Mark the date July 8, 2009, when the government abandoned its six-year-old policy of teaching Science and Maths in English.

This watershed event will be remembered as the day we began to backslide in our quest to become a high-value economy. Indeed, the irony is that the policy was introduced when the government recognised that the deteriorating standard of English of the workforce was a growing handicap for attracting investors.

The cabinet has now decided that the policy was a failure because a mere 19.2% of secondary school teachers and 9.96% of primary school teachers are sufficiently proficient in English, as Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin told the press yesterday.

This situation points to two differing responses: raising the competency of teachers or switching the medium of instruction to the students’ mother tongues.

The government chose the latter, and for sure, this will make life easier for the majority of the students and their teachers who have struggled to cope with technical subjects in a language they are not comfortable with.

But the harsh truth is that English is most in demand in the commercial world. In the international arena, businesses will pay a premium to operate in a country where communication with workers, suppliers and in the market is a breeze.

We could have faced up to the challenge of improving ourselves and thereby ensuring a brighter future for the next generation.

So, it is good that to improve the standard of English, Muhyiddin announced that more emphasis would be given to the teaching of the language. More hours will be dedicated to English, new subjects introduced and the number of English teachers substantially increased.

In the light of these measures, it is strange that Science and Maths will once again be taught in Bahasa Malaysia and the vernacular languages. It is as if the government gives due recognition to the importance of enhancing the quality of English, but felt it necessary to accommodate the language champions.

The cabinet should have just bitten the bullet and kept the sciences firmly in the fold of the English language.

After the initial pain, the future generations would have thanked it for enhancing their marketability in the increasingly competitive global marketplace.

Indeed, we are likely to continue seeing rural students left behind by their urban peers, who have myriad opportunities to enrich their command of the language through total immersion in the medium. The key to helping the rural student population is to ensure that they get an equivalent dose of exposure to the English language.

Protecting the rural students from the reality of a globalised world is not going to help them one bit.