STOP comparing with China, Japan, Korea: Muhyiddin needs to be EDUCATED

Deputy prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin said, the government would progressively convert the teaching medium to Malay.

To be honest, most of the subjects in public universities are already taught in Malay, save for a number of courses such as engineering and medicine where the subjects are taught in both English and BM.

As for private institutions of higher learning, English is widely used as the teaching medium, and this explains why job prospects for their graduates are generally perceived as better when compared to public universities.

Let's set aside the issue of personal liking and prejudice, is Muhyiddin's proposition acceptable and viable?

Pathetic standards

Several days ago, the Bar Council co-hosted a seminar with a private university to explore the issue of legal education in the country. The hottest topic of contention was the issue of law student's English standard.

Senior lawyers and law lecturers grumbled that the English of many law students and young lawyers was of pathetic levels, indirectly compromising the legal service quality they delivered.

Not too long ago, an entrepreneur I met told me his practical experience. He said his company intended to hire a few junior engineers and many responded to his recruitment advertisement.

"Some 20 came for interviews, all with university qualifications, but at least 15 of them couldn't speak proper English. Some of them even asked me whether they could answer in BM.

"I told them, 'No way! We are not in a university lecture hall but a job interview. Our requirements are not the same as those of your university."

As a result, he couldn't' get the right engineers and some of these applicants also failed to get the jobs they had wanted.

I asked him, "Do you have very high requirements for English? Or you feel the language is more superior in one way or another?"

"High requirements? What can you expect from our young graduates? I'll be very happy if they meet the most fundamental requirements," he replied.

"As for English, it is not to please myself but out of sheer necessity. These young engineers need to attend internal and external meetings talking about all sorts of technical problems. Besides, they also need to continuously learn and upgrade themselves. They won't be able to handle all this if their language capability is poor.

"Do you think they can use Malay if I were to send them overseas for training or negotiate the projects?"

His response did not surprise me the least, every other entrepreneur will think the same way.

Don't try to compare with China, Japan, South Korea

But our DPM might beg to differ, and could possibly get very mad, too.

Perhaps he would say: Wouldn't the problem be solved if everything is changed to BM?

Based on his argument, if China, Japan and South Korea can all succeed with vernacular language teaching, why not Malaysia?

From the perspective of nationalism, Muhyiddin has his insistence, but in reality, things couldn't get more different.

As languages of knowledge and technology, Chinese, Japanese and Korean have long reached the level of maturity.

The Japanese people started to translate major technological and literary classics into Japanese ever since the dawn of the Meiji Restoration some one a half centuries ago. Over the years, they have accumulated a vast treasure trove of knowledge and from there they have been able to develop their own technologies and innovation.

The same goes for China and Korea. They have translated countless of foreign works and boast hundreds of tertiary institutions with large armies of academic personnel. Through continuous dissemination of knowledge and academic exchanges, they have managed to spur the development in technology as well as humanity.

In Malaysia we do not have such a background and necessary conditions to do the same. How many books have we translated into BM each year?

Indeed, as the national language, BM oughts to be respected and widely used, but as Mahathir has said, it is simply not the language of knowledge acquisition.

Call him an absolute nationalist or anything, but Mahathir does have his pragmatic side. While Muhyiddin is eager to push ahead his nationalistic agenda, he has failed to see our own restrictions as well as global needs.

mysinchew