Omitting English from Elementary School, Necessary?

When I read the article in the  Jakarta Post, ‘Goverment will omit English from Elementary school’. I was startled and I think that the reason was not clear to omit English lesson for Elementary school, because nowadays English is a languange that needed by everyone even the elementary school student.  Deputy Education and Culture Minister, Musliar Kaslim gave the reason that Elementary school student can’t learn two or three foreign languanges in the same time and also goverment states teaching English should be taught after the students have mastered in their native languange (Indonesian) because the goverment wants to be more focus in applying character education for Elementary school than applying English.

In those statements, I totally disagree, it seems that the goverment assumes English can influence students’ character, I think it can not be measured and I believe that Elementary student can learn two or three foreign languanges in the same time,because in Elementary school, English lesson will be  taught about ‘Basic English’ such as alphabet ,number, animal and etc, it will not be taught about ‘Grammar, tenses or linguistics.  If English lesson is taught when students graduate from Elementary school (Junior high school) , I think they will have some difficulties to learn English, because they haven’t known English before, notwithstanding there are many English courses in the outside but not all the students can learn English in English course, most of English course has ‘High price’ and we all know students come with different background.

So, as a student of English Education, I think the goverment’s assumption to omit English for Elementary school is not the way to enhance student’s competence or to develop student’s character. 

Izoel