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UNESCO finding? Anyone knows more about this or the MCA guy is taichi-ing the blame to UNESCO

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The decision has got to be wrong... the MCA, Samy Vellu and Hishamuddin agree with it.

What sort of recommendation is that??

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Wow, apparently UNESCO did make such a recommendation back in 1997 to World Bank, but Tun M choose to ignore all the findings and arguments against PPSMI in 2003 then .... ******/bing unesco teaching science and mathematics in mother tongue. Interesting !! It was recommended that at primary school level the teaching should be in mother tongue to aid the comprehension and understanding of science and mathematical concepts during the tender ages; apparently, to do it in non-mother tongue will results in a double-hurdle !! Still trying to get the full Unesco report.

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yet again two wrongs don't make a right

Go back to the 60s and teach everything in English and have a BM class, it was key to the success of developing the nation and was thrown away.

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For the past six years, many students were affected by the teaching of the two subjects in English and could not catch up

If you cannot catch up now, but later... it's better this way !

When you can catch up now, and not later in University years, then you're gonna lose your precious money, time and worse a being drop-out ! Uni (tuition & semester) fees are far higher than in schools !

On another matter, Universities are supposed to produce good quality graduates. And, not quantity of pass graduates !

Who wants a pilot that fly you to Europe with only a pass in his Maths & don't master it in English ?

Anyone flew AirAsia or MAS before ? Listen to some of the pilots speaking... then tell me will you worry about their communicating skills with the tower or not !

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English speaking Malaysians are not represented in parliament. malays speakers are under pas and umno, MCA and DAP for mandarin once, and MIC and PPP for indians.
Those poor kampung boys will effectively be tied to government jobs for the rest of their life. No one else will employ them.

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agree with sydput...
those poor chinese school boys and girls will forever sell pirate DVDs, becoming ah longs, becoming perompak and becoming GROs.

the govt should continue the teaching of science and maths in english to prevent these poor students becoming NED (non-educated delinquents)

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Hishamuddin said the ministry started to study the effects of teaching the two subjects in English during his time as Education Minister.
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And we all know how THAT went.

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MUHAI'S MOON WALK
http://malaysiancartoons.*****...-walk.html

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Flip Flop and the Raayat suffers even more.

The country meanwhile is down on a treacherous winding road.

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I always wonder about this mother tongue issue. And I would like to know how many of the ministers' children are secretly learning English. And how many of the ministers' kids are in international or private schools? And how many of the ministers' kids are studying overseas in English speaking countries? And how many of the ministers' kids are in boarding schools in England? How many of our urban Malays, Chinese and Indians send the kids overseas even at a very tender age? How many of our urban Malays, Chinese and Indians provide their kids with private tutoring in English (apart from speaking English at home). So, the poor Malaysians especially those in rural areas will continue find their careers limited by language.

Anyone knows if Muhiddin's children are educated in local schools? or are they overseas? or in private schools?

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Just turned to Kit Siang's bloc and found more nuances in his opposition to the government's decision, especially when the problem concerns teaching in English to Form 1 - 5 students. Indeed, other ways of upgrading the teaching of English should be considered, not least the setting up of English-medium schools.

LChuah

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Now that a decision has been made, all is not lost with the leaders' promise of a new and more logical approach. Let's hope Najib and Muhyiddin, who were both from English medium schools, will see through their commitment to improve English through teaching of the language from primary level!

The future on the nation should not continue to be forever based on half-baked policies and short-term political expediencies at the expense of future generations! Better still, promptly import foreign teachers and allow private English medium schools to sprout and compete with local International schools!!

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I feel so sad for my country, Malaysia. What a useless bunch of politicians they are making decisions affecting the lives of our future generation by reverting to BM. Teaching science in English bring in a lot of changes to progress and development of the country through higher skills development for our young generation who will build up the country's resources. Now that is gone, forget about this development and live like a frog in the well. Good for politicians, hah!

