STPM Bahasa Melayu textbooks risk racism

Publisher to recall STPM books with wrong facts about Tamil language.

Malaysia's Deputy Education Minister, P. Kamalanathan said that Oxford Fajar Publication has apologised for the error and promised to withdraw its Form Six Bahasa Melayu textbooks from all stores nationwide.

In a post on his Facebook account last night, Kamalanathan said he met with the senior management of the publisher – Oxford Fajar Publication – and voiced his “displeasure and the Indian community’s anger and hurt” at the factual errors in the book.

“They have apologised for the factual discrepancy and have instructed for the books to be recalled immediately from all book stores in Malaysia. Oxford Fajar Publication is also taking full responsibility for this error,” he posted.

Kamalanathan added that he had also requested the company to investigate how the erroneous facts had been published, and asked them to present a report to him on the matter.

“I am also reminding all other publications that have similar factual errors to rectify them immediately.”

A screenshot of the erroneous fact in the STPM textbook – that the Tamil language had “borrowed” from other languages – went viral on social media yesterday.

The offending paragraph reads: “The borrowing of Tamil words is not that prominent in the Malay language. This is because the Tamil language borrowed from other languages such as Greek, Portuguese, English and Eastern languages.”

Tamil, in fact, is acknowledged as one of the world’s oldest languages. The two earliest manuscripts from India, acknowledged by Unesco, were written in Tamil.

Kamalanathan had earlier said the book had nothing to do with the Education Ministry and was published by a private company.