dibawah pokok demokrasi

Saya amat suka dengan idea menamakan Pokok Demokrasi secara rasmi dan menanam lima anak pokok yang diberi nama Amanah, Adil, Telus, Kebajikan dan Wibawa. Saya berasa amat bangga dengan tindakan simbolik ini oleh rakan-rakan sepejuagan saya. Walaubagaimanapun, saya berasa amat sakit hati membaca teks yang tertara pada plak di bawah pokok itu, dengan penggunaan Bahasa Melayu yang kekok berserta dengan kesilapan tatabahasa.

Saya bukannya pakar Bahasa Melayu, bahkan saya mengaku bahawa saya tidak begitu fasih dengan bahasa kebangsaan kita. So I guess I’m no better, so aptly reflected in this sentence where I have to switch back to English once the discussion starts getting complicated. Perhaps it’s a symptom of how the national education system has failed me. All my years in school when I was using Malay on a daily basis, I never really needed to think or reason. I’m guessing most of my analytical skills were honed outside of school where the operating language was English in my case; which brings to mind, other than Bahasa Inggeris, all subjects in school were taught in Malay and yet my command of the language is still pretty pathetic, so I’m guessing that any improvement in English proficiency by teaching kids Science and Mathematics in English would be minimal at the cost of losing terms like janjang, pengamiran and persenyawaan ganda dua.

Getting back to Pokok Demokrasi, I guess it’s just a publicity stunt and I can’t expect too much from it.