The Babbling Bleating Old Man

Another chain has started. The dominoes, will fall.

My common sense need some brushing after being left rusted for some time.

Extracted from Utusan Malaysia Online, 9th of November 2007:

The article is too long to be posted here, so I will just link it. Click here 

 
Applying understanding…

The article is about reverting the teaching of Science and Mathematics from English to the Bahasa Melayu(this term is still used in the Constitution, hence it is only lawful to practise the correct term).

Reasons given:

1. The sanctity of the national language - Bahasa Melayu, should be protected based on the Constitution (Perkara 152), in which mentions that the language should be used for official purposes. ie: governmental and state proceedings. Since the local universities is under the supervision of the Federal government, inadvertly the official language for proceedings in the local universities is Bahasa Melayu.

2. ‘‘Bukankah banyak faktor lain menentukan kejaguhan kita. Bukankah gahnya sebuah universiti itu kerana sumbangannya kepada tamadun ilmu yang didukung oleh mutu pengajian dan hasil penyelidikannya,’’ kata beliau.

   A summary of the lines above : The excellence of one university does not solely lies on the language factor. The other dependent factors are the educating quality and researches.
    

3. Tegas beliau: ‘‘Kita melihat dalam ruang lebih luas, pandangan lebih jauh ke hadapan. Kita mahu maju dengan acuan sendiri. Malah tidak ada negara di dunia yang maju dengan meminjam bahasa orang lain.’’

   A summary of the lines above : We have move forward using our own compasses. There is NO country in this world which develops using foreign languages.

Let’s dissect:

1. Fair enough. That’s in the Constitution. Nothing much to argue about. I stand by the constitution. But by abiding completely to the constitution, it will only mean that only the national language is to be used in the public universities. Well, that’s not practical, at least to the universities. They are teaching many of their core science courses in English. The reason is pretty simple - the text books and resources are in English. Adaptability, is the key to cutting costs and maximizing output.

2. OK. Fair enough. I agree whole-heartedly that language is not the sole factor of the university’s achivement. Speaking of educating quality and researches…

Educating quality = Making the students able to understand the subject and ignite their thinking wheels. If the scientific texts come in English, the task to understand the knowledge becomes daunting because the foundations are not strong. Of course, one can argue to teach the scientific text in Bahasa Melayu instead. We can do that, but the resources will be limited and the costs will be expensive. Besides, we will be unable to catch up with newfound knowledge as they are published generally in English.

Researches  = What’s good of a research to be published if we cannot make the world understand what we discovered? Of course, translating services are always available but we have to understand that one must be able to present his work to a group of seasoned professionals before his/her work is recognized internationally.

Well, my thoughts only work on courses which are related to science. Of course, you wouldn’t expect a Malay Literature university student to learn his/her paper in English!

3. Well, we have to remember the past. Upon gaining independence, all the knowledge in fields of science, laws, economics and arts were in English. That has shortened our route towards developments because we are able to learn knowledge researched for decades in just years.

Again, please don’t get me wrong for being pro-English. And, my preference to use English instead of Bahasa Melayu to write this article is no measurement of my stand or nationalism. Of course, I am able to type my ideas in Bahasa Melayu, but I prefer to convey my thoughts using the medium which projects the better propagation.

It’s not the language. It’s not the knowledge. It’s not the content.

It’s just the attitude. Humans always dream, but many just do not make it come true. They think they did, but they didn’t realize they are still dreaming.