Sarawak’s insistence on English proficiency is simply salvific

From Terence Netto

Sarawak’s  deputy education, innovation and talent development  minister Dr Annuar Rapaee’s insistence last week that the state will not allow its education system to relegate English proficiency to a backburner is not just laudatory; it is salvific.

The state has been under pressure to prioritise Bahasa Melayu as the medium of instruction in schools which would then diminish the need for proficiency in English, a prospect which Sarawak has long wanted to avoid.

It is obvious from Annuar’s stance that, in education, Sarawak is declining to go the way of the rest of the nation who have let Bahasa Melayu displace English almost entirely in the education system.

His stand is not only salvific, it is also redemptive: it was another Sarawakian, Abdul Rahman Yaakub, who as federal education minister in 1969, began in myopic haste to change the medium of instruction in schools from English to Bahasa Melayu.

In retrospect, it can be said that Rahman was keen to curry favour with then prime minister Abdul Razak Hussein to facilitate his goal of becoming chief minister of Sarawak by fast-tracking the Bahasa Melayu-isation of the education system.

His unseemly haste weakened our education system and left English-language command among the generality of students and graduates in the country in the sorry state it is today.

Cringe-worthy errors

To cite an example, just read the e-book ‘Test of a King’, which was launched in late January.

The book was aimed at highlighting the panache of Al-Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah, then Yang di-Pertuan Agong, in navigating the constitutional crisis that prevailed when the general election of November 2022 delivered a hung Parliament.

Cringeworthy mistakes in syntax and grammar marred the articles of a slew of contributors to the book. In deference to their personages, the names of the slovens will not be mentioned here, to spare them embarrassment.

Fortunately, the volume’s centrepiece, by legal expert Shad Saleem Faruqi, was lucid in its delineation of the constitutional niceties involved and flawless in its use of the English language.

One would like to say that the article alone redeems the entire volume. One can’t, because English grammar is such that even one mistake in an individual piece of a volume churns the stomach; a second identifies a sluggard; a third would demand his defenestration.

The e-book sports such mistakes by no fewer than three of its contributors.

Years ago, when Abu Talib Othman retired as attorney-general, he gave a warning about the possibility of a miscarriage of justice if the medium of legal proceedings were to change entirely from English to Bahasa Melayu.

Abu Talib is an avatar of Annuar. Both are saying 

Disregard my cautions and you’d face the deluge.

The deluge may already be here. Recent news reports have it that one of the grammatically-challenged contributors to Test of a King may be elevated to the federal bench.

It hurts too much to laugh. - FMT

Terence Netto is a veteran journalist and an FMT reader.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.