Chinese priority: First-class education

The Chinese are not intent on having schools in Chinese as a means of preserving their culture. They just want the best education environment.

COMMENT

If we read our Federal Constitution, vernacular education should have by now been replaced completely by a national school education system.

Having allowed the continuity of vernacular schools, the government cannot undo it now. No way can we expect Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak to have the gumption and the courage to enforce the constitutional provision that there should only be one type of school – national schools.

Let’s look at that current situation with the Chinese.

The Chinese are really not intent on having schools in Chinese as a means of preserving their culture and all things Chinese.

They are, I suspect, really after a good education setting which offers excellent and superior facilities and resources.

If they are pursuing the purity of their culture, then how do we explain the fact that the biggest enrolment in international schools and in the various private schools such as KDU, Sri Inai and others are Chinese?

I don’t see Chinese cultural-enhancement or strengthening curriculum in these centres of superior education.

These offer what the Chinese are really looking out for – the best facilities and resources that money can buy that produce the best results.

Indeed the Chinese pay to get into colleges such as Taylors and Sunway because these colleges offer them pathways to better and first-class education.

Are they after the triumphalism of Chinese culture and if so, why then attend international and private colleges?

Chinese want top class education

The fact is the Chinese are after high-quality education because their own culture is best preserved in their home environments and other cultural-enhancement activities.

What if our national schools have first-class facilities and resources and produce top results?

Believe me, Chinese parents would gladly send their children there, forgetting the supposedly overriding need to preserve their culture.

If national schools have only one agenda – to produce the best results using the best facilities and resources and not imposing one group’s hegemony on others – I think the Chinese will enrol their children at national schools.

If Education Minister Muhyiddin Yassin does not already know this, maybe I should replace him.

The government should turn all national schools into first-class teaching-and-learning facilities; then you will see the Chinese abandon their national-type schools.

My reasoning is simple. Take Sekolah Kebangsaan Subang. It has a very large Chinese enrolment. Competition to get into this school is super tough.

Why? Because this school, it seems, has the best teachers, excellent facilities and resources and offer what the Chinese see as first-class educational environment.

What is important to Chinese parents is that this school provides the best results and the best students year after year.

It’s good education which the Chinese are really after. The Chinese appear to not mind that the medium of instruction in SK Subang is in Malay.

The Chinese can tolerate this as they see the resources and facilities and the preparation for a better educational future in SK Subang as the best. They want schools that produce the best results year after year.

Supporting ‘gangster level education’?

Our first priority should therefore be to upgrade all the facilities in all the national schools and supply them with the best resources and best teachers and faculties.

Imagine, if instead of paying RM7.8 billion for 257 APCs (Anugerah Perkhidmatan Cermerlang), we spend that amount on upgrading the national schools, air-condition all of them, and provide the best teachers including, if required, expatriate teachers.

The Chinese parents will come zooming in to secure entry for their children, never mind if the principal medium of instruction is Malay.

If we do that, we don’t even have to legislate the termination of vernacular schools because Chinese parents will voluntarily send their children to these schools to get superior education.

When attendance at national-type schools dwindles, they will fold up voluntarily.

Why make the Chinese hostile when there can be more persuasive ways to entice them to embrace national school education?

Likewise, Tamil schools. Why allocate RM100 million for Tamil schools where the system provides education up to only Primary Six?

What can RM100 million do? Provide Malaysian Indian children up to gangster-level education?

Or is the RM100 million for MIC president G Palanivel to distribute the money among his buddies?

The writer is a former Umno state assemblyman but has now joined DAP. He is a FMT columnist.