It is ironic that the controversy over the teaching of Mathematics and Science in English in our schools should coincide with the news that the country has run out of gas!

We now have to import gas from Indonesia's Pertamina when we were supposed to have enough gas reserves to last at least another 20 years.

In fact, to raise the standard of English among our students, all we need is GAS (Goal, Attitude and Strategy), rather than undermining our respective mother tongue education systems.

Our respective mother tongue education systems are the proper claimants of the ' Malaysia Boleh ' status. Let us not destroy this accomplishment in the name of the latest buzzword globalisation.

It is goal/attitude/strategy that is lacking in the teaching and learning of English (or for that matter, any language or discipline) and which is the key to the problem we face in our schools.

Think about it. We have Malaysian students who spend just two to three months studying French or Russian before they go to these countries to further their studies.

And we say that the 10 years or more of English our students learn is not sufficient and we need to Anglicise our mother tongue education systems to cope with globalisation?

A rhetorical question: Do you think the French, Russians, Germans and Japanese and the others are Anglicising their respective mother tongue education systems to cope with globalisation?

The British Council must be laughing but they are also probably laughing at how gullible Malaysians are!

Unclear goal

Initially, the government's goal seemed to be to raise the level of English proficiency. More recently, the director-general of education said the purpose was to raise the level of competence in Mathematics and Science.

Other politicians have come out to give differing views while the public has been told to accept the decision.

The government's goal has never been clear from the start. Why should the imperative for mastering English be any less clear then say, two decades ago, when we went about dismantling our solid human resources in English teaching all in the name of nationalism?

Globalisation is just another word for the process of internationalisation of capitalism that started years ago. If our goal was clear in the first place, we would not have the problem of unqualified and inadequately trained English teachers today.

Goal-directed learning is seriously lacking in many of our institutions and should be foremost in the minds of teachers and learners.

The focussed attitude of a group of students who have to master a foreign language in three months in order to further their studies, is the key to learning a second language. The attitude of the trainers who are focussed on the goal is also paramount.

The attitude of the government is reflected in the failure to train adequate qualified and motivated English teachers. We can do without amateur comments about how we only need computers to teach English.

A student who has a sound strategy for attaining a goal and knows the study skills to go with it, is likely to succeed. We all know that. The mastery of the English language follows the same strategy. This principle is applicable not only to the learner but also to the educator and the Education Ministry.

The Prime Minister's comment about students pressing buttons to learn English was as much a give-away as his original proposal to teach Mathematics and Science in English.

Our PM is a great helmsman in many aspects but there are at least two areas in which he is sorely lacking. One is the rule of law, the other is education. He tends to treat these two delicate issues with the precision of a scalpel, which is not the method needed.

For educationists, the teaching method for a language subject is quite different from that of a knowledge-based subject such as Mathematics or Science. To master the English language, it makes sense to use text that has been designed to teach English. For example, would you use a Mathematics textbook written in Japanese to learn Japanese?

Using English to teach Mathematics and Science would make it difficult for those children whose mother tongue is Malay, Chinese or Tamil to grasp such essential knowledge.

For the middle class who can afford tuition for their kids, this problem can be overcome, but for the poorer families, we would be condemning them to a fate we know only too well.

Role model

Speaking for the Chinese schools, their record would indicate the folly of changing their medium of instruction for Mathematics and Science to English: In 1973, when there were still English primary schools in existence, the standard of Mathematics in Chinese primary schools was higher than that in the former! Remember, only a few years ago the Education Ministry was using Chinese schools as a role model for teaching Mathematics?

At the time, typical of the Education Ministry, it thought that the key lay in the use of the abacus. The fact was, Chinese schools had stopped using the abacus for years! Again, the secret lies in the judicious use of GAS.

Many people think that the language switch is a small sacrifice. In the first place, why should the question of sacrifice arise?

Let us look at the examined subjects in the UPSR for Chinese primary schools, namely, Bahasa Melayu, English, Chinese, Mathematics and Science.

Now if English is the teaching medium for Mathematics and Science, there would be only a single subject in the standard six UPSR exam in which pupils would be using their mother tongue.

This will definitely affect the attitude of pupils toward their mother tongue and sabotage the whole justification for having mother tongue education in this country.

'Singapore Syndrome'

We will then suffer from the 'Singapore Syndrome' in which pupils study one Chinese Language subject and everything else is in English. The consequence is their leaders now lament the loss of heritage and have to resort to instant culture by importing Chinese scholars from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and graduates of the Malaysian independent Chinese secondary schools.

Education movement, Dong Jiao Zong, has called for the improvement of English and Bahasa Melayu in Chinese primary schools over the years. But the repeated requests for teaching English from standard one instead of standard three in these schools has been consistently denied by the Education Ministry.

Throughout the years, school committees and Parents and Teachers Association (PTAs) of Chinese primary schools have had to rely on tuition classes to coach these students in English.

Raising the level of English proficiency in these schools requires changes in language teaching methodology and resources (ie. strategy).

The current presumptuous and undemocratic method to implement a questionable policy is not the way. A better approach would be to increase the teaching period for English, train more professional English teachers, supply more and better teaching materials and ensure effective learning environment in smaller classes.

To meet these conditions, what changes need to be implemented in the schools? In order to ensure more teaching hours for English in smaller classes, there must be a move toward single-session schools, which means more Chinese schools and classrooms.

The statistics speak for themselves: at Independence in 1957, when the population of Chinese Malaysians was half of what it is today, we had more schools then 1,350 Chinese primary schools, 78 Chinese secondary schools and even a Nanyang university. Now there are only 1,285 Chinese primary schools and 60 Independent Chinese secondary schools.

The present situation is thus not conducive for learning English in Chinese primary schools. The government does not allow English to be taught from standard one; does not allow the building of new Chinese primary schools, and also does not train adequate teachers for our schools.

The only cause for celebration in this latest controversy is the failed attempt by the powers-that-be to communalise the issue by saying that it is only the Chinese educationists who oppose this move.

In fact, from the start vernacular education lobbies in the Malay, Chinese and Tamil communities were united in defending their respective mother tongues and that is why this communalist plot was doomed to fail.

Dr KUA KIA SOONG is principal of the community-funded New Era College. He was a member of parliament and an Internal Security Act detainee.