The Education Ministry plans to have more boarding and day secondary schools offering Japanese language as the third language after Bahasa Malaysia and English.
Director-general of Education Tan Sri Alimuddin Mohd Dom said for this purpose, the ministry would increase the number of teachers who could teach Japanese language.
O_o
I’m all for learning more languages, and I fully agree we should start with BM, and then prioritise English thereafter.
But Japanese for no. 3??
It’s a cool language, I’ve got nothing against it, but for sooooooooo many reasons, wouldn’t it make sense to give that slot to Mandarin and/or Tamil? I think even Arabic would be a lot better!
What plausible reason could we possibly have for prioritising Japanese over those languages? Certainly not economic ones, looking at growth prospects of the region.
I hope this is not some weird cultural politics at play. Kita ni 1Malaysia ke 1Jepun??
Guess the government has plans to send more students over to Japan for tertiery education and beyond. We already have a pretty significant student population there. Maybe this will change once we get around to recognising more universities from other places.
Lebih baik kita belajar bahasa Arab lagi bagus jepun tak nak belajar Bahasa Malaysia. kalau bahasa arab kita boleh baca Al quran Negara Malaysia Kan negara Islam.
What a stupid idea….I’m Malay and I can speak English, now I can speak little bit of cantonese and tamil ….Japanese?..how many population of Japanese in these country? Is it more than chinese or Indian? Please explain Alimuddin…
Inggeris pun sudah tak boleh tahan, mahu buat Jepun lagi? Mana otak?
Furthermore, is Japan rising or China?
Perhaps our Education Ministry missed this development: http://www.exploreasianow.com/my-interview-with-jim-rogers-prepare-by-learning-mandarin/
We should go for Arab, Chinese, Tamil….all these are better then Jepun. So far, these countries have not attack us, but Japan has attack us and killed many Malaysians. What is the rationality to study Japanese??? Ali ato, Ali ato….Ichi Ni Shi Go Rokku…sayo nana oh, sayo nana oh….
kesian TPM ni…dah ler tak popular tak pandai plak tu..Hello..??? Kat malaysia ni ada tak menteri2 yg boleh kita pakai kapla otak dia org? Most of them yg aku tau, kalu nk pelingkup negara pandai ler…GOD PLEASE help us…We, people of Malaysia are DYING waiting for a new n much better good government..we deserve for it
nat, On my personal experience in USM, for more than 30 years there were many many languages in the pusat bahasa. This including arabic, french, thai and many more foreign languages.
for some reason there were no tamil language and when enquired , the Dean said no indians will support or lack of support from students etc.
To prove a point, students volunteers became part time teacher to teach other students as a trial for this program. Mind it, it was on personal basis as no clubs even indian society not willing to undertake this issue.
So, after the 1st year with many students, the Dean said, We need to see statistics, please show us statistics. so 2nd year was full of paperworks while the students-cum teachers ran their classes on fridays 12- 3pm ( University lectures free period) for an entire year .When presented the statistics to the Dean , she simply said , you did not have exams for the students so its not proof the teaching was done properly.
3rd year and 4th year the volunteer teachers and volunteer students kept on with the private classes without fail and even streamlined 4 different levels and had exams for the students. All these were happening while they themselves had their own coursework and degree to think about. after the 5th year rejection, They realised that the authorities were simply delaying the approval so those eager for this implementation will have themselves graduated and left the varsity compound- hoping this matter will die down.
Nevertheless, the torch was passed from Seniors to Juniors who kept the work going and even recruiting chinese students at class level zero and working their way each year to the whims and fancy of the management of Pusat bahasa.
I was among those who came in year 6 and stayed on till year 9 and seeing the dedication of the teachers and unsupportive University authorities, pushed the matter to Vice-chancellor who again told us to meet the Dean. Some students even graduated and continued with their masters just to ensure the success of this project but to no avail.
No arguments were valid with them, they gave us all kind of excuses including the economic value of Thai and japanese compared to Tamil, unsupportive students once the language is offered (ironic it is because they never tried offering it in the first place).
They even had the knack to say, Students with Tamil in SPM might score high results due to low standard in the exams..
after 12 years of non-stop effort today Pusat bahasa in USM has accepted Tamil language as a paper and officially classes are run. This should have been their effort from the start , only proves that we have to struggle for what should be given to us in the 1st place.
I think Singapore got it right all along.
English is the common language for all to study. Then if you are Chinese, you have to study Mandarin, likewise the Indian will study Tamil and the Malay BM.
Firstly, the children will grow up with powerful command of English and they can compete & do business easily in the global market. Secondly, the children will retain their mother tongue & culture etc etc.
