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(The Straits Times) - AN ONLINE poll on former Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamad's blog showed 75 per cent of votes favouring the teaching of Maths and Science in English.
In his latest entry on www.chedet.com, Dr Mahathir posed the question to readers, 8,044 of whom disagreed with the government's decision to revert the teaching of both subjects to Bahasa Malaysia. As of Thursday night, only 2,719 votes came from those who agreed with the decision, according to The Straits Times . In his entry, Dr Mahathir said the he felt the government was not listening to the voice of the people. Malaysia announced on Wednesday it will abandon the use of English to teach math and science, bowing to protesters who demanded more use of the national Malay language. 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. English was once the medium of instruction in most schools in Malaysia, a former British colony. Nationalist leaders switched to Malay less than two decades after independence in 1957. In 2003, realising that poor English skills hurt graduates competing for work against people from other countries, especially neighbouring Singapore, ex-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad launched a program to resume teaching math and science in English. Most other subjects are taught in Malay. Malay activists began to protest the policy after the government recently said it was reviewing the programme's success. Students in rural districts, who are mainly Malay, suffered the most because their English proficiency was low, Mr Muhyiddin said. He said authorities would try to improve students' English-language skills by recruiting more teachers and offering more language classes. Some in the large ethnic Chinese and Indian minorities also oppose the use of English, insisting that math and science should be taught in their mother tongues, Mandarin and Tamil.
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The Blogs 
Nevertheless, why in the first place mess up with Education in English? Why not have four streams of education in English, Malay, Tamil and Mandarin? Let people choose what they wish to study? Is it not the most democractic way of doing things in a democratic country?