Our DPM: Missing the Forest for the Trees

Our DPM: Missing the Forest for the Trees


As if the pressing issue of PPSMI, the mind boggling Tun M’s learning English by trying to decipher its scientific and mathematical terminology is not enough. Our DPM must be living in another far out world of make believe to come out with another preposterous idea.


Now, he wants to introduce compulsory English at SPM level. Is he trying to divert attention from the inability to be decisive concerning the unresolved PPSMI issue? First, he caps the number of SPM subjects which is no big deal because those who take these many subjects are usually more than able to cope and consider them as challenges. In fact, taking more SPM subjects as a contest or endeavour is certainly more worthwhile than swimming or walking in freezing waters or icy poles like some amusing people who return to tell frosty tales.


Our DPM and Education Minister has certainly missed the point. It is not only English that is lacking in our student standards but they are failing as a whole in all subjects. Students somehow lose touch with education much early on even at lower primary. They seem not to possess self esteem and are unable to motivate themselves. Their families and friends do not inspire them. The ministry is too eager and over excited when it comes to A’s. But how many students drop out? Why are so many students losing out and left to degenerate to join a host of unqualified and uneducated school leavers?


Surely he is aware of the numbers who are screened and kept in the last or bottom classes so that teaching can be concentrated on those who want to learn. Teaching in a public school sometimes is a course or a bout in survival. Students have become so undisciplined as to be so atrocious.

One anecdote has it that a biology teacher asked her class on anatomy to label body parts in English on a diagram of a human body. Most students were found to have stuck the label “brain” on the body’s stomach. She sarcastically commented that that was where their brains were located!


It is not English that the DPM should be worried about. It is the standard of education that seems to fail whether at the parenting level, the schools and the community, the government itself seems to be in a sad state of paralysis instead of moving forward. It is trapped in some nostalgic trip of English as the solution for all its education woes. For the drop outs which are increasing in numbers, English is a gas and is just another brick in the wall.


Its education, dear sir, not English!
Unfortunately, the DPM is missing the forest for the trees.