By Dr Chen Man Hin, DAP life advisor
The 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) shows that students from developed countries are the top scorers and they are the movers and engineers responsible to make their countries progressive and prosperous.
Hogging the top places are Singapore, Taipei, S. Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, England, United States and Russia, with scores from 10 and above.
Unfortunately Malaysia had low scores of 3 and are seen in the company of Indonesia, Colombia, Georgia, Ukraine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Botswana, Algeria, etc.
Malaysia at independence was as rich as Japan and had a high per capita income. But now Malaysia has been overtaken by Singapore, Taipei, S. Korea and Hong Kong. They progressed faster because of better education in science, maths and engineering. DPM Muhyiddin should take note of the TIMS report and raise the standard of science and maths among our students.
He should revoke his policy to ban PPSMI. We urge him to allow and encourage the students to use English to learn more maths and science so that they will graduate and be technologists and engineers and managers to build up the country.
English should be the language for Science and Maths education in the schools. Singapore is a good example where English is the common language, and today Singapore is acknowledged to be the model for schools in USA and Europe. Of course, science and maths can be studied in Bahasa or Chinese or Tamil, but in a multilingual society in Malaysia, English is a common language for technology and science.
Muhyiddin must remember that one of the objectives of 1 Malaysia is to have an IT, high tech society so as to transform Malaysia to be a high income economy. He should do the honourable thing and REVOKE THE BAN on PPSMI, and give hundreds of thousands young Malaysians the opportunity to be managers, scientists, engineers and technologists to make Malaysia progressive and prosperous.