the main factor why Korea, Japan, France and Germany progress. We have had 30 years of experimentation with that idea and we can't afford to have another generation who will feel robbed of a good education after another 30 years.
In acquiring knowledge in the sciences, nationalistic passion needs to be tempered with the realities of today's competitive, interconnected world. It is probably safe to assume that those who fervently oppose even limited use of English for teaching science subjects are those who did not come from the science stream themselves and therefore do not understand the difficulties and disadvantages of not using English.
At any rate, the teaching and practice of clinical medicine have always been in English because of the insurmountable difficulties of switching over to Bahasa Melayu even during the period when language nationalism was at its peak.
Even if the proposal to use English in the sciences is stalled, there is no stopping well-to-do parents and the Malay elite from sending their children to English private schools and colleges, and paying for extra tuition. English language centres will continue to reap profits from this fear of losing out without proficiency in the language.
Will we then have an English-speaking elite and the ordinary and poor Malaysians who don't speak English well, on top of existing divisions along racial and religious lines?
At least, the democratisation of English by the limited use of the language in the sciences will go in some way towards toning down this language apartheid.
Political points
The government proposal could well have been done to score political points, but it is about time that we confront the language debate rationally. It certainly requires a great deal more in-depth discussions. If it were to be implemented, the major problems of a severe lack of qualified teachers who can teach effectively in the language and the disturbing urban-rural divide, need to be addressed.
I could understand the opposition to the proposal by Malay cultural leaders, academics and public figures, concerned over the loss of national identity and the undermining of the Malay social fabric, culture and religion. But this is still very much up for debate.
But I think the cultural dislocation that has been a source of great concern among the Malay community and religious leaders — moral decadence, disruption of traditional social fabric, weakening hold of religious values and enfeeblement of religious practice, have very little to do with the English language.
The entertainment pages of Utusan Malaysia and Berita Harian and our local TV programmes are copycat pop culture hedonism in Bahasa Melayu. The Malays' cultural confusion is a result of failed nation-building policies, especially in the sphere of culture and to a certain extent reflects our failure to manage the downside of globalisation and modernity.
Poverty and poor education will perennially exact a high social cost. Just as we lack a coherent and consistent long-term policy on education, we likewise lack the same in the area of culture. Our skewed emphasis on science and technology, which we have not been very successful in except as consumers, has neglected the social and spiritual aspects of development.
A nation that upholds social justice, openness and democratic values as paramount, and is confident in the positive aspects of its culture and language has no need to fear a limited use of English in the sciences and business.
Of course there will always be a Westernised elite who will continue to embrace western lifestyle, embarrassed of their own culture and language, and maybe even the colour of their skin and hair. It is Fanon's Black skin, white masks coming full circle with the new imperialism but this is not such a major problem if we have enlightened policies to manage modernity rationally.
In conclusion, in so far as confronting the debate on English in education is concerned, we need to strike the right balance between total rejection based on misplaced nationalism and total subservience arising from a cultural complex.
Dr MAZENI ALWI is a medical practitioner who takes care of sick children.