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I'm sorry that but I am one of the many Malaysians who opposed to such a thoughless move by the government.

Ask yourself and your children what higher education and/or professional career they can pursue in years to come if they are subjected to years and years of English-oblivion and the answer is very obvious, no where!

Reading the news today in newspaper saddens and disappoints me greatly. What makes me even more dusturbed were the reasons behind the rationale of the move;

(i) DPM Tan Sri Muhyiddin Mohd Yassin said that studies showed that PPSMI was never implemented as originally hoped. Instead, teachers were using both English and Bahasa Melayu to teach Science and Mathematics. He further literated that studies have found that only 8 per cent of teachers used English completely when teaching Science and Mathematics. On average, English use was 53-58 per cent of the total time allocated for teaching the two subjects.

To this, I have to ask them back the question of why is this the case? Go visit any schools today and talk to most of the teachers and you will understand the shortcomings. It is simple and it is obvious, the LACK OF PROPER, EFFECTIVE and FLUENT ENGLISH-SPEAKING and/or English-educated teachers (of course, not entirely their fault) are the reasons behind this predicament. How can you expect a local BM-educate/graduate/teacher to teach Maths and Science in English medium, let alone other simple modules???


(ii) He later highlighted on the worrying trend of academic achievement of these two subjects between students from the urban and rural areas - an increasing gap forming in recent years.

With that in mind, how would reverting the medium to BM narrow this gap??? More importantly, is the government saying that by lowering the bar, we can narrow the gap between the orang-pasar and orang-luar-pasar? Again, I would say the main problem lies with the quality of the teachers and not the language used. If they continue to post lower-graded and/or 2nd graded teachers to the interiors, then this is expected, wouldn't?


(iii) He also added that according to the study of Trends in Mathematics and Science Study 2007, it reveals that Malaysian students in Science slipped from 20th place in 2003 to 21st in 2007. For Mathematics, our students dropped from 10th placing in 2003 to 20th in 2007.


So, in order to improve this trend and as a response to the slipping of grades/positioning of the respective subject, we revert to BM???? Wow, why didn't we think of that earlier?


While I remain sceptical of this questionable decision, I am absolutely positive of one thing; (a) our future generation Malaysians will find it even harder to further their education abroad and be competitive with other nationalities and (b)that Malaysia will eventually produce plenty of "Malaysian-made" granduants of mediocre standards.

Malaysia Truly Boleh!

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Just apply simple solution !
Study in English Medium Schools for those who wish to excel in English .
Study in Malay Medium Schools for those who wish to excel in Malay.
Just revert back to the English Medium school and Malay Medium school Education policies of the 1960s ?
We have a win - win situation.
These problems are so easy to solve ,OK !
The 2012 dateline may not come to fruition ?

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tino_chan
i can shed some light regarding the slipping in position. Its not the language problem but its the students. A lot of them can go into an exam hall and pass with distinction without even trying n yet there are some quartes which can still fail. The reason is the lax marking standards. Mind u wht we learn in SPM is abt half of wht we learn in A levels. So content wise, we are in a good position. So now is the time to wise up and tighten the standards of marking the exam papers.

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" For the past six years, many students were affected by the teaching of the two subjects in English and could not catch up



Yes, you'll lose a couple of generations but come next they will be better of , and that will be good for the country for sure.

Nobody now is looking at leap years ahead. Our leaders now have no vision, and they succumbed to pressure.

I say it should stay English no matter what the rest say. Sure, you have problems around it so fix them.

With this, Malaysia will,and still is running on the spot!

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I asked my two kids (one Form 1, the other form 3) whether, given a choice of answering Science and Math questions either in english or BM, which wud they choose. The answer was a resounding yes for English! I asked why English. Their answer was that its easier to understand scientific and mathematical terms in english. There you are. School kids are smarter than those in the cabinet!

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Go to TDM's blog to participate in a poll run by him.

http://chedet.co.cc/chedetblog...tml#_login

Right now it is 73% against and 27% for the decision to teach Science and Maths in BM.

