Don: Abolish vernacular schools for unity's sake

Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) pro-chancellor Abdul Rahman Arshad has called for the abolition of Chinese and Tamil vernacular schools in favour of a single stream school which uses Malay-language as a medium.

This, he said, was for the sake of racial unity as the existence of such vernacular schools have been a barrier towards that goal.

"There were two observations in the 13th general election, one was not there is no unity in our country and another is that racism has thickened now despite unity efforts for the last 57 years since independence.

"We hope for unity but it has become clear the longer it is, the farther away we are from achieving it, and the thicker the racism," he told a forum entitled: "GE13 post-mortem: Muslim leadership and survival".

He said countries such as Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand had already implemented a single-language policy in the education system to better foster unity among its people.

At the moment, he said a majority of Chinese Malaysians or Indian Malaysians only sent their children to vernacular schools and only a handful go to national schools, therefore communities are isolated.

"It would be best that we have a single stream using Malay language in order to improve unity," he said.

'Other languages okay, schools not okay'

However, he said by no means that this would mean that the Chinese or Tamil language cannot be learnt.

"(On top of Malay language), we should also give emphasise to the English language so that we can strengthen our ability in the two languages.

"We should also recognise that China is rising, so on top of these languages, we can also learn Mandarin, not only for Chinese Malaysians, but for everyone," he said.

Also speaking at the forum which was hosted at Premiera Hotel in Kuala Lumpur were former Court of Appeals Judge Mohd Noor Abdullah, former PAS deputy president Nasharuddin Mat Isa, Himpunan Keilmuan Muslim (Hakim) fellow Wan Ahmad Fayhsal Wan Ahmad Kamal and moderated by former Biro Tatanegara director Kamaruddin Kachar.

Mohd Noor who echoed the call for vernacular schools to become national schools, said if they refused to comply, a court order could be obtained to force their compliance.

"We can argue that all the state and federal spending for Chinese and Tamil schools are not provided for in the federal constitution," he said, adding that such provisions are only provided for Islamic schools.

"Let all the students study in the same classroom, eat and drink in the same canteen and play on the same court or field, only then can there be national unity and integration.

"Those who do not agree are anti-unity," he said.