English? Malay? Malay? English? Manglish?

During Tun Mahathir tenure, the Government decided to change the medium for Science and Mathematics teaching from Malay language, to English. But back at 2008, Tun Abdullah revisited the module and changed it back to Malay with "Memartabatkan Bahasa Melayu, Memperkukuhkan Bahasa Inggeris". Now, the government is planning to change back its policy after many parents appealed that these subjects to be taught in English.

To me, to uphold Bahasa Melayu does not mean that we need to use it the whole time in school or in any other formal events or occasion. We need to look back at this topic with different perspective with a whole wider range of views. What is the point of having extra 8 hours in school speaking in Malay when the rest of the day, the student was chatting, talking, listening to "Bahasa Rojak" while watching movies or dramas, listening to music, either way none of them are using the correct Bahasa Melayu? Rather than teaching every subjects fully in Bahasa Melayu, we first need to correct and revised back all the Bahasa Melayu that we are listening and using in daily life.

Having Japan and France as the country models that only used their mother tongue language, I feel that this is irrelevant and cannot be applied here in Malaysia. This is because of the education and technology that we have, which we actually depends on foreign countries to grow and enhance the economy. Having prefesionals who can't speak English is not helping. We need our people to master English, so that not only it helps the knowledge transfer and communication friendly, but it also pave ways to borderless society.

Having English as our second language increase our country's marketability. In that case, the language needs to be strengthened and practiced among us more to prove that English is really so, our second language. So I really believe that teaching Science and Mathematics help to increase our graduates' confidence and being multilingual, especially the from the rural area. Multilingual should be encouraged among our students as a study claims that those who are highly proficient in two or more languages are reported to have a higher cognitive proficiency and are found to be better second-language learners at a later age than the monolinguals.

I am not saying that Bahasa Melayu needs to be sacrificed in some sort of form. It will always remain as our first language, our mother tongue language, but how are going to be the regional hub of education if this simple change cannot be applied?