Suresh Thiru, COO of JobStreet.com, was on The Breakfast Grille yesterday, facing a tougher-than-usual line of questioning from Alan Bligh (a fate we reserve specially for good friends and affiliates). But to Suresh's credit, he moved the discussion to what became the key takeaway of the interview.
Suresh cited a recent JobStreet.com's survery of Malaysian employers on the employability of fresh graduates, a very vulnerable group during recessionary times. JobStreet.com's findings? Malaysian employers say that the No. 1 criterion for their decision on whether to hire a fresh graduate: Their command of English.
In this respect, Malaysian employers are no different from multinationals. I met Kam Raslan for a chat on his visit from Shanghai a couple of months back. I asked him for his impressions of China. Without hesitation, he said it was the image of hawkers and stallholders huddled over an English dictionary learning the language word by word. English is perceived to be the meal ticket to a great career with a mulitnational.
A nation of 1.2 billion people recognises the importance of the English language as the common language of commerce. And here we are, tiny little Malaysia, quibbling about whether or not we should continue to teach mathematics and sciences in English. That's how parochial we are.
The same afternoon after Suresh's interview, I met Andy Robinson of The Expat Group, publisher of the The Expat magazine. We were talking about the My Second Home programme, and he mentioned about how much Malaysia would stand to benefit if we just allowed people over 55 under the programme to work part-time in Malaysia. Many of them could teach English in local schools and colleges, jumpstarting our revival in the English language arena.
There are also plenty of teacher training colleges in the UK whose students would love to spend a year teaching English in a foreign country. Japan, Thailand and China welcome them with open arms. And they will work for a small living allowance. It's the experience that matters more to them.
So we have identified an important need, and several solutions.
You bet. It's on the BFM agenda.
(this post is dedicated to Mr Scarlett and Dr Kilburn, my English teachers during my secondary school days, and to Alvin Heng, an occasional commentator on this blog and the BFM forum, whom, of his own accord, took the trouble of going through the whole BFM webste and correcting our (my) grammar.