A Doctor in The House: A Memoir of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad (116 page)

After the 1969 riots, Malays generally became more intensely conscious of being Malay, the religious dimension of which was important. Levels of Islamic commitment and ritual observance increased, attendance at Friday prayers rose, and there was a constant demand for mosques to be built. There was also strong pressure to provide better religious instruction within the schools. The Colonial Government’s English Secondary Schools had not included religious knowledge in their curriculum. The mission schools had taught Christian scripture, which even the Malay students had to study, but Islamic religious knowledge was not part of their curriculum. The Government now introduced Islam as a subject and since it would not be mandatory for non-Muslims, classes in moral education were provided for them instead. Although I was Minister of Education, the details of the Islamic syllabus were determined by Pusat Islam.
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I assumed that the religious curriculum would broadly cover all the teachings of Islam. If done properly, teaching the Islamic way of life (
ad-din
) would encourage students to become upright and diligent. Ritual instruction would not be neglected but would be just a part of Islamic instruction, enabling Muslim students to learn and perform all their religious rituals to gain merit for the afterlife. But other non-religious subjects would receive proper attention.

Unfortunately, the syllabus that was adopted neglected instruction in the Islamic way of life and its character-building values. Emphasis was instead placed largely on the proper performance of rituals. Islam was taught as a religion of ritual, of dos and don’ts, of formalistic requirements and prohibitions, not as a religion of far-reaching human and moral responsibility, not as a way of life. Worse, many of the Islamic religious teachers were supporters of PAS, who took the opportunity—and abused their position and public trust—to implant their political creed and outlook into the minds of their young students.

Although religious teachers were of junior status in most schools, they were powerful. Even the head teachers dared not discipline them for fear of being accused of failing to respect religion. When religious teachers required students to perform additional prayers and to recite religious texts for the whole night when the children should be doing their homework instead, head teachers were unable to override them. These religious teachers insisted that the children wear uniforms that they considered Islamic. Girls practically ceased to play games. In some schools the boys had to wear skull caps even when playing during recess.

Meanwhile, the Government decided that although the national language of Bahasa Malaysia should be the medium of instruction, English had to be a very important second language which everyone must learn and master. But many Malay students, encouraged by young activists and older-style nationalists, decided that knowing only Malay was sufficient for them. They didn’t even need to learn it properly as it was their mother tongue. It was enough to know their own local dialects and they were not concerned about mastering modern written and spoken Malay. Very quickly, Malay students became less proficient in their own language and had little command of English to boot. But Chinese and Indian students studied both Malay and English assiduously, while also using their respective mother tongues. These worrying developments took hold largely after I had ceased to be the Education Minister. But there was an exception: the MARA Institute of Technology (ITM), which was developed from the Rural Industries Development Authority (RIDA) training schools, was allowed to use English in its classes. ITM developed into a very big institution—when it became a university it had more than 100,000 students, all of them Malays or other indigenous citizens. Thanks to their familiarity with English, many ITM graduates have been able to pursue postgraduate studies abroad and have done well in life.

I have defended and struggled on behalf of the Malay language as devotedly as any Malay nationalist, if not more so. As far back as the 1940s I was already fighting for the use of the Malay language. I wrote in the 
Straits Times
 that Malay was not just the language of five million people in Malaya but the language of 120 million people in Indonesia at that time. I dearly wanted Malay to be recognised as a major world language, but with age and experience I realised that a language would only spread if the people speaking that language were successful in life. Then others would want to learn their language too, to enter into their mental universe and cultural world and benefit from sharing in their wisdom.

At one time the Arabs who developed Islamic civilisation were regarded as incomparably knowledgeable, not only in religion but all other fields of knowledge. As a result most people in the Muslim world, extending from Spain to Central Asia, learnt and used Arabic. The Jewish philosopher Maimonides (or Ibnu Maimun) wrote all his work in Arabic. The Europeans also learnt Arabic to gain access to the intellectual wealth of the great libraries in Cordoba and Baghdad, where the works of Greek philosophers, scientists and mathematicians, translated into Arabic, had been preserved for later ages and other peoples. Strangely, just when the Europeans were learning Arabic, the Muslims decided to pursue no other knowledge except religion and, as a result, Arabic ceased to be an important language of new and living knowledge. It was replaced by Latin and later by other European languages. Arabic became the language of ancient knowledge and wisdom, of an increasingly beleaguered religious tradition, and of an arrested and stagnating civilisation.

Similarly, the use of the English language spread because the English-speaking people were the most successful in colonisation and empire-building. One of those British colonies gained independence and became the most powerful nation in the world, capable of exerting its will and promoting its agenda on a global basis. The US is now responsible for the continued usage of English as the primary language of knowledge and international relations. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and South Africa have also contributed to its world standing, as have the people of the Caribbean. The vast bulk of all scientific knowledge that has been produced and communicated worldwide is now in English. Even the once great national scientific traditions of the Germans, French, Dutch, Russians and Italians, among others, must now project themselves internationally in English, as do the newer scientific cultures of such dynamic countries as Japan and South Korea.

If Malay is to become an international language then the Malay-speaking people must be successful in every way, particularly in pioneering new knowledge. But as a realist I had to admit that Malays are not notably successful in life nor are they the authors of new knowledge. To do that, we will first have to learn from others. The Europeans had to learn Arabic in order to catch up with the Arabs of the days of the great Islamic civilisation. Now, in the same way, Malays must learn English. We can and should learn other languages too, but the inescapable reality is that English is now the lingua franca of knowledge and international commerce.

