Math and science in English

A few years back, our previous Prime Minister, Datuk Sri Dr Mahathir Mohd has establish a new law that is to teach science and Mathematics in English. After he stepped down from his position as the Prime Minister of Malaysia, a few protests were organized by the Bahasa Melayu scholars community, trying to force the government to demolish the law. After awhile, the government gave in and restore the original law. However, little that they know Datuk Sri Dr Mahathir Mohd strategy did work because the student’s English subject percentages blooms after a year, students suddenly improve dramatically in English vocabulary. Math and Science are important subjects that would help develop Malaysia towards achieving its goal to become a developed country. Both subjects are crucial subjects and having it taught in a language which the students and the teachers could not fully understand would hamper the learning process of the subjects. It is true that English is a widely spoken language internationally but to have a good command in English does not necessarily means that we have to learn Math and Science in English. Teaching science and mathematics in English would solve two problems simultaneously. One, considering the critical shortage of textbooks, journals, and other literature in Malay, teaching the two subjects in English would facilitate the acquisition of new knowledge by our students. With the exponential growth of new knowledge, it would be impossible to keep up solely through translations, even if we were to devote our entire intellectual resources towards that endeavour. In schools where the background English literacy level of the pupils is low as in the villages, I would have the pupils take English immersion classes for a full term or even a year. We had earlier successful experiences with this with our Special Malay Classes and Remove classes. This strategy has also been tried successfully in America for children of non-English-speaking immigrants. At the secondary level, our residential schools get the best students and teachers. Consequently the program could be more easily implemented there as the learning curve would be steep, and mistakes more readily recognized and corrected. Once the kinks have been worked out, expand the program. Another is the issue of teachers. Fortunately Malaysia has two large untapped reservoirs of talent: recently retired teachers trained under the old English-based system, and native English speakers who are either spouses of Malaysians or residents of this country. Given adequate compensation and minimal of hassles, they could be readily recruited. My point is when the government decided to do what is best for the future generation of the nation, they should not do it half way through because research and statistic of English language in schools blossom magnificently and if they firmly stands with their opinion and effort and ignore completely the thought of those who are selfish enough to only think about themselves, our nation would be a better nation. Moreover, the government should not have been alone in this situation, where are the parents, teacher and scholars who support this idea? From my point of view together we stand, divided we fall applies well in this condition.

quote of the day

sometime on you way to find your dream you might get lost but you'll find a new dream.