©New Straits Times (Used by permission)
JERLUN member of parliament Datuk Mukhriz Mahathir's suggestion that the government creates a single school system in the country is not new.
Not surprisingly, his statement drew protests from non–Malay politicians and educationists.
Such reaction is expected because since independence, educational
issues in this country have always been and sadly looked at from the
political rather than the educational point of view.
In fact,
the first call to have one educational system based solely on the Malay
medium of instruction was made by the British administrators before
independence in the 1951 Report of the Committee on Malay Education,
Federation of Malaya, or better known as the Barnes Report.
The
Barnes Report 1951 recommended this: "Chinese and Indians are being
asked to give up gradually their own vernacular schools, and to send
their children to schools where Malay is the only Oriental language
taught. In principle, we recommend the end of the separate vernacular
schools for several racial communities and the replacement by a single
type of primary school common to all."
Then came the Abdul Razak Report which was released on May 6, 1956.
The
1956 Report recommended that "the ultimate objective of education
policy in this country must be to bring together children of all races
under a national education system in which the national language is the
main medium of instruction".
Both the Barnes Report 1951 and the
Abdul Razak Report 1956 were met with strong protests from various
ethnic communities, particularly with the proposal of "the ultimate
objective".
As a result, this proposal was dropped and the
1956 Report recommended to establish "a national system of education
acceptable to the people of the federation as a whole which will
satisfy the needs to promote their cultural, social, economic and
political development as a nation, having regard to the intention of
making Malay the national language of the country while preserving and
sustaining the growth of the language and culture of other communities
living in the country".
The same words were incorporated in
their entirety into Section 3 of the Education Ordinance 1957 which
came into force on June 15, 1957 just as we were about to achieve our
Independence.
Hence, the vernacular schools were saved and
non–Malay educationists had argued that section 3 therefore represented
the original social contract of the communities.
However, when
Abdul Rahman Talib became the education minister,
he decided to review the education policy as declared before Merdeka in
Section 3 of the 1957 Ordinance.
The Rahman Talib Report 1960 reintroduced the "ultimate objective" for the sake of national unity.
Section 3 was accordingly amended to read: "The education policy of the
federation is to establish a national system of education which will
satisfy the needs to promote the cultural, social, economic and
political development as a nation, with the intention of making the
Malay language the national language of the country."
On Jan 1,
1962, the new Education Act 1961 also came into force. With this,
Chinese schools which did not convert to national–type (Chinese)
secondary schools became the Chinese independent high schools which
continue to use the Chinese language as the main medium of instruction
without any financial aid from the government.
The 1961
Education Act also contained an infamous Section 21(2) which empowered
the minister to convert any national–type (Chinese and Tamil) primary
school to a national primary school.
Today, the law relating to education in this country is governed by the Education Act 1996.
There is no provision similar to Section 21(2) of the 1961 Act in the
1996 Act, and the non–Malay communities had much to thank the then
education minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak.
Section 17 of the
1996 Act now provides that the national language shall be the main
medium of instruction in all educational institutions except for a
national–type school or any other educational institution exempted by
the minister of education.
There are still some who have argued
that without any amendment to Section 17, the switch to teaching
Mathematics and Science in English in 2002 has infringed it.
Be that as it may, I feel our education policy requires an overhaul to address racial polarisation among our young today.
Where our children have their primary and secondary school education is nowadays so predictable according to their race.
In
the days before the medium of instruction switched from English to
Bahasa Malaysia in national schools, the majority of non–Malay parents,
especially the Chinese, would send their children to national (English)
schools.
As a result, there are Chinese children like me who would grow up not being able to read or write much Mandarin.
Today, the Chinese in this country can best be categorised as those who are English–educated and Chinese–educated.
The manner in which they were educated when they were young would show
up later in the way they looked at certain issues and approached a
particular problem.
This is evident today in the rivalry between the two groups in Chinese–based political parties.
In fact, not all Chinese were in favour of an English education in the 1960s.
I
remember that when my father sent us to English schools (in those days
they called it tak ang moh chek in Hokkien), he was advised against it
by his relatives who said we would grow up embracing Western values and
mores, discarding Chinese ones like filial piety.
They were wrong.
Though I may not read or write much in Chinese, I do speak some Mandarin and the Chinese Foochow dialect.
My primary school education in English has not made me feel any less
Chinese or fail to love my parents any less than a Chinese–educated
person.