TDM said it seemed like the government was not listening to the people.
He said he would try to convey the poll result to the government.

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Why only talk and listen to the academicians or whatever associations.
Why not listen to the voice of the people, it is our (their) childrens' future we are talking about.
Why not run a referendum with the people and let the people vote if they wanted their children to learn the 2 subjects in English or other wise.
If the majority say yes to English, then we should continue, not abandon it half way just like this.
Do it now, there is still time.

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After months of indecision, the BN government has come up with yet another band-aid solution. So, in another decade when the rest of the world has moved forward, we would revert to English again and play catch-up.

We have lost 50 years during which education in the country has deteriorated. Gain in quantity; loss in quality. The consequences are there for all to see and I don't need to go into that. That includes the standard of English and that's why we have this problem of teaching (and learning) Science and Maths in English.

The general consensus is that English is important in the advancement in science and technology as well as in trade and the conduct of world affairs. Secure the position of English now in the school curriculum, so that we would have a starting point to improve English learning and teaching. This way all sectors of the country can move forward together, instead of what is happening now - the rural areas holding back the progress of the urban areas.

Our children's education is too important to be politicized. Everyone would be happy to see a bipartisan approach to building a new, dynamic, world class education system. Both government and opposition should stop playing politics with education (and language) and come together to set up an education commission to design a new educational system.

Ill-conceived policies have created the present state of segregation of our schools which in no small part contributed to the polarization of the people. I venture to suggest that in addition to the national type schools, we bring back the English-medium schools which had produced the stratum of leaders and technocrats in government and business and industry and accounted for the high standard of English in the early decades since independence.

A new education system should help build a national Malaysian character and outlook. We should start to be more Malaysian and not more Malay, more Chinese, more Indian and more native Sarawakian/Sabahan.

Are we going to start now or wait another 50 years?

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“This announcement will ensure that our students are competitive in both subjects,”
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Competitive in both subject ..

Uncompetitive to be employable ..

Kepala otak tak berguna ..

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Malaysia was a British colony before Merdeka.
As a sovereign nation, we adopted Bahasa Malaysia as the national language.
Politically, this is correct.
Due to its multiracial population mix and political expediency, the Chinese and Tamil languages were retained as medium of instruction in vernacular schools.
Unfortunately for Malaysia, our colonial language (English) happened to be the most influential economic and political language in the world during the last 150 years. That is the root cause that, even until today, 52 years after Merdeka, we are still haggling over which language we should use to teach our children when they learn science and mathematics in school.
Frankly, we need not know much English to learn maths. It is all figures and equations. As for science, most BM terms are just the original terms spelt according to BM dictation rules (eg. psychology becomes psikologi).
What we mostly overlooked in this debate is the falling standard concerning the comprehension, grammatical and expressive aspects of the English language. This English language is also very idiosyncratic, making it difficult to master. There is only one way to improve our standard of literary English; read a lot of books or articles. The government should now ensure and invest in improving the teaching standard of English where English is taught in schools. There is nothing stopping parents tutoring their kids in English.
So, spare our children the agony and let them learn maths and science in BM, which also served as a unifying language for the various races in Malaysia.
Finally, just step back a little and imagine this.
WHAT IF MALAYSIA WERE A DUTCH OR FRENCH COLONY?
Look at Vietnam and Indonesia, the two big brothers in ASEAN.
The debate of using either Dutch or French as medium of instruction in their schools after gaining independence never existed. All children were taught Vietnamese or Bahasa Indonesia from the onset (kindergarten). What about their grasp of English? Their elites are also very conversant in English.

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THESE POLITICAL GROUP will support anything done by the UMNO regime just to survive on UMNO handouts.... pariahs, leeches.. parasites...

also they know very well their own children are so backward, they cant even pass their own language writing skilll... Malu ooi... kah kah kha kah kah

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