PPSMI's Soft Landing..

Soft landing... from NST This is the most confusing soft landing. The scrapping of PPSMI will start in stages, beginning in 2012 for Year One, Year Four, Form One and Form Four. Form Six and matriculation students are not involved.

Okay, so if you are in Year 5 in 2012, does that mean that you still have the option of learning Maths and Science in English? Then in 2014, when this batch moves up to Form 1, they switch to BM. This is followed by 5 years of instruction in BM and if they choose to do Form 6, it's back to English! This has got to be the craziest thing I've ever heard. I wonder whether we can find another country with a swing like ours.

Our kids hang like a yo-yo and is bounced around. Some of them are going to end up quite confused... either that or they're going to be great at doing translation job in future.

The MOE should realize by now that is actually quite a large group who wants the medium of instruction for these 2 subjects to be in English. Else, you won't have schools like SK Bukit Damansara and SMK Sri Hartama trying to hold their EGMs to voice out their desire for the continuance of PPSMI. And the school authorities actually locked them out because they did not want the EGM to take place. Aren't parents stakeholders too? And if they are, why isn't the Government listening to them also?

There are other schools as well like SMK St Francis, SMK Gajah Berang, SMK Tinggi St David, SMK Canossa Convent, SMK Infant Jesus Convent, SM Catholic, SMJK Tinggi Cina, AM Yok Bin, SMK Tun Tuah, SM Pulau Sebang, Sekolah Tinggi Methodist Melaka and SMK (P) Methodist Melaka who want to convene their respective EGM regarding this matter. Who says the majority want PPSMI to be reverted? The silent majority is now trying to speak out and the Government is trying to silent them by locking them out of the schools.

Why can't the Government just liberalize the education sector... let the parents have a choice. Let those schools who want to continue in English, carry on. If the vernacular schools insist on their mother tongues, then let them continue. Let there be a choice.

In a couple of years, we'll know what the people really want cos by virtue of the demand and supply, schools that do not cater to the needs will just fade away. I fail to understand why the Government insists on being so rigid in this matter. Liberalization of the choice of the language of instruction should be the way to go! It's not going to make the young ones less Malaysian than they are now. We're already in a sorry state cos even the Government is not consistent....

...soft landing. Yeah! Right! More like a merry-go-round a bush; a confusing one that is and that sadly is the Malaysian Way.

Update 18th August: Finally, from the NST, some more clarification on the soft landing... we sure are going to get truly confused kids.