Can’t speak BM? National schools to be blamed, too
‘These students are worse than Bangladeshis’
The 604 respondents in the survey mentioned by Utusan Malaysiainclude youngsters who attended national secondary schools. Why did these schools not ensure their Bahasa Malaysia (BM) was up to scratch?
As for the great majority of non-Malay kids who do have excellent BM, what educational and employment opportunities does the government sector offer them?
As a report on national education stated back in 1951: “The last racially segregated vernacular primary school in Malaya will close when the parents of the children attending it believe that a local national school would provide a more acceptable education.”
Over to you, national schools.
Mosquitobrain: Utusan assistant editor Ku Seman Ku Hussain, BM is the national language. No doubt about it.
If you want to play politics, please go elsewhere. Don’t do it at the expense of school-going children.
If the ‘minority’ has failed to master the national language, as a patriotic citizen, do you think it is the government responsibility to address the failure?
The government is producing and sending sub-standard, half-baked teachers. Why? Because the Education Ministry is full of idiots, mostly unqualified yet self-claimed patriotic individuals like you.
Dingy: If the Chinese and Indian National Service trainees could not speak proper BM, it didn’t necessary mean that this was due to vernacular schools.
These school leavers spent five years in secondary schools where the medium of instruction is in BM and yet they couldn’t speak proper BM or for that matter even English. I would blame the poor national education system where there is ‘automatic’ promotion.
These group of NS trainees were probably the late developers or slow learners but were totally neglected by their parents and teachers. When teachers ignored them in class, they lost interest in the lessons. The remedy is to identify them early, isolate them and place them in a special remedial class.
My own son was in a similar situation, spending three years in pre-school education and yet was not able to read in BM and English. We engaged a retired school principal to train him the technique of reading.
After three months, he was able to read. He just graduated with second-class upper in a private university.
Kalui 64: Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia’s Institute of the Malay World and Civilisation lecturer Teo Kok Seong should carry out another survey of the 604 Chinese and Indian trainees. He should not assume that all of them completed their secondary school education.
In our system of education, students only learn Chinese or Indian language until Standard Six. In secondary school, from Form 1 to Form 5, the language of instruction is in Bahasa Malaysia.
If these 604 trainees had completed their secondary school education, they will definitely be able to speak and understand Bahasa Malaysia. I suspect that most of these 604 trainees dropped out of school.
We have read of these trainees who, at 18 years old, have been working for many years and have even got married when selected for NS training.
Someone should question Teo about the level of education of these 604 trainees. Utusan should not jump into conclusion that these trainees are all Form 5 school leavers.
Spirit of Malaya: Even though I do not subscribe whole heartedly to what the Utusan editor is saying, certain issues raised by him are correct.
I have personally seen and heard some Chinese youngsters struggling to speak even simple Malay. When I inquired something in our national language from them, they just cannot interact, and I’m talking about simple Malay here.
I’m not saying that I agree with Utusan, but something must be done to instill respect for Bahasa Malaysia.
Geronimo: You mean speaking BM will unite the people? But then, I don’t see it happening to the Malays in Umno Baru, PKR and PAS.
Patriotism and loyalty to the country do not lie in the language. It is in the hearts and minds of the people. Let’s assume that I may not be good in BM, but if I have the brains to be doctor, lawyer, engineer or scientist and can contribute to the nation’s well-being, I think this outweighs all the talk about language.
If the Bangladeshis are good and have the brains to contribute, who am I to complain?
Wg321: Today, the Malay language or BM is more widely spoken in the Chinese community compared with 30 years ago.
This is because of the uncontrolled influx of more than three million legal and illegal Indonesian workers, not counting the Bangladeshi, Nepalese, etc.
Chinese bosses and Chinese workers in factories, hawker centres, construction sites, and other Chinese places of employment speak BM with these foreign workers.
On top of that, BM is also widely spoken in Chinese households because of the employment of Indonesian maids. There are more than 300,000 Chinese household employing the Indonesian maids.
I must admit there is minimum contact between Chinese and Malays because of the existence of UiTMs, Mara Junior colleges, religious schools and vernacular schools, but that doesn’t mean the Chinese don’t speak BM in their daily lives or when doing business.
SultanMydin: What wg321 said is quite true but here we are talking about fluency and a comprehensible form of communication and not the ‘pasar’ type of lingo. Chinese in other Southeast Asian countries (for example, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, etc) speak and write fluently their respective national languages in countries where they reside.
No vernacular schools were allowed in those countries unlike here when choices were given to cater for the needs of the major ethnic groups, the consequences of which we are seeing today.
The blame is squarely on our past leaders at the time of independence. An unforgivable mistake was made when the country achieved its independence when we should have one type of national school (either Malay or English medium) and now trying to turn back clock is a lost cause.
Wg321: SultanMydin, the ‘pasar’ type of Malay lingo is normally spoken by the older generation of uneducated Chinese from Tengku Abdul Rahman’s time. However, the Chinese from Generation X and Y normally can write properly and speak fluent Malay with proper Malay grammar.
Of course, they cannot speak Malay with a Kelantanese or other local Malay accents. When the Chinese interact with Indonesian workers in Malaysia, they speak in proper Malay because the Indonesians don’t understand or speak in ‘pasar’ Malay lingo.
Of course, they are a minority of young Chinese dropouts who can hardly speak any language fluently at all. Why must anybody bother about these dropouts from Chinese society? In Chinese society, only the fittest will survive and prosper.
In fact, young Malay sometimes can’t speak grammatically proper Malay. They speak ‘rojak’ Malay mixed with a lot of English words. So why find fault with the Chinese?
Theeyes82: The main reason to this is the political landscape which has divided the nation. Vernacular schools are being targeted to divide the nation further by race. Why is that Indians and Chinese get along just fine but not the bumis?
The leaders of this country have to reflect on their agendas. Too long have we dwelled in it. Too long have we been divided by it.
Racism is spreading like a cancer. We are all Malaysians and both the ruling and opposition need to tackle this dilemma.
Neo Zypher: I am all for single stream of school system if the government acknowledges all Malaysians born in the country as bumiputera. Otherwise, it would be against the social contract that BN claims exist.
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