Revert to English medium in schools, urges author
Published on: Sunday, October 13, 2019
By: Oswald Supi
PENAMPANG: Our education system should revert to English medium of instruction to overcome the lack of command of the language amongst our young generation, for their future and the progress of our country.
This is the view of Bryan Paul Lai who launched his third book “Moving On” at Sabah Credit Building, Donggongon.
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The importance of English is proven by parents sending their children to private schools and institutions when they can afford the cost, he said.
Bryan, the Deputy President of Sabah Government Pensioners Association, was formerly “Guru Besar” of SRK St Patrick Tawau. The term Principal was not used then, he said adding he started teaching at Semporna in 1969.
He maintained his excellent in spoken English by listening to Radio and TV programmes and reminded that learning is a continuous process even after retirement.
“Our brain is like the computer hard drive, it is full of data and some good data needs to be downloaded to other storage devices such as pendrives. For me the pendrive is a book,” he said.
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His latest book was written within a year after he moved to Kota Kinabalu from his hometown of Sandakan and contains historical informations of Penampang and Kota Kinabalu with the help of his many friends and acquaintances.
He had written two other books, “Joy of Life” and “Glance of Tawau in Sixties”.
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The old books are only available at amazon.com while the latest is available at bookstores of Wisma Merdeka, Airport and via the association.
Bryan was born in Sandakan in 1943 and survived the Japanese occupation of Sabah.
“My mum had to marry at 17 to dad who was 18 just to prevent being taken away by the Japanese soldiers, he said. My dad worked as a medical assistant under the British and was arrested by the Japanese for secretly giving medicine to the Australian Prisoners of War detained at the infamous Sandakan POW camp.
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