However, for those who study in national–type Chinese
primary schools, the majority still opt for the national secondary
school, probably because education is free and in order to enter local
universities. But the sad part is, every year there are thousands of
drop–outs among the Chinese students simply because they are not able
to cope with the change in the medium of instruction from Chinese to
English in the 1960s and 1970s and thereafter to Bahasa Malaysia.
Many ended up as labourers, farmers, plumbers, mechanics, VCD pedlars and unskilled workers.
In
this sense, while it may be well and good to preserve one's mother
tongue, it remains a social issue whether the current system is in fact
in the interests of non–Malay students with such a high drop–out rate
among them?
This is a serious problem affecting especially the Chinese in rural areas and those in lower–income groups.
As
a temporary teacher in a rural Chinese independent high school for six
months before I left to read law in England, it saddened me to see
close to 90 per cent of my students drop out after their Senior Middle
Three education.
Only a handful managed to further their studies in Taiwan after having sat for the Chinese Unified Examination.
Of course, the students also registered to sit for Sijil Rendah
Pelajaran and Sijil Pelajaran Menengah examinations but many did not do
well.
Today, the future of the students in Chinese independent
high schools is perhaps brighter as the Unified Examination Certificate
is now recognised by Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman and many foreign
universities in Singapore, Australia, Britain and the United States.
In fact, the English taught in Chinese independent high schools is even
more advanced than the syllabus taught in national secondary schools.
But sadly, the standard of the English language among our students is
still not good enough according to international standards.
Having
associated with many secondary school students in youth activities, my
observation is that our secondary school students today may find it
difficult even to answer the English language paper in the Singapore
Primary School Leaving Examinations (PSLE).
In this respect, we have much to learn from Singapore and its education system is perhaps one of the best in the world.
The Singapore government abolished vernacular schools and the Nanyang University long ago.
The
main medium of instruction in all its schools is now English. But every
child is required to take up a mother tongue language, be it Malay,
Chinese or Tamil as a second language.
Most of them will be
promoted to express stream in secondary schools where they will sit for
the GCE "O" Levels at Secondary 4 which is equivalent to our Form 4.
Starting from next year, a secondary school student has an option to
learn a third language. Hence, a Malaysian Chinese who studies in
Singapore will end up being trilingual –– in English, Malay and Chinese.
All in all, the ultimate objective is that Singaporeans of all races
get to mix together right from the pre–school stage to their tertiary
level.
Here, most of our children only get to mix with other races when they converge in national secondary schools.
The problem is compounded with the rise of religious fervour in national secondary schools.
I fear if our national secondary schools are not run based on a secular
concept, one day more Chinese will opt for the Chinese independent high
schools because they are producing more competitive students.
This will only worsen racial polarisation among our young people.
In fact, racial polarisation was particularly bad when Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim was education minister.
He
not only required all schools to call Bahasa Malaysia as Bahasa Melayu,
but also sent Malay administrators to national–type primary schools.
The non–Malays should not, therefore, be blamed if they regard Bahasa Malaysia as the mother tongue of the Malays.
We should, therefore, seriously look at the Singapore model.
Of course, not everything is good about Singapore but it cannot be denied that its education system is top class.
Had
the Singapore government governed along racial lines and made the
Chinese language as the main medium of instruction in its schools,
Singapore Chinese today would not have been more competitive than the
Chinese in Hong Kong, Taiwan and China due to a poor grasp of the
English language.
If English language is the main medium of
instruction in our schools, no one can claim that it is the mother
tongue of any race in this country because it is the international
language.
But we can stipulate a requirement akin to those
days when we had English schools whereby students must have at least a
credit in Bahasa Malaysia before they can be promoted to Form Six or
secure a place in public universities.
Our children must also
be required to study their mother tongue in addition to Bahasa Malaysia
at the primary and secondary levels.
To those who say that
having the English language as the main medium of instruction will
threaten national unity, I will say that we actually obtained our
independence because of the joint efforts of a united group of
English–educated elites.
If this is possible, I am confident more non–Malay and even Malay parents will send their children to national English schools.
Then the issue of abolishing the vernacular schools will not arise
because more non–Malays will be attracted to study in English schools.
For this to materialise, this change must be built into the
Constitution so that future leaders will not change our education
system whenever they like by just amending the Education Act; thereby
causing another generation of Malaysians to suffer.