PPSMI

Pengajaran dan Pembelajaran Sains dan Matematik dalam Bahasa Inggeris

A friend of mine got back from hometown Hulu Terenganu sharing an interesting story. Story about Hulu Terenganu primary school niece and nephews whose been taught math in English and they understood and pronounce well. This is an amazing thing about children, they could easily adapt to new environment as compared to adult, while adults are resist to change or rather recalcitrant. Even though this Hulu parents or ‘Orang Ulu’ as Tun Dr M used to describe it, have nothing but to submit to non ever stopping curiosity of children asking math question in English, “Ma.. devide”, “Ma.. substract”, “Ma.. add”. So, indirectly this ‘Orang Ulu’ parents also educating, i.e. learned math in English. More beautifully these children are left to their grand parents after school, since the parents are working and so the grand parents are also educating.

I remember during my school days, I earned better grades for Physics as compared to my friend, not because I’m extra smart but I learnt from the formula. For e.g. halaju, v = d/t. As for me, I take ‘v’ is meant velocity, ‘d’ is meant for distance, ‘t’ is meant for time; and scientifically halaju or better still ‘velocity’ is a measure of distance over time; so v = d/t, and so for other formula. For those who didn’t relate to English, this may be difficult to memorise especially when we have so many formulae left to hafal. And today I graduated with a Physics degree (alhamdulillah).

By the by, don’t worry about the children, they are so adaptable. The one whose worrying is the ‘keras lidah’ adult especially the teacher. Avoid link semangat with education because both are antagonist. Semangat (melayu) is there to defend but to learn is to give-in and to accept.

This piece of gem left for us, don’t simply toss it away. Tun ‘tak rugi’ but the next melayu generation will be.

Oracle