“We should look forward instead of mourning over the mistakes made in the past.”
Masidi conceded that some of the policies in the past, on education and the English language, may have been questionable but he draws a line at looking for scapegoats or blaming what happened in the past. “We went through phases of development. It must be admitted that there were also some good initiatives and policies.”
“Our task is to find solutions to the present problems and this is where we should look forward and come up with policies to make up for what we had not done in the past.”
Masidi was taking his cue from Sarawak Chief Minister Adenan Satem on the English language. “There must be consistency in education policies and in implementation of programmes. Everyone must do their part.”
“In Sabah, every Tuesday can be English Day at the schools. Then, we can go on to have an English month.”
As far as the Sabah Government was concerned, he added, it will still accept correspondence in the English language. “Adenan mentioned that there was a Federal Minister who said that he will not entertain any correspondence if it’s not in Bahasa. The Sarawak Chief Minister pointed out that was not a good policy.”
Masidi said that his Ministry received correspondence in English all the time. “It would be difficult for us to push tourism in Sabah if we insist that all correspondence must be in Bahasa. Many of the people who write to us are not Malaysians.”
Sabah Education Director Jame Alip chipped in that “fear of being embarrassed when speaking English” was “a killer statement”. “Our students can understand English but lack confidence when it comes to speaking in the language. When speaking English, confidence is important.”
The Sarawak Chief Minister has been reported in the local media as saying that “all those policies announced by Putrajaya on allocation and putting emphasis on the English language have been failures.”
“I don’t care what Putrajaya says. We have adopted a policy in Sarawak to have English as the second language.”
Adenan said that there were thousands of graduates in Sarawak who cannot string a decent sentence in English. “We are backward by tens of years because of that.”