Is the national language still under threat?

THE NST 09 MARC 09

LAT speaks for a great many Malaysians in his comment above. After decades of promoting Bahasa Malaysia as a cardinal unifier of all Malaysians, is the national language now still under threat?
The “Gerakan Mansuh PPSMI” certainly thinks so, going by its abortive march to Istana Negara on Saturday to deliver a protest against the continued teaching of Science and Mathematics in English in schools.

It should be remembered that the policy was initiated six years ago out of alarm at the deterioration of intellectual acuity among Malaysian schoolchildren in all languages, not just Malay or English or, for that matter, their mother tongues.

The teaching of Science and Maths in English is about education, not merely language. And the minister of education, having allowed this programme to run six years without apparently coming any closer to proper realisation, should seal this matter once and for all (EDITORIAL).

Maintaining a virtually open-ended “grace period” for objections has become deeply counter-productive, now that the objections have become as disgraceful as Saturday’s tear-gassed spectacle in Kuala Lumpur...