'Malaysians more pragmatic than nationalistic in what they want from education'

Malaysians prefer an education system that makes them more marketable, rather than one built on nationalistic values, Merdeka Centre's programme director Ibrahim Suffian said yesterday.

This after the pollster's survey on Johoreans showing overwhelming support for the return of English-medium schools was published by Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.

The survey prompted certain education activists to argue that national schools should prioritise preserving national identity and promote local languages rather than English.

Ibrahim, however, says otherwise.

“I think Malaysians, when it comes to education, value (obtaining) skills that make them more marketable.

“(They are) not nationalistic when it comes to education choices and have shown overwhelming support for English-medium schools,” he told Malaysiakini when contacted.

Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Abdul Rahman Dahlan also expressed his support for English-medium schools for similar reasons, saying that such schools were needed to improve graduates’ command of the language and their competitiveness in the future job market.

Ibrahim added that his team was “not surprised at all” by the survey results, which showed 82 percent of 2,011 Johoreans across races expressing support for the idea, as a similar poll in 2015 by the government’s Performance Management and Delivery Unit (Pemandu) had yielded comparable results.

The Pemandu online survey had posed seven questions to the public to ask for their perception of the importance of being proficient in English. Of the survey’s 190,000 respondents, 90 percent had agreed that English proficiency needed to be improved.- Mkini