The Kernel of Education

Today for a change I'm going to blog about a contemporary issue. I usually shun these topics because most of the time enough has already been said about them. I have nothing novel to contribute. Furthermore, I know exactly what my point of view is and I'm not interested to convince others about it. I blog for my own benefit. 

What's the topic for today? Education in general and our Malaysian education system in particular. I read frequently about how bad our education system is. It is 'broken'; it is 'politicised'; 'we are far behind our neighbours'--these are common refrains. How true is that?

Now, I am a product of the Malaysian education system. 100%, from kindergarten to university. I am a pure product of the public school system. My primary and secondary education were completely in Bahasa Malaysia. Even in university, they tried their best to conduct all the courses in BM. Some courses accomplished that better than others. I remember my 3 years of mathematics of my engineering degree course were taught completely in BM.  

Of course, textbooks in BM at the tertiary level were non-existent. We had to read all our reference books in English but answer exam questions in BM. We were given some leeway for some courses that were only taught partially in BM: we were required to 'answer at least two questions in Bahasa Malaysia'!

I remember my first year Computers 101 course was also completely in BM. I could still remember some of the terms used: the mouse is tetikus; peripherals are called peranti susur-keliling; the UNIX shell, kerang and my personal favourite: nyahpepijat. (which never fail to put my younger colleagues now in stitches). If you can't figure that one out, here's a clue: nyah is a negative prefix often used to replace the prefix 'dis' in English. e.g. discharge is nyahcas. Anyone who has written some computer code would have done nyahpepijat before.

Throughout my entire primary and secondary school years I had no problems learning mathematics and science in BM. That was because they had proper BM equivalents for all the scientific terms. Mass is jisim; velocity, halaju; volume, isipadu; gradient, kecerunan; compound, sebatian; catalyst, mangkin; integration, pengkamilan; arithmetic progression, janjang kira-kira. 

Of course I didn't know the English equivalents then.  I only became acquainted with them when I reached university and found that all the textbooks were in English. But it was not a big deal, because there's always a one-to-one mapping between these scientific terms. 

Now, comes the hotly debated issue: should Maths and Science be taught in English? 

As someone who had the bulk of his maths and science education in Bahasa, my answer is: ideally, yes but not necessarily. Did I face any difficulties when I had to refer to books and technical papers written in English in university? Well, there were slight adjustments required but by and large, all my peers had no issues.  Having the subject taught in BM did not in any way make us less competent in the subject. We all went out into the world to become competent technical professionals serving global multi-nationals, communicating primarily in English.

Would it had been better if we had been taught in English instead? Yes, it certainly would have helped but not by a huge degree. We all had some basic education in English. We could navigate ourselves through textbooks and papers in English, even though the technical terms are different. That's not the main issue, as most of the BM terms were derivations from their English ones anyway (logarithms, logaritma, entropy, entropi).  

The main issue that needs to be addressed in our schools is the poor standard of English. This cannot be addressed simply by teaching Maths and Science in English.  The only real solution is a radical one:  use English as the main medium of communication in all our schools.  Even during my time, the standard of English among all my peers who went through the public school had dropped considerably after the mandatory change of medium to BM, especially in small towns and kampungs. 

Of course, we all know that using English as the main medium for teaching is a non-starter in our present political climate.  What then is the solution?  You know what? I think the teaching of languages in general has to be improved.  I even think our mastery of Bahasa Malaysia is bad. How many people read books BM?  

It actually doesn't matter what language is the medium of instruction. We need to inculcate a love for the humanities--literature, history and philosophy with an emphasis on reading and writing. We should strive to be multilingual, just like how we play different sports in school. We can be very good in one, but we should appreciate and know the rules of the others and be able to play them, if need to.

Am I being too idealistic? Most certainly.  I am advocating a re-emphasis on an education in liberal arts.  That would be the ultimate goal. It means a complete relook on what education is: not to produce a workforce, but to produce quality open-minded, thinking individuals.  That to me, is the real purpose of education. 

A liberal arts education is the foundation of an educated person. Learn the basics of being a well-balanced, decent human being in school. That forms the kernel of one's education. The rest are applications that can be learned from YouTube.