Saturday September 10, 2011 Why we need English THE results of the PMSI survey by a Malay NGO speaks

volumes. The majority of the Malays are against the reverting of the teaching of Science and Mathematics to Bahasa Malaysia. I agree with this opinion and believe our younger generations competitiveness in the global job market is significantly jeopardised if the Education Ministry insists on reverting the teaching of the subjects to Bahasa Malaysia. Feedback from employment agencies further reinforces this opinion that one of the main reasons foreign investors have invested elsewhere was due to the lack of a talent pool proficient in English. In the multinational call centre where I work, the majority of the employees are non-Malays. The company has been constantly reevaluating strategic locations for its operations. If the leadership finds Malaysia no longer attractive, they would relocate to a new country. We are fully aware of todays information technology advancements. They come with new terms and phrases. I can imagine Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP) coming up with strange and confused terms in Malay. This does not help our younger generation when they join multinational companies or even government linked companies for that matter. We lose our competitiveness to countries such as India and Singapore where schools are using English. Other countries, too, have increased their focus to improve their standard of English. Yet, instead of seriously competing with these countries, the Education Ministry made a surprise U-turn to revert the teaching of Science and Mathematics to the Bahasa Malaysia. We are aware that some in rural areas will find instructions in English completely foreign to them. They struggle to understand the language. But this should not stop us from finding ways to help this group.

Even during the British occupation of Malaya, many Malays were excellent in the language despite the absence of the electronic media, and compared to what we have access to today. In fact, todays generation can effectively use Facebook and Twitter despite the instructions being in English. JAMIL Kuala Lumpur. DIN,