PUTRAJAYA: AS a parent and journalist who once served the beat, education is the topic closest to my heart. Unfortunately, it has also been a source of wrenching frustration and turmoil.
Like all other parents, I wanted the best for my children, but was told — and saw from a seat in the front row — that the best may not be in our public schools.
Constant change, at times politically motivated, bedevilled national and vernacular schools. Command of the English language is continuing to be in free fall. Evidence of this can be found everywhere, even in the highest echelons of academia going by articles this newspaper sometimes receives. There is that creeping sense of misplaced priorities. And for reasons many have not been courageous enough to say out loud, national schools are worryingly no longer multiracial, especially at the primary level.
Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad attempted to arrest some of these problems when he was last prime minister; his most decisive, yet divisive, solution being the teaching of Science and Mathematics in English. But that was unfortunately reversed due to pressure from Malay language nationalists shortly after his resignation.
A curious hybrid, a chimera called DLP, or the Dual Language Programme, stealthily found its way into the education system after that with some classes in selected schools allowed to teach the two subjects in English. But this is unfair, with an obvious bias towards urban schools and more urbane students.
Dr Mahathir is keenly aware of this and everything else that has come undone. If he had his way after GE14, he would have been education minister, not Dr Maszlee Malik, but the Pakatan Harapan election manifesto did not work in his favour. Expectedly, he has seen Maszlee “many, many times”.
So, will his PPSMI policy, introduced in 2002, make a return? Dr Mahathir left no doubt that it would during the interview.
The way Islamic Studies is being taught is set to undergo readjustment, too. On this, Dr Mahathir has thus far been the only Malay-Muslim politician to acknowledge the Islamisation of national schools, explain why it is not ideal, and offer a remedy. Islamic Studies takes up too much classroom time, and is not all about “going to hell”, he said, knowing full well that he will be given hell for it.
These measures are, however, not major revelations as Dr Mahathir has been unwavering on matters related to education through the decades.
So yes, like winter, change is coming. We should all brace ourselves for it, once again. But with Dr Mahathir back at the helm, what should be reassuring to us weary parents is that education is as close to his heart as it is to ours.