Time to bring back PPSMI - PAGE

The Parent Action Group for Education (PAGE) has again reiterated its call to the government to re-introduce the policy of teaching Science and Mathematics in English. It chairperson, Datin Noor Azimah Abdul Rahim this should not be an issue anymore as most Malaysians’ mother-tongue is now English. “Most of us speak the language well now and it has become the first language or the mother tongue to most of us,” she said when contacted by Astro AWANI today. She said many parents who send their children to Tamil schools are also keen for their children to learn the two subjects in English as most of them are comfortable with the language as they speak it at home. Earlier this year, Noor Azimah told an online news portal that the time is right for the Teaching and Learning of Science and Mathematics in English (PPSMI) policy to be re-introduced in schools once again. For six years now, PAGE has been pushing Putrajaya to bring back PPSMI in national schools. PPSMI was introduced in 2003 and was abolished in 2009. The debate on the matter persists even until today particularly among academicians, parents and students themselves. Meanwhile. The Wall Street Journal reported that English is not the most suitable language to be used to teach Mathematics as its numbers are confusing. “Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Turkish use simpler number words and express math concepts more clearly than English, making it easier for small children to learn counting and arithmetic, research shows,” the paper said. “The trouble starts at "11." English has a unique word for the number, while Chinese (as well as Japanese and Korean, among other languages) have words that can be translated as "ten-one"—spoken with the "ten" first,” the report said. “That makes it easier to understand the place value—the value of the position of each digit in a number—as well as making it clear that the number system is based on units of 10,” the report added. The paper had the research done by Northwestern University school of education and social policy Prof Emerita Karen Fuson and Chinese math education expert at Texas A&M University, Prof Yeping Li in the report.