©New Sunday Times
(Used by permission)
by Ungku A. Aziz
MALAYSIAN nation building is founded on the realisation of national unity.
Education must be one of the primary influences in the achievement of this
objective. At the core of this policy is the teaching and learning of language.
Malay is the only vehicle which can ensure the achievement of genuine national unity. Simultaneously, English must be learnt in order to reap the full benefits of globalisation.
The advantages of the bilingual approach to language learning and teaching are
mainly derived from mental interaction in an environment where the two languages
are learnt at the same time.
This will stimulate the minds of children and adults who will be able to
reinforce their thinking skills as well as their memory. Fluency in Malay,
competency in English and integrative bilingualism are the key requisites for
national unity.
While it is indisputable that competency in English is essential for economic
and commercial development, there is an equal need for wide acceptance of the
one language, Malay, that can genuinely bond together all Malaysian citizens,
irrespective of their rural or urban location, race or religious background.
Two languages, Malay and English, should be taught and learnt
throughout the 11 years of education and, where possible, from the first
tertiary year. Language, for the formation of national unity, has to be taken
seriously and not given casual lip service. It should be taught for at least two
periods a week.
A thorough grounding in grammar of both languages is as important as the
development of an ever–expanding vocabulary and phraseology according to common
usage.
Very early on, every student should be taught correct chirography so that from
the start, students will write letters that have uniform shapes. Malaysian
students seem to write alphabetical letters in amorphous shapes that are often
unintelligible.
Malaysian educators and political leaders need to realise that Malay and English
each have different syntaxes, grammar and historical backgrounds. Therefore,
each needs to be learnt according to their respective languages.
The Malay language is founded on the principles of affixation (imbuhan).
One hundred and forty years ago, William Marsden (author of A Dictionary of
the Malayan Language) called them particles.
There are prefixes (pe, mer, ber, etc), suffixes (kan, i, etc) and infixes (em,
er, etc).
There are special words for the functions of place, tense, singularity and
plurality.
The significance of affixation can be easily understood. A count of items in
Kamus Imbuhan Bahasa Melayu (Fajar Bakti 2005) shows that 95 per cent of the
words were associated with an affix. Out of a total of 2,323 base words
consisting of nouns and verbs, there were 11,405 instances of affixation.
Most Malay words consist of a pair of consonants and vowels whose pronunciation
are commonly understood. But this is not the time to discuss the finer points of
Malay grammar. Incidentally, both languages have pedigrees that stretch back at
least a thousand years and include poetry that can be easily understood by
children and adults.
English grammar is the result of English history as it was formed during the
past millennium.
Malay has a history of over a thousand years during which time it discovered its
own grammar, poetry and phraseology. Malay has drawn extensively on cognate
sources that have assimilated inputs from other languages, including Arabic,
Persian, Sanskrit, Portuguese and Dutch.
There is a reasonable degree of unanimity as to the correct usage of Malay and
English among the teaching profession and the academics.
Two further points need clarification. Both languages will have to be learnt up
to the point where they can be equally understood by the beginning of the
secondary system.
The respective shares of other subjects in the timetable will have to be
appropriately reallocated.
All schoolchildren should be given the opportunity of learning other languages
in Malaysia. A distinction needs to be made between learning any language and
using a language as the main medium of instruction via Malay and English.
Insufficient attention has been given to the notion that language learning, and
indeed the accumulation of knowledge, is closely tied to the growing mental
capacity of children.
Primary children can be taught simple nouns and verbs of one or two syllables.
As they mature, they can learn more complex ideas associated with appropriate
nouns and verbs.
They should proceed from concrete words to abstract words and from simple
phrases or sentences to more complex or sophisticated expressions.
The Malaysian education system should seriously reconsider its preference for
the inductive approach as compared to the deductive approach in language
teaching and learning in Malaysia. This is more rational and likely to be more
effective in the total learning systems.
In conclusion, language learning for national unity involves three stages :
thinking, learning and using.
Some readers may raise the usual pessimistic objections and try to bury this
proposal by claiming that the three–way approach is too idealistic and not
sufficiently pragmatic. Readers should study the proposals in detail and not get
lost in the forest by giving too much attention to the twigs and leaves rather
than the roots.
One of the most dangerous death traps for this proposal is the, "yes but..." or,
"it will take too much time...". Its collaborator is a form of academic
logomachy (word–making) which can be utterly unconstructive.
The first step is to convince the political and professional elites of its
feasibility, and then students, teachers and parents will follow. Otherwise,
Malaysian pedagogy will fall into a tunnel from which there will be no escape.
It could be known as "Pedagogy in Wonderland". (With apologies to Alice and
Lewis Carroll.)
The lack of space prevents me from discussing a variety of collateral topics
such as learning in the mother tongue, whatever that may be.
Moral, faith and religious education as well as education for entrepreneurship
should be considered. Opportunities for physical activity should be provided to
students of all ages and gender in the spirit of having a healthy mind in a
healthy body.
The sensitive issue of trilateral racial polarisation should be bravely and
calmly faced. Malaysian cultural and educational trends tend to be centrifugal
(moving outwards from the centre) rather than centripetal (spiralling inwards).
National unity is constantly threatened by the rise of divisive and
dysfunctional pressures.
The strengthening of national unity would be one of the best benefits from the
adoption of the three–way approach.
Besides the widening and strengthening of vocabularies, there should be serious
efforts to interest all students, parents and, of course, teachers in expanding
their cultural horizons by reading an ever widening range of works in the
various fields of knowledge, science and literature in both languages, including
translations from a variety of languages. Reading should be enjoyed for its own
sake as well as for passing examinations.
The relative importance of the respective subjects can be discussed when this
main thesis is broadly accepted. There is neither the time nor the space to
decide now whether History, as taught in schools, should be learnt as a
compulsory subject rather than Biology or Geography.
The prime objective is to achieve competency in the two languages while other
choices should be subject to decisions that are based on rational, objective and
empirical ideas.
The fundamental role of teachers should be respected. In fact, the teaching
profession should be recognised as being on par with the civil service so that
parents and political leaders can give it due respect.
Malaysia's survival needs a clear, rational response to the resolution of
teaching and learning English and Malay within a bilingual context.
This proposal offers a unique opportunity for all Malaysian citizens to accept
the one change that could satisfy practically everybody.
Ungku Aziz is a Royal Professor