Sunday, December 21, 2008

RM70mil to retrain jobless grads
SHAH ALAM: The Government has approved a RM70mil grant to retrain 10,000 unemployed graduates, said Human Resources Minister Datuk Dr S. Subramaniam.
He said the grant would be used to train them in skills like communication, language and creative thinking.
“Some have good qualifications but their hurdle is language. So, we want to train them in English,” he said.
I read this in the Star the other day.
That's RM 70,000,000 of your tax dollars, ladies and gentlemen.
You can't undo what your school and social systems have done in a decade, in a short retraining course (short being relative; in this context even a year is short, me says).
In the meantime, groups are now still debating whether science and math should be taught in English, or some other language.
Let science be taught in the language of science, me says. English. The universally used medium, the language in which scientific journals are published.
Unfortunately, I think the poor standard of English is the result of politicians playing the nationalism and patriotism game while trying to make their mark, coming up with the simple conclusion that anything non-BM is bad. And now, a generation down the road they're trying to backpaddle their way probably aware that they're too far downstream for any simple solutions.