Malaysia: English proficiency will empower us

Sun Feb 17 14:07:45 UTC 2008

TUNKU ABDUL AZIZ: English proficiency will empower us
By : Tunku Abdul Aziz

IT never fails to amuse me to see our reaction to international
surveys in which Malaysia is included among countries that are put
under a microscope and examined in detail for purposes of comparison
on a range of social, economic and political issues. We waste little
time in discrediting those who show us in unfavourable light, and on
the very rare occasion when we are praised for achieving something
against the best in the world, we literally go over the top. We tend
to behave as an insecure child would who simply could not come to
terms with reality -- a forgivable failing in an immature person, but
the same traits underpinning our national behaviour and psyche suggest
a disturbing character defect. Let us confine ourselves to two
international surveys that make the greatest emotional impact on us,
the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index (TICPI)
and the Times Higher Education Supplement-Quacquar elli Symonds
(THES-QS) World University Rankings.

In the case of the TICPI, which first came out in 1995, showing
Malaysia at roughly the half-way mark but well below Singapore, the
reaction to begin with was unexpectedly hostile. Then prime minister
Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad was quick to dismiss the findings as a
Western ploy to belittle our achievements. The promoters of
Transparency International Malaysia found themselves in a frightfully
difficult position with the former prime minister firing a salvo, so
early in the day, across the bows of the good ship "Transparency". We
were upset and humiliated by the repeated accusations made by our
powerful detractors that we were part of a foreign conspiracy to
blacken Malaysia's image.

When they realised that the TICPI was an important barometer of
governance and was developing into the most authoritative single
measure of comparative international corruption, with implications for
foreign investment, their tune changed a little. If the revelations
now in the public domain are to be believed, then there is absolutely
no room for complacency. The THES-QS ranking of world universities has
done its worst to the pride and fortunes of our self-proclaimed "world
class" institutions of higher learning. It has, in one fell swoop,
destroyed the myth of intellectual excellence of our universities.

Some vice-chancellors have taken the strictures in their stride, while
the others who have thrived on, and made a virtue of mediocrity, have
not been slow to question the validity of the methodology employed.

Some outstanding work is being done in many of our universities and
they should continue to address internal weaknesses so that they will,
in time, achieve academic excellence that has so far eluded them.

Learn from the surveys but do not become obsessed with rankings. We
must first strengthen the foundation of our higher education through
policies that encourage rather than control and regulate.

Excessive controls stifle new ideas and initiatives, and it is
difficult for vice-chancellors to operate effectively in a highly
regulated bureaucratic environment.

Today, the truly great universities of the West owe their outstanding
contributions to knowledge in several important areas of human
endeavour to the freedom of action they have enjoyed, to develop
educational excellence without let or hindrance.

Politicians should not intrude into areas they least understand and in
this way, they can hold universities accountable for results.

>>From my conversations with some of the more astute vice-chancellors, I
have gained the impression that they would greatly welcome being left
to their own devices to get on with their work on a day-to-day basis.
It is a fair request.

There are today, 20 public universities and 15 university colleges in
the country. But as we all know, bricks and mortar do not a university
make: outstanding teachers attract outstanding students, and in
combination with a dose of intellectual freedom, they form the
ingredients for an ideas-challenged community of scholars.

The notion that having a doctorate is all that is required of a
university teacher is one of the reasons why our standards are
dismally low.

The output in terms of research publications in international journals
of some of our university teachers is abysmally low even by Southeast
Asian standards, so I am told.

Our future as a small nation, naturally not counting some two million
Indonesian cousins in our midst, depends for the most part on our
ability to compete with the best.

I cannot believe that we can be competitive globally unless we are
prepared to recant our stand made more than three decades ago against
the use of English as the language of instruction in our national
schools.

That policy has crippled our competitive position and Singapore stands
as a shining example of practical and sensible pragmatism. And haven't
they reaped enormous benefits from keeping standards high?

Displacing English in the name of nationalism has put this country
back at least 50 years.

The unintended victims are the Malays who can find reasonable
employment only in government agencies. With an English education,
they do not need crutches to make their way in the world.

Before I am accused of being a cultural renegade, or worse, let me say
that I am not suggesting that English should replace Bahasa Malaysia
as our national language. It is the language of the whole of the Malay
world; it is our unifying language.

I know about the argument that is being trotted out by warriors of
Bahasa Malaysia that China and Japan do not need English to achieve
global economic power. We are neither China nor Japan.

We must not forget that they are both homogenous societies with a very
long tradition of respect for scholarship and learning.

They have a great capacity to absorb scientific and technical
knowledge and have enormous resources for translating every book on
every conceivable subject into their languages. Their strengths differ
from ours and so are their social, economic and political imperatives.

Let us, as we become increasingly immersed in the globalised economy,
think in global terms so that we may meet squarely the future
challenges that are bound to come our way.

We can only do this by empowering our people to equip themselves with
the language of world trade and communication.

Make English the language of instruction, Bahasa Malaysia and Mandarin
compulsory languages, and Tamil a school subject where there is
sufficient demand for it.

This change in our education strategy would bring enormous benefits to
our young people of all races, particularly the rural Malays, whose
only opportunity for engagement with the enlightened and exciting
world of knowledge is by acquiring proficiency in English, which is
denied them.

Our universities would be transformed and would attract international
faculty members and students. We would set our students free from the
intellectual constraints, incestuousness and inbreeding that
unfortunately characterise the Malaysian campus environment.

A change of this magnitude requires of our leadership moral and
intellectual courage of the highest order, but this will make a
dramatic difference to the way we compete for opportunities: for the
Malays, doing without the reliance on government largesse for basic
survival would make them a more confident people. On reflection, if I
had been born in a kampung where education was limited to reading,
writing and arithmetic, I would be still ploughing with a water
buffalo in a padi field instead of annoying a lot of people with my
opinion column in English. And if you, my readers, had not been
exposed to the English language, you would be spared the pain of
reading all this. Worth thinking about.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The writer is a former president of Transparency International
Malaysia and a former special adviser to the United Nations
Secretary-General on Ethics. He can be contacted at tunkua at gmail.com

http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Sunday/Columns/2160307/Article/index_html

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