Reading Malaysia from another perspective

After reading about the appalling decline of Malaysians' command of English *, which I would equate to loss of one of Malaysia's greatest national treasure, and musing over the most questionable orientation of the controlled main stream media's line of reporting, I decided to look up to a Singapore newspaper for a different perspective.

Lo and behold, in 28th December's edition of Today, I found a relevant article.

click the picture to get a larger image

The article mentioned that mainland Chinese students are eroding the advantage of Singaporean students' superior command of Engish. The article I quoted earlier already mentioned the significant gulf between Singapore Primary 4 English curriculum as compared to form I contents in Malaysia.

What can Malaysia do, faced with such fierce competition?

The article highlighted a significant advantage Singapore has - having a multi-cultural background hence having a more adaptable and flexible mindset.

Actually Malaysia can claim to be more multi-cultural than Singapore, Malaysian Chinese definitely mix with more non-Chinese compared to their Singapore counterparts...and yet our multi-cultural heritage and advantage are being labelled as a threat, an intrusion, an invasion and a robbery. Talk about killing the goose that lay the golden eggs.

One would wonder the motive of such people dealing in currency of communal politics.

For decades, the bumiputera community is given protection and told incessantly that they cannot compete openly and fairly. Well competitiveness, independence and endurance is moulded via throwing people into deep end, rather than via overprotection and constant talking down to.

Just look at what South Koreans do to beef up their boys. How should Malaysia education and social systems teach the population to be tough, mentally as well as physically?


In the same newspaper, Malaysia was mentioned in these 2 reports....which makes me wonder...what would a foreigner think, after reading abou the first 2 articles? Would they like to invest or visit our beloved country? Would they have confidence in basing their employees, assets, families and future in Malaysia?

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* As quoted by Mrs Sheela R

To illustrate further, I would like to produce an extract from a Year 4 primary school English textbook used in Singapore (which incidentally was used by my son in his Malaysian school as a supplementary text, at the equivalent grade level):

“Archeologists use certain ‘clues’ on the surface of the ground to search for the remains of the past. These include mounds, depressions or ancient buildings. On land and under the sea, remains of human civilisations were often buried in layers of mud, dirt and over the years, these have become embedded in rocks. Erosion by wind and rain can sometimes uncover ancient objects- pottery, flint, bones, tools or even coins.”

Now contrast this with the English literature component recommended for secondary schools (Form 1) for the forthcoming year.

A picture book (stylised after graphic novels) based on an oversimplified version of a Sherlock Holmes mystery novel. Questions which are featured at the end/throughout each chapter are rudimentary at best. I reproduce below a question, verbatim:

What job do they do? Use the job titles below to complete the sentences.

police officer detective doctor

a) Sherlock Holmes is a_______________
b)Dr Watson is a medical _________________
c) Inspector Lestrade is a ___________________