Malaysia has announced 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 Wednesday.
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 modernise their mother tongue.