In fact I was told that in order to get into better secondary schools or university, a good command of mother tongue is a plus point. That’s how they encourage the kids not to forget their own language & culture.
Singapore has proved it right by their excellent RESULTS and we Malaysians still want to reinvent the wheel?
A stupid plan by malaysia. My son is studying at a top private secondary school in England(equivalent to MCKK)
where 35% of the students get admitted ino Oxford-Cambridge and Harvard. UK is folllowing the examples of most developed European countries,by
introducing the teaching of chinese mandarin in many primary/secondary schools .Which country in Asia has the third largest economy in the world ? China will overtake Japan soon to be second after USA. Japanes is losing its global importance and is no longer commonly taught in European schools/ uni.
Malaysia is really doing the opposite of what most developed countries are doing, stupid
Semua graduan melayu yang belajar dijepun tidak berupaya mendapat pekerjaan. jadi terpaksa lah kerajaan buka post untuk dia orang bekerja. maknanya subsidi lagi untuk bumi yang tak berkualiti ini.
1Nut in our Education Ministry had a romantic dream with a Japanese lady during the nite. He woke up in the morning and decided to propose Japanese language as the 3rd language in Malaysian schools.
I suggest to this said 1Nut to continue being in your deep romantic slumber and please don’t wake up as many will turn you to 1Peanut and feed you to a Japanese monkey.
I am so glad that chinese mandarin is taught at my son’s school upto A level. He had the options of learning french, german or spanish and i told him to choose mandarin.
All for more international languages, and more language centres, not just in KL. Nothing against the Japs either, so many years after WWII, much to learn from their culture.
However, it would be quite rational to have as official languages: BM, English, Chinese ( plus Tamil in Peninsular, Iban in Sarawak, Kadazan in Sabah).
English is the language of communication and business used by largest GLC companies, including Petronas, by multi-nationals like Shell, and some state GLCs like Sarawak Energy. These large companies offer the best paying jobs. Are we offering every graduate, including and especially the Bumiputeras, equal opportunities for the most lucrative jobs in Malaysia? What about the competitiveness of Malaysians for the best jobs on the international job market ? How competitive would we like to become in exporting our services sector, given current language policies?
English is the medium of instruction of half the subjects in Brunei schools for a fully Malay Muslim nation. The people in Brunei kampongs are able to converse quite comfortably with you in English. English is the sole language as medium of instruction in the Philippines without losing Philippines identity. India and Philippines lead in attracting the set-up of international outsourced call centres using English, thus creating thousands of jobs.
Malaysia has a distinct advantage in Chinese language education, but other nations near and far are racing to catch up. Let Malaysia use this advantage to the fullest in international competitiveness, and not be clouded by myopic local race politics.
For other foreign languages, consider all the international languages at the United Nations, designated as official,not
forgetting our emerging Asean world power, Indonesia G20 member, and the future importance of Bahasa Indonesia. BM is unlikely to have traction in the world ahead of Bahasa Indonesia.
Kuching.
saw coments on this topic here…. http://tinyurl.com/yf7vcc6
[...] comment to my post on teaching Japanese generated some interesting comments. One hypothesised that it was to support scholars who studied [...]
amboi!! gila ah meluluskan cadangan ini?! Sudah lupakah sejarah kita?! balik lah baca buku teks sejarah, muhyddin yassin….!!!!! tak tahu sejarah berlagak lagi!!!!! tak tahu malu kah!!!!!!!
hey nat, I am new to the blogging sphere here and I’m wondering how did you do the “quotes in the box” thing?
been trying to search the net for the html code but to no avail.
All I learn are (blockquote) *something* (/blockquote)
Can you send replied to me the method at –> stormsea7.blogspot.com ? just somewhere in the comment page
I don’t really want to reveal my email address here. Been getting to many spam >.<
And oh, if you are wondering, this is not some publicity stunt. I’m serious about it!
Have a nice day :D
Well, now it’s government decision to make our people smart. To my personal view, it is great to learn more languages. We can’t say that China will be overtaking Japan in these few decades. Things can change very fast and we, as human, cannot predict their existence. Japan will become a strong country, or a weak country, nobody knows. What’s wrong if we learn more? Will it cost you a price?
Look at teenagers today as Japan anime industry is huge and international worldwide mode. And teenagers love to watch anime using Japanese language, the original language, not Bahasa. I didn’t mean not to respect our mother language, but we can have another idea to promote our Bahasa. And as well, if teenager have the chance to learn, they will be happy and when they watch the anime, they won’t have the problem. I have confident that Najib will fare these well. He is a great leader that take care much of the people than himself.
As a conclusion, I do hope that Ministry of Education will carry on this project as fast as possible.
Thank you.
Why is Jawi used in our foreign Embassies instead of B.M. ?