MALAYSIA wants to produce graduates who can compete at the global level. This is the way to go, we say.
But first, what does competing at a global level mean? It means being fluent in the most widely spoken language in the world. And this happens to be English, which is spoken by 1.1 billion people. Given the global population of eight billion and more than 7,000 spoken languages, this is a good slice to aim for. Are we there?
No, but we used to be there. What happened? Well, a few things happened that have brought down our English proficiency. These things are mind-forged manacles and impediments of similar sorts.
Start with surveys. We do not have a national survey that measures our students' proficiency. But there is one conducted annually by EF Education First (EFEF), a Swedish education outfit. The survey findings are not without controversy.
Called the EF English Proficiency Index, it hawks itself as the world's largest ranking of countries by English skills. But last year's survey must have astounded many Malaysians. Of 111 countries surveyed, Malaysia was ranked 24th in the world and that, too, in the high-proficiency category. Just to give the context, Singapore was ranked No. 2 in the high-proficiency table. Rightly so. Not long ago, the EFEF ranked Singapore behind Malaysia.
Baffling. Baffled, too, must be Malaysian employers and teachers, who constantly complain of our graduates and students' proficiency. Just walk into some of our universities and converse with the students, and you will come away thinking that we must be lumped in either the low or the very low proficiency group. This is our first impediment. It will be a very dangerous one if the Education Ministry believes in it.
The second mind-forged impediment is our either-or mindset. If English is in, then Bahasa Malaysia is out. If Bahasa Malaysia is in, then English must be out. This is simply not true, argues Universiti Malaya Associate Professor Dr Adelina Asmawi in an NST op-ed. There she avers that learning three or more languages isn't a problem for Malaysians. She is right.
For most Malaysians, first comes the mother tongue, followed by Bahasa Malaysia and then English as the third language. But trilingual teaching can only happen, Adelina reasons, if we focus on managing our language policy, by which she means ensuring the teaching of English, Bahasa Malaysia and other languages are taught effectively.
This is the responsibility of the Education Ministry.
Now for the final impediment, which even the Education Ministry will find it hard to overcome: changing emphasis on the teaching of English. The day before it was English, yesterday it was Bahasa and today it is English again.
Our language policies mustn't swing like a pendulum. This will bring to nought our education blueprints and development plans. Education is a life-long pursuit. It must not be truncated like this. Such cruel cuts are already disclosing troubling results.
Students of English who were taught by teachers with low proficiency are now themselves teachers. The multiplier effect of such pendulum-like policies will result in a few lost generations. This relapse must be arrested now if we truly want to produce world-class graduates.