Malaysia to teach math and science in Malay: progress or a backward move?

Articles of Interest: Malaysia drops English to teach Math and Science , Malaysia to end teaching math and science in English

According to one of the articles,

Malay will be reinstated in state-funded schools starting in 2012 because teaching in English caused academic results in those subjects to slip, Education Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said.

The news comes after months of high-profile demonstrations by politicians and linguists, especially from the ethnic Malay majority, who say a six-year-old policy of using English undermines their struggle to modernize their mother tongue.

That seems like a weak argument. Is it proven that language is the root cause of the slip in results? Let’s say for argument sake that it is indeed English that is causing this problem. Instead of pumping in more resources to rectify the problem, it seems like they are just finding an easy way out. Perhaps in the short term, academic results will improve. But in the long term, it is the students in the rural poor that are going to suffer even more.

Instead of teaching maths and science in English, a policy started in 2003, the government will double the time spent on English lessons for primary children and increase that for secondary school children by half.

It said it would hire an additional 14,000 teachers to teach English as a language.

Personally, I don’t think that language lessons will be able to pull up the English standard of the rural poor. By endorsing the movement to teach math and science in Malay, those students would see even less reason and have less motivation to improve their English. True, they will still be learning English in ‘English lessons’. But to them, it will just become one of the many school subjects and they may not realise the importance of mastering the language. Why bother, we can get along well with Malay.

For those who work hard, they probably could attain a reasonable proficiency in English conversation. But without the exposure to academic and technical terms in English, how can they compete with others whose first/second language is English? By the time they are forced to undertake academic studies in English, they will be at a great disadvantage. This weak foundation is going to hurt alot in the long run.