7/28/2019 Unified schools - shun clayton

1/3

Unified nation

Following the recent General Election, Malaysia faces calls for more unity amongst its citizens asthe races become more and more polarised. I believe one of the reasons for this polarisation is

because of our education system which divides our citizens into schools according to race. Whilethis may not be part of our education policy, in reality parents perceive that the best chances fortheir children is to be educated in their mother tongue. This is a misnomer since the Chinesespeak several different dialects while Chinese schools teach in Mandarin which the majority ofChinese dont speak at home and the Tamil schools cater only to Tamils and not to the otherIndian ethnicities of Malaysia.

Parties on both sides of the political divide have historically been opposed to unifying oureducation system so that all public school students go to just one type of school. This feeling

stems from before independence when the British introduced Tamil schools for the Indian labourforce, who mainly worked in the plantations sector, and Chinese schools for the Chinese whowere imported as manual labour. Other schools used English as a medium of instruction with afew, mainly at primary level, using Malay. In 1970, the government began to introduce Malay asthe language of instruction in all national schools although the Chinese and Tamil schools wereallowed to keep operating as before so long as they offered Malay, a mandatory subject for allschools, and kept to the National Curriculum.

This has led to national schools being populated mostly by Malays while the Chinese and

Indians have shunned national schools in favour of schools which offer an education in their ownlanguage. A Centre for Public Policy Studies report in February 2012 indicates that one reasonfor this is that the Chinese and Indians view national schools as providing an inferior education.

Another is the perception that national schools are becoming more and more Islamicised.

Now that the electorate has voted against race-based politics with the routing of the MalaysianIndian Congress and the Malaysian Chinese Association (both components of the rulingcoalition) and, by inference, racial policies, it is time for us to go forward as one united nationrather than a conglomeration of different races, each interested only in advancing their particular

culture. We should start at unifying our school system. When children play and learn together,they do not see the differences. My cousins daughter, who recently graduated high school, saysthat her multicultural education provided her with the means to understand and respect differentcultures. As she enters university, she says that this understanding wil l help her to find a job inour ever-shrinking globalised world.

University of Washingtons Dr James A Banks, a respected leader in multicultural education, inan interview last year with NEA (National Education Association) Today suggested that amulticultural education was essential to foster citizen participation in a democratic society. When

people dont participate, when people dont know each other, this just further polarizes. True, hewas speaking about education in the US, however, I believe the same holds true wherever youare in the world. Humanity is universal and is not restricted to one race or one nation.

7/28/2019 Unified schools - shun clayton

2/3

One problem with implementing a unified schooling system is that most teachers have not beentaught how multiculturism should be advanced. A 2008 study by Universiti Sains Malaysiastudent, Najeemah Mohd Yusuf, indicated that the majority of teachers in national schools (whoare mostly Malay) do not know how to implement multicultural practices into their curriculumsince they have not been taught what multiculturism is nor how it should be contained in theirteaching materials.

And how do you go about dismantling a system that most parents think is best for their child? Notto mention that the two largest minority races feel that their rights would be impinged upon if thegovernment were to abolish mother tongue education.

In a conversation I had with a friend who went to a Chinese school, she tells me that she doesntfeel the Chinese system works for most children. Yes, they learn discipline and learn early on themechanics of science and maths. However, she says that the system of rote learning they usedoes not promote critical thinking. When it was time to enter secondary education, her parents

sent her to a convent school which taught in English. She says that she found it particularlydifficult switching to another language and that the Chinese school didnt prepare her for the realworld in which people come from all cultures and backgrounds. She admits that she had very fewfriends of other races at primary school and wishes that it wasnt so.

A widely held perception is that school leavers of Chinese and Tamil schools lack the Englishskills necessary to find a good job. This is also true of graduates of national schools butvernacular school graduates cannot speak Bahasa (Malay) with any competence and that meansthat employment opportunities are very limited for this group of students. (I do not include

Chinese private schools in this category which do quite a good job of preparing their students foradult life.) While I could not obtain hard statistics on the fate of our vernacular school graduates,anecdotal evidence suggests that a sizeable proportion of them end up either in menial jobs or ingangs. According to a dissertation, Racial Inequality and Affirmative Action in Malaysia andSouth Africa, written in 2010 by Lee Hwok-Aun of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, therate of unemployment among Chinese and Indian secondary school leavers rose between 1995and 2004 whereas unemployment rates among bumiputeras (mainly Malay and someindigenous tribes) fell from 6% to 4.8% in the same period. Those who do well have usuallytransferred to other schools at secondary level, as my friend did, and thus have had to minglewith those of other races.

There are many parents, and other concerned parties, who argue that going to a unified schoolmeans that one has to give up ones culture and identity. Dong Jiao Zong, the guardians ofChinese education, says that sending children to national schools will erode their identity asChinese and that it is imperative that Chinese students keep their cultural roots. While I agreethat it is necessary to know ones roots, I would also argue that they are doing a great disserviceto the Chinese community by making sure they are segregated from the mainstream the Malayswho make up the majority in Malaysia.

With political will, it can be made possible to attend classes in a unified school in Malay and/orEnglish with other languages and cultures offered as electives. It is also possible to repeal thelaw which stops schools from offering religious knowledge as a subject. What would it mean forour children if the could learn each others reli ions and cultures and understand the

7/28/2019 Unified schools - shun clayton

3/3

significance of certain rituals and taboos? Would that not make us more tolerant of each other?

There are many rocks on the way towards a unified education system. The government will haveto address issues of poor quality teaching, the perceived Islamification of national schools andthe attitudes of the parents themselves; and they wil l have to ensure that teachers in nationalschools are culturally sensitive. It will not be easy but, at the end of the day, do we want to see

our children embroiled in bitter race disturbances because they did not grow up together and donot understand each other?