Over the last couple of months, parents like myself watched helplessly as our political leaders across the political divide wilted and succumbed to partisan political pressure that resulted in the

discontinuation of the teaching of mathematics and the science in English in our public school system within the next few years.

By taking the path of least resistance for short-term political gain and support, our political leaders have sold out and assigned the future of the next generation of Malaysians and those that follow to the scrapheap of posterity.

To those who thrive on partisan politics in the name of patriotism or the preservation of mother tongues, my personal assessment may be considered far too harsh. Or is it? I wish to add that more often than not, such partisans who pass themselves off as educationists, fail to distinguish the differences between the global distribution and the penetration of a particular language.

For example, while the Chinese language has the highest penetration for any language, with an estimated 1.4 billion speakers, however, in terms of distribution, most speakers of the Chinese language are confined mainly to the People’s Republic of China (including Hong Kong and Macau), the Taiwanese Republic and Singapore. This is apart from the millions of overseas Chinese around the world whose first language may or may not be the Chinese language.

Although the English language lags behind with an estimated 1.3 billion speakers, it has the widest distribution covering 54 countries within the British Commonwealth across all six inhabited continents, in the US and is widely utilised within the European Union, particularly in the Scandinavian countries.

In fact, English is often the language of choice used in proceedings and documentation within the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), based in Geneva. English is not only advancing in the world of science and technology, it is also gaining momentum in countries where English is not even a national language.

The progressive evolution of international trade, ICT and education has changed this world into a border-less one. Partisans who continue to advocate a near-monolingual educational system in Malaysia will eventually paint themselves and the entire country into a corner.

Is it any wonder that so many of our local university graduates are not employable or marketable because most of them are monolingual? Many of these so-called educationists themselves are not employable in the private sector, nor are they prominent leaders in the world of science and technology.

To be a developed country, one needs a world-class educational system. Not one that is determined by partisan politics.

One of the best examples of a world-class educational system is found in Switzerland. Unlike most countries with only one or two national languages, Switzerland has four national languages, ie, German, French, Italian and Romansh. Apart from the four national languages and an extensive mathematics programme, all Swiss students are required to learn English as an international language.

Like Japan, Switzerland is a mountainous country that lacks natural resources and most Swiss are employed by small and medium industries. Yet Switzerland remains one of the richest countries in the world by per capita gross domestic product, with a nominal per capita GDP of no less than US$67,000. There is more to Switzerland than just private banking.

Today, at the Eidgen ö ssische Technische Hochschule Z ü rich (ETHZ) or the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, nicknamed by some as the ‘MIT of Europe’, it is possible to complete a doctorate degree entirely in English.

In China, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), a leading public academic institution in the science and technology, launched a roadmap entitled, ‘Technological Revolution and China's Future Innovation 2050,’ on June 10, 2009 in Beijing. This roadmap outlined 22 strategic technological and scientific issues that will be critical to the modernisation of China in the next 40 years, which includes green energy technology, nano-technology, material science, space science and a host of other scientific and technology subjects.

This roadmap was prepared by 300 leading Chinese scientists and technologists. All subsequent research and studies arising from this roadmap will be published in both Chinese and in English. The CAS also has a fully functional website in English. More than 250 scientists from the CAS have held positions in various international organisations outside of China, an achievement highly valued by the academy. Yet we have partisans back home in Malaysia calling for the discontinuation of the teaching of Mathematics and the Sciences in English.

In addition, online courses and reference materials are blooming on the Internet. Most of them are in English. Leading technical institutions, such as, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have made a wide range of lectures by its teaching staff freely available over the Internet through its OpenCourseWare (OCW) programme.

The Public Library of Science (PLoS), a non-profit organisation of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource, is publishing papers covering biology, medicine, computational biology, genetics, pathogens and tropical diseases which are, likewise, freely available through its website.

Other leading institutions, such as the University of California at Berkeley (UCB) and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) are joining hands with MIT in this effort. They have even set up channels on YouTube. College students around the world can now experience and access world-class lectures from MIT, UCB and CMU, minus the fees, from YouTube.

However, Malaysian students will be one of the biggest losers in this case because, as mentioned before, all these materials are in the English language.

With the introduction of ICT tools and devices like the Apple iPad and Sony’s E-Book Reader, more publications in science and technology will be made available in the English language at incredible low costs. More people who are not conversant in the English language will be left behind.

Therefore, is it any wonder that our ‘brain drain’ is literally irreversible, the multimedia super- corridor remains nothing more than a real-estate project and our biotechnology park and ‘rubber city’ remain a far-fetched dream.

In taking one step forward, the country has taken two steps backward. And for all this, we have our short-term thinking politicians to thank for.