PUTRAJAYA, Feb 6 — Putrajaya welcomes any differing opinion regarding the decision to teach Science and Mathematics in English (PPSMI) as the Cabinet weighs in on the issue, acting education minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said today.

The prime minister also said a committee has been set up to review the issue, citing strong public opinions on both sides of the matter.

“Public is welcome to give its opinions; they can write to the government. Media can write long articles condemning it. We are used to having people disagreeing with us.

“Parents and Teachers’ Associations as well as students too can write to us, we have no restrictions,” Dr Mahathir said in a press conference after a special address to Ministry of Education staff here.

learning capacity... time.

not everyone can be multilingual comfortably.

No lah. Schools now teaches 2+1 languages already.

and are the students mastering all of them?

teaching is one thing... the result is another

bereev so there are many factors to economic success, not just the language. Of course if Malaysians are as industrious, hard working and innovative as the Koreans or Japanese, then Malaysians can be as successful too. Are we?

japan is a country which heavy on innovation and production, they produce goods and tech that are wanted by the rest of the world and countries want to learn the knowledge from them.

They are fine to stick with their own language, people will learn their language to get their knowledge or work with them.

What Msia can give to the world? So far, Msia only famous for its multi lingual society, if you lose this as well, what Msia can give to the world which the world demands for it?

Forgot to mention, due to Japanese's inability to be globalized, their economy always stuck in a deflation stage, you can take a look their bank is charging interest and how atm works there.

As a kid, I agreed with PPSMI.

What I learned as I get older and start working though, is that it is a BAD POLICY.

Why? Because it makes things more difficult for kids to understand Science and Mathematics. It increases the hurdle to comprehension and discriminates against the linguistically static kids who otherwise could have understood and memorize things. Basically, cutting off more Malays from medicine and tech.

What I learned as an adult is that, if you are exceptional in your field, people will accomodate to you no matter what language you speak.

Let there be more good doctors who understand mostly Malay instead of just a handful who are either only good at the language but not the actual subject matter, or are so good that they run away to work overseas instead of here.

malaysia had an early edge over our neighbours because of our better than usual standard english in this region. speaking in terms of attracting fdi... not so applicable nowadays

Some are. Many are.

The objective of PPSMI is to ease the transition of science stream kids from secondary school to university program. At the same time to enable the kids to read more science and maths resources in the internet, in reference book and from documentary.

There aren’t much science & maths reference books in BM beyond what are being taught in the syllabus. Even on the internet, you can’t find much resources like science journals and articles in BM. Heck even “malaysian standards” documents are all in English.

For kids who are into science, having limited resources to refers are something that is frustrating. When i was a kid i was having a hard time understanding the science term in my encyclopedia because the science term are unfamiliar in english, and my parents were science illiterate. My parents bought me a simplified encyclopedia with images instead to help me understand the content (and still in english).

This post has been edited by blanket84: Feb 6 2020, 03:31 PM

basically lower the hurdle (standard), so more can pass through...

we can probably keep the BM option, but if they cannot grasp it in English early.. likelihood they are not going to be very good in what they are going to do. Of course, there will be exceptions...

English is Bahasa Penjajah

We are Merdeka country, we need to learn in Bahasa Malaysia

#doneprotect

The lack of reference and translated works is because the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka(DBP) only sit on their asses all day not doing their job on anything thats not art.

The Japanese has very hardworking translation agencies who converted countless books on countless subjects. You wont find a Malay version of The Divine Comedy, but you can find them in Japanese: thats how diverse they are.

The DBP should step up their game.

DO NOT confuse the 'standard of language' with 'standard of subject'. Those two are very different things.

You want an English proficient doctor who can only work at clinics, or a Malay only researcher who found the cure to cancer?

i won't trust art trained DBP staff to translate science materials. probably going to find a lot of "interesting" translation....

Your latter would be the exception I mentioned earlier

This post has been edited by duHwaN: Feb 6 2020, 03:39 PM

medicine and tech are in english when you taking it in university, what makes you think that people who are poor in english can miraculous cope up with the syllabus taught in uni?

If you are aiming to maintain the status quo, then yes, no need to trouble yourself with learning beyond the shores.

If you are aiming to be a progressive nation, a leader among many, then you need to run. To run you need to copy others because it is the fastest way to progress quickly, therefore you need to learn their language. If you continue to be innovative and hard working, then you start to develop science and tech no one has yet, you get to coin words in BM and publish them in BM journals, then people of other nations learn your language.

so malaysian need learn English.

2020 then decide this ah?

Wow.