It comes as no surprise that the teaching of science and mathematics in English is a failure. At the outset of the idea, Chinese educationists had protested against it and not without valid reasons.

The fact is that it is not feasible to teach those two subjects in English as the pupils will have to overcome two obstacles to attain the idea's objectives. The first obstacle is to understand the English language which is foreign to a majority of rural pupils.

Only when they understand English well, can they go on to understand the subject matter. If they don't know English, they will lose interest in the subjects being taught in that language and hence failure in the subjects at a later stage.

In the end, the idea is to 'kill two birds with one stone' backfires and nothing is achieved.

I believe that in order to improve on the pupils' command of English, the Education Ministry should allocate more periods of English classes.

Let us hope that the government admits its mistake over the teaching of English and Science in English. The sooner the better before another generation of Malaysians are lost in the world of science and technology.

We have already lost our cutting edge due to our rapidly declining standard of English. Let not the situation erode further.