On the current debate about the use of English to teach Science and Mathematics, here's another indication that the language used to teach these two subjects does not really matter and that you can excel in them without mastering English.

In the International Mathematical Olympiad , the Chinese team emerged tops for several years running. Even Vietnam and Thailand scored much better than Malaysia as can be seen on this results page .

Malaysia's performance is quite disappointing as we were ranked in the bottom half.

Besides the ranking, the competition shows the Malaysian students are among the oldest participants. We have to highlight this issue to the public about our student's poor achievement and do a postmortem on our education system's competitiveness in the world.

I believe we have bright students in the country. Is our education system at fault then? We must stop deluding ourselves about our real 'achievements' and start mending our ways and think of the future.

I totally agree with the government's goal of improving our English proficiency but I totally disagree with the use of English to teach Science and Mathematics from Standard One. I would support using English to learn Science and Mathematics only from secondary school onwards.

The government should be more careful in implementing education policies and bear in mind that their priority is the welfare of the students — not of the politicians. Please remember that students are not substances you can experiment with in test tubes, and to be thrown away if the results are not what you desired.