Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad was wrong to call Chinese educationists extremist just because they opposed the teaching of Science and Mathematics in English.

And it was doubly wrong of the writer to ridicule them for their 'unenviable command of English' in the letter Chinese educationists no extremists .

I understand neither the United Association of Chinese School Committees (Dong Zong) nor the United Association of Chinese School Teachers (Jiao Zong) is opposed to enhancing the teaching of the English language in schools across Malaysia. What they are against is the suggestion by the government to replace Mandarin with English as the teaching medium for the two important subjects, Science and Mathematics.

I do not have concrete statistics on hand, but it is widely accepted that pupils from Chinese primary schools in Malaysia tend to achieve better results in Science and Mathematics compared to their counterparts in national schools.

This is not to say that other children are less bright — and I do apologise if I give such an impression — but that Chinese community in this country has been putting in an awful lot of effort in improving the teaching facilities as well as the learning conditions of Chinese schools.

In fact, Chinese Malaysians often joke, not without bitterness, that supporting mother-tongue education in monetary terms is already a second income tax to them.

As for national schools (we must not forget Tamil schools here), the lack of proper investment in school facilities and training for teachers is the actual root cause of the decline in educational performance especially in Science and Mathematics, not because of Malay being the teaching medium as the Ministry of Education has wrongly identified.

By making the seven-year-old Ahmad, who comes from a rural area and speaks no English, learn 'one plus one equals two' instead of the language that he has grown used to, will only result in greater confusion for the kid and hamper his ability to master basic Arithmetic.

Both Chin Hin Low and Tai Lo Chin ( Fear of English ungrounded, 30 July 2002) have pointed out the dilemma facing Chinese Malaysians who lack proficiency in English.

However, the way to rectify it is not as what the government is bent on doing, i.e. introducing English as the teaching medium as if the language was a panacea for all that is wrong with our education system. Such a move will only confuse the general public further, for we are now kept in the dark, not knowing if the government's objective is to raise the standard of English, or to improve the performance of students in Science and Mathematics?

The way to enhance the teaching quality of the English language will be to strengthen English classes nationwide by making subjects such as English/American literature compulsory in all schools, and putting in money to train teachers that are capable and confident of teaching the language.

Outside the schools, an environment must be created in order to encourage more Malaysians to practise their English. All Malaysians must get rid of the mentality that speaking English is tantamount to 'having a blind faith in the West'.

However, Science and Mathematics can continue to be taught in mother tongues, be it Malay, Chinese, Tamil or English. After all, Japan and South Korea are counted as among the two most technologically advanced countries in the world, yet we all know English is not common there.

Royal Professor Ungku Aziz has recently related his teaching experience in Holland that the Dutch only learn English as a foreign language, yet their command of the language truly puts Malaysia, an ex-British colony, to shame.

Germany, the biggest economy in Europe, is another example. That these two European nations do not teach science subjects in English does not bar them from becoming developed and prosperous, and one of my English lecturers back in university once said to the class, "It may be a bit embarrassing, but I must admit that German and Scandinavian students tend to write much better English than the British".

Some may of course cite Singapore as an example how its proficiency in the English language has made the island-state shine across the globe. True, but this is just part of a mammoth social engineering by an authoritarian government.

It however came with a cost: young Singaporeans of all ethnic backgrounds nowadays are undoubtedly proficient in English, but their ability to express themselves clearly and adequately in their mother tongues is not envied.

Unless we all want Malaysia to be like Singapore, we should not benchmark against it to measure our improvement in English.

In this rapidly globalising world, itself a cause for concern, virtually all nations have begun to appreciate the paramount importance of the English language. Indeed, many of them have been taking steps to ensure that their countrymen are not cut off from this language of technology.

Their way of doing it is however quite different from what is proposed by our government. They do not seek to kill two birds with one stone, wishfully thinking that by resorting to English, one can improve both the language and the sciences.

I hope our policymakers will have the wisdom to discern what will truly benefit the people, so that we will not have to make another about-turn some years down the road in light of some major disaster, as has happened time and time again with our education system over the last three decades.