THE MALAY MEDIUM POLICY: THE MALAYSIA’S EXPERIENCES RELATED TO FISHMAN’S MODEL

The aim of this study is to examine the development and the implementation of Malay medium policy in the Malaysia Education System, and it’s relation to Fishman’s model and multilingual society. Emerson (1957) Furnival (1948) Chopra (1974) contended that Malaysian plural society was divided in almost every respect. As a plural society, nation building or national integration (Ibrahim, 1985) was considered of the utmost importance in Malaysia. Fishman (1968) developed the concept of nationalist-nationist functions of language in nation-building. Since independence, the Malaysian leadership has believed that education is critical for national integration. It is generally believed that schools inculcate the child with values and facts, which are supportive of national ideology. The present study focuses on the process of development and the implementation of Malay medium policy in Malaysia. The performance of Malay-medium of Instruction universities (UKM, UTM and UPM) at post-graduate level was amazing. They had proved the ability to get Masters and Ph.D or degree in medic specialist from overseas and local universities. UKM had produced 272 theses at post graduate level since 1994 which 247 theses at master level and 25 Ph.D theses. Since 1995, UKM was producing about 200 theses at post-graduate level yearly. Usually there are thousands of Malay language theses from public universities in science after 1990. The thousands of theses in Malay language indirectly showed the ability of Malay language in education and its world class standard. The Malay scholars had created a lot of terms in biology especially for animal and tree name. For example, since 2001 Dr. Mohammad Salleh a world standard professor from entomology, UKM had created hundred of terms in Malaysia. A part of beetle were being names with Malay words such as Arthrotus hijau, Atrachya hitam, Dercetina bopeng, Itylus biru, Ophrida kuning, Monolepta merah, and Sphenoraia tompok; and other words such as Sarawakiola ajaib, Medythia bukit, Monolepta cantik, Nadrana dwiwarna, Podontia jalur, Pseudosastra indah, Monolepta kenit, trichomimastra kurnia, Xenoda lapan, Paleosepharia lawa, Metrioidea molek and Liroetiell warisan; and from place such as Aplosonyx pahangi and Malay name such as Arcaries ismaili. This study using interviews with persons directly involved in the process of education in Malaysia examines a number of scholarly publications and other primary sources of information.