The recent decision of the government to revert to Malay as the language of instruction for Maths and Science by 2012 is again typical of the government's penchant for flip-flopping on policies that Malaysia is infamous for.

We also seem to have this strange habit of trying to reinvent the wheel only to come up with something that is all but round.

Looking back, we had inherited an admirable system of education in the post independence period by having English medium schools, the government assisted Malay schools and other vernacular schools such as the Chinese and Tamil schools.

The government paid a lot of attention to education in those days and some of the better qualified in our society became teachers.

The famous Kirkby trained teachers added to the respect teachers commanded those days.

The teaching profession somehow lost its lustre in the mid-70s when the government decided to discontinue the English medium schools and third graders were allowed to enter the teachers training colleges.

The result is all too evident for us to see. The fault is not the inability of students to cope with a new language but rather the misplaced notions of nationalism and political expediency that saw the end of the English medium schools.

For more than 30 years we have been flip-flopping on education policies at the expense of human capital development in the country, knowing full well that the future well-being of the country depended very much on quality education being provided and the mastery of a world language of knowledge.

A peek into history will show the changing dominance of the world language of knowledge from Sanskrit, Chinese, Greek, Arabic, Latin and more recently English.

Some of these languages have since fallen into disuse due to changing world economic dominance. Scholars in different ages, went to great lengths to master these world languages in their quest for knowledge in science and technology. Marco Polo learned Chinese, Munshi Abdullah mastered Arabic while the European scholars learned Latin.

We have to acknowledge that Bahasa Malaysia or Bahasa Melayu has never attained the status of a world language of knowledge. Historically it was a language spoken by a small minority population of the Riau islands and the Malay peninsula.

Prominence to the Malay language can be alluded to President Sukarno who selected this minority language over the other more prominent languages of Java, Sumatra and Sulawesi to be the official language of Indonesia.

Almost immediately the language which was perhaps spoken by only five million people at the time of the independence of Indonesia in 1948 increased to almost 150 million now.

Notwithstanding this, the language remains a language of communication and culture and fell short of being a world language of technology and commerce.

In order to support the Bahasa Melayu policy, the Malaysian government revamped the education policy, introduced new laws and completely dismantled the education infrastructure by promoting and replacing the teaching profession with Malay educationists in all strata of the academia, from the universities to primary and secondary schools.

The Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP) was established to undertake the massive task of translating and publishing books in Malay.

The programme failed miserably, due mainly to the inability of the academia to produce and publish technical manuscripts in Malay, a major problem that persists even today.

We have to acknowledge that traditionally, the Malays transmitted knowledge by verbal instruction and not written prose as is evident in the rich heritage of the syair, pantun and seloka that enriches the Malay language.

The recourse chosen by the DBP was to invent technical words in Malay that not even the Malay understood or used. I think the Indonesians were more practical when they merely used the English equivalent.

The respectable system and high standard of education we had in the 70s is all too evident for us to see. We produced several outstanding statesmen and government administrators.

The human resource capital of Malaysia was the envy of South-East Asian countries.

At international conferences and seminars, Malaysians and Singaporeans were often selected by their peers from the region to be their spokesmen due to the mastery of the English language then.

Having Bahasa Malaysia as a compulsory subject to obtain a full certificate in high school was perhaps another reason for the good bilingual command of Malay and English that the early generation of Malaysians had.

We have to recognise that the great strides made by both Singapore and Malaysia in transforming their economies and providing the de facto leadership within Asean was directly attributed to policy instruments in human capital development that provided opportunities for Malaysians to learn and excel in English.

We have somehow lost that edge with the policy shift to Malay.

The recent policy reversal on the PPMSI has also shown the weakness of government in playing into the gallery of the neo-nationalist Chinese and Malay educationists.

The Chinese schools will continue to be the preferred schools of choice for the Chinese, while the Malays dominate the national schools which have become nothing more than Malay schools, looking at the composition of the students, and the Tamils in the Tamil Schools.

The net effect of this sequence of events is that the Chinese will have the mastery of at least one international language ie Mandarin with the growing economic dominance of China at the expense of the other Malaysians who would have to make do with Bahasa Melayu and Tamil.

It is inevitable that the biggest losers in the policy flip-flop are the middle class Malaysians who have no choice but to send their children to private schools/international schools, an expense they could hardly afford.

Providing good quality education is too important an issue for the government to flip flop. Education should not be used as a tool for political expediency.

The government should recognise the need for quality education to be provided to all segments of the Malaysian Society. National schools through the PTA (parent-teachers association) should be given the choice to run a particular school in the medium of instruction of its choice be it English, Malay, Chinese or Tamil.

If the other vernacular schools are allowed to coexist within the Education system of the country, why not the English medium schools. We must have the foresight and magnanimity to recognise that we had made a big mistake in revoking the English medium schools.

If the general wishes of the so called nationalists are to revert to Bahasa Melayu, the government should at the least provide a choice to progressive Malaysians who wish their children to be educated in English medium schools with Bahasa Malaysia as a compulsory subject.

In short bring back the old system with Malay, Chinese, Tamil and English schools coexisting in the country.

We must recognise that although Malaysia is a small country, it is the 20th most important trading nation in the world and as such mastery of a world language of knowledge i.e. English is all too important an issue for us to compromise again.

At least, a choice must be given to the middle income stratum in society wherein the future leaders of the country will emerge from. Malaysia has to re-establish its leadership role in Asean as a progressive nation.

Perhaps we need a minister who is bold enough to declare both Bahasa Melayu and English as the official languages of the country - a feat that that the government of India did when it declared Hindi and English as the official languages of India .

The Malays have to cast aside their insecurity and master the two languages that will ensure their future prosperity.

If the other Non-Malays in the country can be fluent in several languages, there should be no excuses for the Malay not to be proficient in both English and Malay.

Perhaps in a hundred years from now, English may no longer be the world language of knowledge. We can then make the policy adjustments to suit the generation then, but for now we have no other choice - it is a matter of our survival and the future prosperity of the country.