When looking into the problem of the rising number of unemployed graduates in the late 1990s, the UMNO Supreme Council discovered that part of the problem was that so many of them could not speak English. Some council members suggested that we return to teaching everything in English, but this proposal was rejected after much debate. Still, everyone felt something had to be done to make Malay graduates employable. Malay students had to take the learning of English in their schools more seriously, just as the non-Malay students seemed to do. But many council members felt that as long as English was not a compulsory subject, students would still get the required number of A’s for admission into the local universities without doing well in English. We finally decided that some key examination subjects should be taught in English. As most areas of modern applied knowledge were in English, we felt that the best options would be Science and Mathematics.

There were other reasons for choosing Science and Mathematics to be taught in English. Most other subjects taught in schools are relatively static, i.e. they don’t change much and little new knowledge is added with the passage of time. But science in particular changes and advances rapidly, so that old knowledge can be actually displaced by new knowledge added almost every day as research is carried out. Almost all this new knowledge is produced in the English language. It is quite impossible to have all of this translated into Malay. We just don’t have people qualified in the different fields and fluent in both scientific English and Malay to do this. If there are, they would not want to spend a lifetime translating research papers and books. Failure to gain access to new scientific knowledge would mean we would be left behind. But if we study science in English, each scientist would be able to access the latest findings in his particular field by himself.

Conferences in the various scientific fields are held frequently, and participation in scientific discussion worldwide needs the mastery of scientific English. Even the use of Malay versions of English scientific terms will not work.

Furthermore, some Malaysians may want to go for further studies in foreign universities. In most instances teaching in these institutions would be in English. Without mastery of scientific English they will not be able to benefit from these studies. It is the same with mathematics. While mathematics does not change much in terms of content, the applications of mathematics have increased in many fields. It would not be possible to launch a satellite without mathematical calculations of force, trajectory and time. All this mathematical knowledge is available in English. There has yet to be advanced work on mathematical calculations in Malay. And we need many textbooks and papers on advanced mathematics.

For all these reasons I had strongly supported the teaching of Science and Mathematics in English. Malaysians must be as knowledgeable in science and mathematics as the people in developed countries if we wish to achieve Vision 2020.

The teaching of the two subjects was switched to English in 2003, just before I stepped down from office. When introducing anything new in schools, a recurrent problem is the need to begin in the lowest classes and to work gradually upwards as the students are promoted. Once a change is introduced in the lowest classes, it takes 11 years before pupils at all the school levels have been exposed to it, which meant it would take a long time before we could assess the success or otherwise of the change. There was another option: computer software could be designed so that the switch to English for Science and Mathematics could be done in all classes simultaneously. The teachers themselves need not be fluent in English. While teaching their own special subjects they could also improve their command of English together with their students. Whether the Ministry of Education actually took this course of action, I do not know, for they were still looking for retired teachers who used to teach in English. This may solve part of the problem but there are unlikely to be enough older teachers with the necessary experience available.

I have come in for a lot of condemnation by Malay language nationalists and there were many calling for Science and Mathematics to be taught in Malay again. Critics said that six years on, the policy had only opened up a gap between urban and rural students, and that Malay students were falling behind in the two subjects because their grasp of English was just not good enough. The Government resisted acceding to that political pressure for a time, but on 8 July 2009 Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin announced the Cabinet decision to revert to teaching the subjects in Bahasa Malaysia in 2012. I believe that this is a mistake. Education is not just about developing the language but also about acquiring all kinds of knowledge.

Apart from the employability of the graduates, there was also the problem of bringing schoolchildren of different races together. Ever since the English-language schools were converted to National Schools, most Chinese and Indian students ceased to mix with Malay students. Public universities draw students from all the communities, but on campus they do not integrate. The Islamic Studies faculties in Government universities have discouraged Malays from mixing with non-Muslims in the hostels, suggesting that contact or even close proximity with non-Muslims is polluting. The Chinese students also avoid staying in the same dormitories or hostels with the Malay students. This failure of local university students to mix bodes ill for the future of the country. If they create separate enclaves and parallel social spaces on campus, they will reproduce the same kind of racial separation in society at large after they graduate. Far from fostering the development of a cohesive multiracial society and encouraging a capacity in all students, especially Malays, for inter-ethnic interaction and sociability, our universities will instead ensure that the divisive educational streaming by race is carried forward from the primary and secondary levels and perpetuated through the universities to all areas of everyday public life. Malaysians cannot live within their racial compartments. In a multiracial society, it is important that they become familiar with one another while still young. If the schools cannot do this, then our universities should. If they don’t, then it will never happen.

Earlier, I had suggested a new approach: multi-school campuses or educational precincts that would be known as Vision Schools. The idea was that we would build schools for the three main races within the same campus. In these compounds, students would attend classes in separate schools according to their language preference, but they would be brought together for certain school activities. School assemblies would be in a common assembly hall for all three schools. They would play games together but they would be divided into teams, not according to their schools or race. Each team would have a mix of students from all the schools. All non-academic activities would bring together the different students as participants while ignoring the divisions between their respective schools. Many school societies might also draw together students from all three schools.