English for teaching Math and Science?

By Sim Kwang Yang

The Ministry of Education is supposed to be making a decision on whether English will continue to be used to teach math and Science in our schools some time in July.  But the public seems as divided as ever, if opinions expressed in the mainstream and alternative media are an indication.

After finishing my Chinese primary school, my mother decided that I would have a better future.  So she transferred me to an English school in the 1960s, when all subjects were taught in English.

Sometime in the 1970s, the federal government made a decision that all government schools should use Bahasa Malaysia as the sole language of instruction, in the hope of uniting the multiracial people of Malaysia with one tongue, and in fulfilment of the nationalist aspiration for the promotion of the national language as is narrated by UMNO.

Then, a few years ago, while Dr. M was still the prime minister, he made the decision that English should be used to teach math and science, to equip Malaysian students with this language skill for a competitive world.  He did this without much consultation with experts and the stake-holders.

So now, educators and parents are up in arms again, torn in an emotional divisive debate that seems to go nowhere.  Those who favour the use of

English give the usual argument about how a handle on the English language will improve the chance of children’s survival on the job market in future. Their opponents argue on nationalist sentiments.  The twain shall never meet.

I have often been asked in private about what I think of the controversy.  In order not to offend anyone, I will just say both sides are partly right, and partly wrong.

First, let us rule out the implausible by a process of elimination.  In multiracial Malaysia, having a common tongue is no guarantee for national unity.  All those MPs in our Dewan Rakyat are fluent in BM, but they are forever partisan right down the middle, fighting like cats and dogs with their national language

The root-cause of disunity among Malaysians is not lack of one common language.  Even without going to government schools, most non-Malays would speak some form of Pasar Malay anyway as a kind of national lingua franca.

The root cause of racial disunity in Malaysia is the politics of race practised by race-based political parties that articulate and implement race-based policies.

To a great extent, I can understand the aspirations of the Malay linguistic nationalists. If the Malay parents want their children to learn all subjects in BM, I think they deserve to be supported.

Likewise, if the Chinese and the Indian parents want their children to learn all their lessons in Tamil or Chinese respectively, they too deserve to be supported.  I agree that the promotion and teaching of the mother tongue by any ethnic community is a matter of basic human right.

How about those who argue that school students must learn English through learning Math and Science in English, based on the utilitarian value of the English language?  They too have a point.  English is the nearest thing to a universal language in a rapidly globalised world.  It is the language of international commerce, diplomacy, scholarship, and communication through the Internet.

The question here is this: if you want our school children to learn the English language, is teaching math and science in English the best step forward, especially when we consider that the level of English proficiency among math and science teachers may be suspect!

The best way of teaching and learning any language is by total immersion; daily teaching and usage is the most powerful means of learning a language not our mother tongue.  That is how I learned English in my school days in the 1960s.  That was how overseas students learned the English language in Canadian universities when I was there in the 1970s.

Failing that, the best way to learn English is to teach English as a separate subject, especially lessons on the parts of speech, all the quaint rules of grammar, and the all-important art of comprehension and composition.

Better still, complement this English subject with the study of English literature from a very young age.  Nothing engenders the love of children for any language more than learning about the literature of that language, starting with fairy tales and nursery rhymes.  The love of literature will nurture the love of reading, which of course is the best way of mastering the language.

Should the English and English literature classes that I propose above be made compulsory or should they be optional?  I am very reluctant to be drawn into that murky whirlpool of endless arguments.

All I know is that something is seriously wrong with our entire educational system.  There is too much politics in the administration, the formulation of policies, and even the design of the curriculum.  There is too much power concentrated in the bureaucratic centre, too much rigidity in the implementation of too many rules, too much instinct to produce the culturally homogenous student population, and too little consultation with parents, students, and the teachers.

It is for this reason that the monolithic structure of the Ministry of Education is now facing the Frankenstein of their own making: how to make our students literate in English without tramping on the nationalistic sentiments of all Malaysian educators and parents?  It seems like mission impossible!

I went to Stockholm in Sweden once for an international conference.  I discovered to my great surprise that all the Swedes, especially the young ones, spoke pretty good English.  I was told by a young beautiful blonde waitress that English was their second language in school!

Could English be the third language in Malaysian schools for parents and students, after the national language and the mother tongue?

(SKY can be reached at kenyalang578@hotmail.com )