Friday, October 31, 2008

Parents group want Maths and Science to continue to be taught in English

KUALA LUMPUR:
The Parent Action Group for Education (PAGE) said it is set on trying to get the Education Ministry to maintain its policy of teaching Mathematics and Science in English.
It, however, does not advocate the abolition of vernacular schools as it respects their positions as provided for in the Federal Constitution.
PAGE chairman and founding member Noor Azimah Abdul Rahim also clarified that the group was not a governmental organisation as had been reported by certain media.
“We are merely a group of parents who want to voice our concerns about education,” she said today in response to an article in a Chinese daily that allegedly reported a representative of the group had called for all vernacular schools to be abolished and replaced with national-type schools.
This remark was supposed to have been made during the fourth round table to discuss the use of English to teach Mathematics and Science.
“The person who made the remark was a participant who was airing his own views and is not related to the group.”
Noor Azimah said the group’s main concern now was the decision that the Education Ministry would be making soon with regard to the policy of teaching Mathematics and Science in English.
“We have almost 1,000 parents supporting us from all over the country, 95 per cent of whom are for continuing the policy.”
This number is in addition to the 120 parent-teacher associations (PTAs) that had responded for, and 20 against the policy being continued.
She said it was a misconception that only urban parents were for the continuation of the policy.
A strong advocator of the policy is Mohamed Saufi Shafie, president of the 13-strong Coalition of Rawang Zone Parent-Teacher Associations, who said the PTAs under the coalition were all for the policy continuing.
Support came recently via an email from parents of a school in Long Lama, Sarawak.
The group is calling for more parents to voice their take — whether for or against the policy — by early next month to be compiled into a comprehensive report.
To contact the group, email scienceandmath@skbd.edu.my.

tunku : please email the action group at the above email adrees to show your support.teaching maths and science in english is very important for our future generation.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I support this group and will email them...I always feel there is no problem in using English in Maths and Science, so does my children think...

Tok Kemuning said...

We have to teach our children science and mathematic in Malaysia Language. Same as what the Japanese, german, france, korean and so on hav done.

If the Educational Ministry stil insist the important of english and the subject stil not been sufficiently taught so they have to introduce a more english subjet in whatever possible way.

It is about time for our leader to stop experimenting with our children.

Language should also be used for intergration of our society. Use Malaysia language to intergate our society further. See what the Indonesian government has done with Indonesian language to intergrate their thousand of ethnics. What we need is a real leader among UMNO to lead us all with this agenda.

Anonymous said...

to all parent,show your supports for the policy to continue or discontinues.this to make sure well being future of our kids.it's our kids that we are talking about here.

i dont have any problem if math and science continues to be teached in english.that doesnt mean that we outskirt the importance of bahasa Malaysia.

Unknown said...

for me there's nothing wrong about learning math and science in english.this could as well reinforces the use of english among students and teachers.