Yesterday Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, the DPM as well as the Minister of Education announced the government’s decision to revert the teaching of science and mathematics in Bahasa Malaysia in schools. This is, in my humble opinion, a good move.

Our disadvantage in science and mathematics has nothing to do with learning the subjects in Malay. And teaching it in English will not make us any better. And our weakness in the international language will also not be improved by learning science and maths in English.

To begin with math is a language in its own right. It is the universal language of science and regardless of what language you speak, the mathematics is still the same.

What about science? Well most of ou scientific terms are in Latin. And what is not in Latin is in English imported to Malay. So I don’t see the problem with learning it in Malay.

Then why are we lacking in the scientific world? The answer I think lies in our education system. To succeed in the scientific world we need minds that are inquisitive and have the thirst and hunger for knowledge. Our education system, however, is only concerned about exam results. Rather than teaching the students how to think, we teach them what to think. We spoon feed them in order to help them excel on exam. We punish them for their mistakes when the very essence of a scientific discovery is trial and error. Try and try again even it means you have to fail 1000 times before we succeed.

Hence if we are really serious about improving our standing in the scientific world, that i what we need to do. Teach our kids to think and encourage them to experiment and make mistakes.

Oh, and on the subject of the English language, learning science and math in English won’t help it. You hardly need to form proper sentences in science exams and definitely not in maths. We are better off learning history in English ( not that I am suggesting so).

But hopefully the government’s effort to provide more time to English classes and train more teachers will improve our English standard which has been in continous decline for the past few decades.