Malaysia’s Globalization, Educational Language Policy and Nation-Building 47
July 2009. This opposition reached new heights in early 2009 when the
Malay nationalists, headed by A. Samad Said, a national laureate, staged
a mass rally in the Federal Capital to protest against the policy and
succeeded in submitting a memorandum to the Yang di-Pertuan Agong
(His Majesty, the King). Soon after that, the government announced the
termination of the policy. Despite the strong contestation from advocates
of the policy, mostly parents from urban areas within the vicinity of the
Federal Capital, the government stood firm on its decision on the policy
(Tan and Santhiram 2014). However, the termination of the policy did not
deter efforts by the government to improve the proficiency of English among
Malaysian students. Immediately after the termination of the policy, the
government introduced the MBMMBI policy. Clearly, this new educational
language policy had resorted to the strategy of glocalization to address the
contrasting linguistic needs of the country by taking into account the stand
of the Malay nationalists vis-à-vis efforts by the government to improve
the proficiency of English among Malaysian students. It hoped to ensure
that the Malay language would not be marginalized by the increased
emphasis given to English to cope with new challenges arising from the
accelerated pace of globalization.
MBMMBI POLICY
The incorporation of the MBMMBI policy into the recently released Malaysia
Education Blueprint marked a new conjuncture in the development of
educational language policy in Malaysia. The incorporation of this policy
indicates the strong commitment of the government to ensure that Malaysian
students are equipped with Malay-English bilingual proficiency to meet
the contrasting linguistic needs of the country. The government hoped
that Malaysian students would be, at minimum, operationally proficient
in these two languages (Ministry of Education Malaysia 2013). Going by
the definition of operational proficiency provided by the Blueprint, i.e.
“the linguistic fluency required to participate fully in professional and
academic life” (Ministry of Education Malaysia 2013, pp. 4–10), it is clear
that “cognitive-academic language proficiency” (Cummins 1984, 2000),
which is closely related to literary skill (Romaine 1995), is the ultimate
target of the Blueprint. As far as the Malay language is concerned, the
Blueprint is no longer contented with the basic communicative role of the
national language to foster national integration. It has moved on to ensure