PPSMI proves its worth

WE laughed at the “beautiful” English by our government departments, but we need to seriously sit down and realise this is no laughing matter.

We have the newspapers, magazines, even junk mail written in English. We have radio channels, TV programmes and movies all in English and yet we publish such an atrocious piece of work on an official government website.

How embarrassing! What has gone wrong? Who is responsible for this piece of work? The answer lies in the education system.

I have said before in my previous letters that we are not helping our children. PPSMI has not even finished its cycle when the Education Minister decided to abandon it and to bring about a new system, MBMMBI.

Even the English we are teaching our children today has evolved. In the past we learned grammar, dictation, spelling and comprehension. Then it was changed to communication English. Now I don’t have any idea what do they do for English today.

We have experts from America and Australia. Imagine how our children will speak in the future – Manglish, as well as American and Australian English.

Why can’t we stick to the proven method? The past produced quality graduates and even those Form Five school leavers were of great quality. Today, graduates cannot be compared with them.

The Education Ministry needs to wake up from its slumber and realise that the education system has deteriorated so fast in the past 40 years that it has become a national disaster.

We started with the right first step to correct it – PPSMI. We saw some results which was proven in the recent PMR results. The statistics for the PPSMI results do not tally with the statistics given by the Education Minister.

The recent PMR results shows that the students are ready to embrace PPSMI. If we produced the best PMR results in recent years, then the percentage of students embracing PPSMI should be more than 11%.

The 11% who opted for PPSMI does not reflect the true picture because the option for PPSMI is not given to the parents and the children but to the school heads.

We need to remember that the children are our future. The PMR results showed that they want PPSMI, and it is our responsibility to give it to them.

Let us all swallow our pride and accept that we have failed our children and our country. Let us start again with PPSMI and make English a compulsary pass subject at SPM level.

We need to change our attitude and realise that the national pride is not just using Bahasa Malaysia but also the English Language.

Look at China. Although Chinese is an international language, the Chinese are embracing English. It does not make them less Chinese but makes them more competitive.

My dream is that all Malaysians will be able to communicate well in these two languages one day. SARALA POOBALAN, Kuala Lumpur.