GMP’s Should Be Ashamed – Reader’s Experience

Gerakan Mansuhkan PPSMI (GMP) had in its memorandum to the Government stated that Science and Mathematics and all other subjects were taught in the National Language since 1970. I think they are grossly misled by their own fantasy and they are just dreaming. History shows that those studying in the government schools way back in 1978 were still studying Mathematics and all Sciences in English. I took my MCE (in English) in 1978 and have my MCE certificate to prove my claims. How can they lie in their memorandum to the Government! Yet they claim to be sincere in championing the cause! They can’t even get their facts correct! We all can still remember well that in 1974, Bahasa Malaysia was first made compulsory in MCE. Many students Chinese, Malays and Indians whom had not done well in the national language failed MCE that year even though they have scored A s in all other subjects. Way back then nobody blames others people for their failure. Those who failed tried harder the following year. Everyone knows that it was done for nation building. On the contrary to the GMP’s claims that materials in Malay are plenty, reference in Malay was rare. I remembered distinctly that when I was in Universiti Sains Malaysia, back in 1987, doing my first degree in Science, I had tremendous problem trying to get reference material for Chemistry and Advance Calculus. That is one of the reasons why we were so very dependent on the lecture notes given by our lecturers, so much so that we don’t even mind being scolded by some lecturers for trying to borrow their transparencies, not because we are lazy but due to the fact that we cannot get reference materials in Malay and was too incompetent to translate the English reference materials. Looking back, we don’t know how we manage to scrape through those years … and the general public blames us that we have not mastered the learning skills to make our own notes etc etc … No one want to admit that there is insufficient reference materials to enable us to make notes! Kindly ask those who attended university in the eighties and nineties, as to why are they begging their seniors for their notes, I believe the respond you’ll get is that there is insufficient good reference materials. The GMP’s claim that there are lots of Science and Mathematics reference in Malay is also total rubbish. You can’t buy 3 good reference books on Complex Analysis in Malay back then. How can you write a thesis in Malay if there are insufficient reference materials and not to mention our incompetency in the English Language where most of the materials are written in? More often than not there are tremendous amount of misconceptions in translation! Once again we would like to appeal to Dato’ Dr Hassan Ahmad to kindly check his facts first before taking it to the streets. By simply claiming that there are lots of materials in Malay for Science and Mathematics is absolute rubbish. We would suggest that Dato’ Dr Hassan and his supporters pause and think about their next cause of action. It would be a better idea if they were to engage the Ministry of Education to find out more about Education instead of taking to the streets blindly. And for your information, the translation done by Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka is also questionable. Ask the private sectors who have engage them …

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Tags: Gerakan Mansuhkan PPSMI, PAGE, PPSMI