Etems should go on !

Since the year 2003, English has been the medium of instruction for the teaching of Science And Mathematics in our Malaysian schools. So much effort and money have been spent to give this winning edge to our students to compete on the world platform. Given more exposure, our students are of course better in terms of delivering the English Language and this year’s UPSR results should not be the determining factor for doing away with English as the medium of instruction.The success of the implementation is not only measured by means of academic results!

I can still remember the plentiful Etems ( English for the Teaching of Mathematics and Sciences ) courses which were conducted nationwide, computer competency courses to create multimedia teaching resource materials, all the computer hardwares to facilitate fun learning and printed and electronic modular aids to facilitate the teaching of these two-six subjects in English. All these are extra effort put up collectively by the educationists to achieve the common goals for our children. How can we just throw everything away to waste when we shift the medium back to Bahasa?

The other justification is the world is getting very competitive and most references for the Science and Mathematics fields are in English. How can our children perform well globally when they have not mastered the international language? Added to this, all the internet resources are in English and in this fast changing world many other printed materials are now going online via this electronic medium. Many ideal competitions and projects are posted in English in the internet to train our young children to be innovative and creative.

The real problem to the issue is that most people are resistant to change, the authority entertains public viewpoints and the delivery system wants an easy way out. Why can’t we just leave educational matters to the expert educationists? The implementation of this medium of instruction is not carried overnight but instead a lot of time and money is given to it.

Zooming down to the problems , the teachers and education officers must play a more committed role. The tagline for a good solution should be analyse-discuss-innovate-coach. In this direction, action researches should be carried out by every school at school level to overcome the problems encountered in the apects of students studying and the teachers teaching. There is no one solution for all schools .Thus such studies are important to track down each school’s immediate problems. The monitoring of the programmes proposed is also important because our system usually carries out programmes and activities which are not monitored for evaluation of the effort made. In short, we must not do the same things day in day out.