http://www.heraldmalaysia.com/news/jawi-was-used-in-schools/51299/5
9 January 2020
The First Bishop of Kuala Lumpur, Rt Rev Dominic Vendargon, laid the Foundation stone for the newly built Catholic High School building in Petaling Jaya, on April 13, 1958.
KUALA LUMPUR: The First Bishop of Kuala Lumpur, Rt Rev Dominic Vendargon, laid the Foundation stone for the newly built Catholic High School building in Petaling Jaya, on April 13, 1958. The linguistic scripts used on the commemorative stone were in Jawi (not Rumi), English and Chinese. There are pieces of evidence that some of the early Bible translations were written in Jawi. The Father of Malay Literature Sir Munshi Abdullah translated the Gospel of Matthew in Jawi. This text is kept safely in the British Museum in London.
It was only in 1966 that the then-Education Minister, Tan Sri Mohamed Khir Johari abolished the teaching of Jawi script as a com pulsory subject in schools, which resulted in a decline of its usage.
In July 2019, the Education Ministry announced that Jawi would be taught in all schools nationwide, including Sekolah Jenis Kebangsaan Cina (SJKC) and Sekolah Jenis Kebangsaan Tamil (SJKT).
This decision was to include the khat — the art of Jawi calligraphic writing — to the year 4 Bahasa Melayu syllabus.
Some members of the public strongly opposed the decision due to fears of Islamisation. Some people have misunderstood the use of Jawi and khat in schools. Jawi is an old script that has been used in the writing of Bahasa Melayu for years and with the com ing of the Western colonisers Bahasa Melayu was also adapted to the Latin alphabet a.k.a Rumi. Khat is just the calligraphical art of writing Jawi. Historically, Jawi came from the influence of early Arabic traders who travelled to this region sometime around the 13th century.
They translated the Arabic literary works into the Malay language using Jawi.
In that sense, the Arabic influence of Jawi on the Malay language is no different from that of the introduction of Rumi (the Roman alphabet) as the written script for Bahasa Melayu by Portuguese explorers in the 1500s.
The teaching of Jawi and khat in schools are about our nation’s palaeographic history! – Agencies
(End)
