English in Science and Maths is Not the

Issue
The policy of teaching science and mathematics in English is under fire again, and all
the ugly politics of language and race have come to the fore once more. But the big
problem here is not with the policy—it is with the way we have carried out the policy.
Our education system has many major problems, but going back to teaching science
and maths in Malay, Mandarin and Tamil will not be solving more than a few short-
term difficulties. Ultimately we learn languages to communicate, and no language is
as important for global communication as English—but none of the proposals on the
table right now do anything to address the fundamental failures in how we teach
English.

Although I think I personally benefited in school from learning science and maths in
English instead of Malay, I have never had a very strong opinion on the question of
the right medium of instruction. A lot of the concepts in science and maths are
expressed in their own unique language, and so it's not a big deal whether we speak
Malay, Mandarin, Tamil or English in the classroom. The important question is
whether teachers and pupils can communicate effectively using whichever language
we wind up choosing.

I don't put a lot of stock in other arguments for or against the present policy of using
English. The argument that using English in science and maths somehow improves
English-speaking and –writing skills is completely preposterous; maybe it applies at
the secondary level, but in primary schools where the students have no English skills
to improve, all they will do is sit in the classroom completely ignorant of what's going
on. The argument that using English in the classroom will destroy the rich linguistic
and cultural heritage of our country is equally preposterous; most Malaysians do not
speak English as a native language. It is ridiculous to think that learning new things in
a different language will somehow make us forget our real mother tongues. No, the
most important question when it comes to the language debate is which language will
help our children learn better.
And while we can argue about the answer to that in theory, the big problem here is
that the government chose to implement this policy without adequately preparing
anyone for it. Pupils in Year One who have never spoken English before in their lives
should not be expected to learn science and maths in English. And teachers who can
barely speak English properly themselves should not be expected to teach science
and maths in English. Yet these impossible demands are exactly what the
government expects of students and teachers.

I think that under ideal circumstances, at the primary level, students should learn the
basic necessities of daily life in their true mother tongues. Those who speak only
Punjabi or Teochew or Malay or whatever at home should learn in their mother
tongue, while also taking (at a minimum) English and Malay remedial classes. As
they progress, more English and Malay should be introduced into the curriculum up
to the point when they are sufficiently comfortable in both languages to learn in either
of them. That is what we would ideally do.

In the real world, we can't do this; catering to the individual language idiosyncrasies
of each family is impossible. But we can come close: we can still at least focus
strongly on the poorest students' language skills while they are still in primary school,
so that at some point they will be able to cope with regular classes. The problem with
the present English policy is that we do not have remedial classes to fix students'
English, and so they can easily go through the whole school system without actually
learning any useful science or mathematics.

And reverting to the old policy will not solve this problem. It will not change the fact
that the quality of English instruction in our school system is so horrid that even most
of our teachers cannot string a proper English sentence together, when the whole
reason we teach English is because we want a nation of people who can at least
handle the basics of both Malay and English. And it will also not change the fact that
even among the Chinese and Indians of this country, there are many other dialects
and languages which constitute "mother tongues," and that for many people,
Mandarin and Tamil are as foreign as Swahili or Japanese. Both the present policy
and the old policy are not suited to the diversity of our country, because they appear
to have been dreamed up by people completely ignorant of how real Malaysians live.
I don't care what language you teach science and maths in; I only care that it is one
which students and teachers can communicate effectively in. Right now, English
does not meet that criterion—but neither do any of the other languages we are
considering. Our history ensures that no language has a 100% penetration rate; the
closest we have to that is the national language, Malay. So regardless of which
language we pick as a medium of instruction, we are going to need a lot of intensive
classes to prepare students to learn in that language.

For a lot of people in the upper- and middle-classes like myself, this is a problem that
is easy to ignore. We have kindergartens and pre-schools to ensure that our kids
know enough rudimentary Malay, Mandarin, Tamil, or English to cope with their
schooling. But a lot of lower-class families do not have this advantage—and
ironically, their children are the likeliest to need this extra help. As long as we ignore
this problem, no language policy is going to be truly effective.

What seems likely right now is that the government will switch back to the old policy
for primary schools, while maintaining English in secondary schools; I think this is
maybe the best compromise we can hope for. We are fully capable of teaching
students how to communicate using Malay, Mandarin and Tamil, and by the time
students transition to English in secondary school, they will have had enough
exposure to it at the primary level to not be completely lost in the classroom. Ideally,
since students have six years of exposure to Malay and English in primary school,
they would be able to use either language in secondary school.

And so if this exposure is sufficient, I see no objection to using English to teach

science and maths at the secondary level: it lets students continue practicing their
English skills. But I remain worried, because ultimately, our present level of English
instruction is not sufficient: we can't prepare teachers capable of teaching in English,
so can we really hope to prepare students capable of learning in English? And even if
we finally revert to teaching in Malay or another language instead of English at the
secondary level too, that just shoves the problem of English under the carpet. This
problem will not go away: we need to fundamentally improve the quality of English
instruction in our school system.
ANALYSIS OF THE PART OF SPEECH

Part of
Function or "Job" Example Words
Speech

(to) be, do, like, work, teaching, can,

Verb action or state
must

Noun thing or person Classroom, school, teacher, pupils

Adjective describes a noun A, an ugly, lot

Strong, effectively, adquately,

Adverb describes a verb, adjective or adverb
properly, ironically

Pronoun replaces a noun We, i, it

Preposition links a noun to another word To, at

Conjunction joins clauses or sentences or words But, and, when

short exclamation, sometimes inserted

Interjection -
into a sentence