I would like to comment on the education minister's move to teach Arabic in schools. In my opinion, a lot of today's problems in Malaysian schools and society at large can be solved if the education minister can take the courage and bring back English-medium schools again.

Do what the Indians did in India after independence from Britain They allowed all English schools and schools in all other languages in the various Indian states to operate side by side. The parents had the choice of either sending their children to English or non-English schools.

All schools were assisted by the government, and the curriculum and exams were standardised. You'll be surprised how many Malay Malaysians and non-Malay Malaysians would leave their vernacular schools and enroll in English schools. Who wants a child who is unemployable?

What you will then have is a workforce which is bi and even trilingual like we had up to the seventies. Unity would then not have to be rammed down the throats of our children by ill-conceived ideas like the beleaguered National Service.

The products of our old school system, which was one of the best in Asia, also produced all our past and present senior ministers and five prime ministers, They weren't sent for any unity training but people then had more unity. The present generation are products of a low-quality system which even some Malay Malaysians would gladly avoid if they had a choice.

A patient of mine, a senior Malay gentleman, walked into my clinic the other day, and greeted me with a loud 'Good morning, doctor'. I was pleasantly surprised, as mine is a rural practice, and I rarely hear English being spoken.

My patient happened to be an ex-headmaster of an English school, and he spoke flawless English which would put some our present-day doctors and lawyers to shame. His qualification was Form Five, Grade 2 in the 1950s.

The man is a voracious reader and his ability to speak on a wide variety of subjects is remarkable, unlike our katak di bawah tempurong local grads who are monolingual and thus lose out on so much information. They have one-track minds that don't want to explore or are fearful of anyone who doesn't think along the same lines as they do.

My patient and I both lamented about the sad state of our education system. He told me that he made sure all his children spoke as much English as possible at home so that 'they won't lose out in future'.

The old man also went on to say that our politicians practice double standards in that their own children are educated in England and America but as we have no choice, but make do with a 'rubbish education at home'.

I am very glad that our present prime minister is taking a hard look at education, as he has done with the police, corruption, and hopefully the judiciary too. (We can do away with some irrelevant.)

Pak Lah, you are like a breath of fresh air. There was a malodor around for the last two decades. Good luck and may God bless you.