When Dr Mahathir mooted the idea of teaching Science and Maths in English and invited public comment, I wrote in to urge that the two subjects were not the appropriate avenues for English to be taught.

The reason I stated and which I still stand by is that Science and Maths do not provide students with the opportunity to study the richness of the language and to master its intricacies that would make them mature users of the language.

Where in Science and Maths do you use with frequency noun clauses and phrases, adjectival and adverbial clauses and phrases, for instance?

Where in Science and Maths do you play around with adjectives and nouns that point to character traits like integrity, honour, manipulation, corrupt, sad, cleverer, cleverest? Where in Science and Maths do you describe past events outside the bounds of a laboratory?

So what vocabulary did the students acquire? What sentence structures did they master in their Science and Maths classes? The language characteristics of Science and Maths are largely imperatives (Fill a test-tube with...) Conditionals (If you heat..., you will get ...), present tense (The kangaroo is an animal that ....), passive voice (The chemical solution is mixed with...), etc.

I suggested that the best avenues for mastering English in the given educational setting would be Geography and History.

History, for one, uses past tense, present tense and even future tense in certain contexts. It allows for the perfect tense to be exploited (If the British had given..., they would have...), for behaviour, both moral and immoral, to be examined and for future situations to be visualised.

It allows the use of such varied sentence structure that students, even in analysing history texts, would see how a particular truth could be rephrased to express a slight bias or differing mindset.

It allows for students to use their imagination, to express themselves vividly using verbs, adjectives and adverbs and provides opportunities for diverse language use.

Imagine what our students would have grasped these past years had Dr Mahathir not made the invitation for public comment a mere window-dressing exercise.

I would say Dr Mahathir messed up big time, but when will he pay the price for flushing education standards down the toilet?

Our students, that segment of society without voice or power, are the ones who continue to be victimised and subjected to the whims and fancies of politicians who very often want to overturn what is established to try to prove they are better than their predecessors.

For the sake of our children, take education out of the sullied hands of politicians. I am inclined to think they have no real interest in educating children. Give education to the professionals to look after and envision.

Set up a committee comprising educationists from pre-school right up tertiary level and have them map out the entire system with one tier linked to the next tier.

Please, it's not the 10 A's and 15 A's that seem so easy to get nowadays that are true markers of an educated person. Our A's are really not of international standard but are spelt out in newspapers to publicise the so-called 'success' of ministry programmes.

We all know better what an A is in this society. Just ask those in charge of the intake of students into colleges and universities, hear their horror stories and be convinced that more things are rotten than the world dreams of (sorry, Tennyson, for mutilating your quote) in our education system.