Case for a single-stream school system

A single stream offers us unity as a nation without robbing us of our cultural identities.

COMMENT

Amidst all the racial white noise and histrionics we’ve been treated to for the past couple of weeks, one idea seems to have got stuck in the craw of our politicians, and that is the streamlining of our education system into one single stream. Of course, Chinese and Tamil educationists and politicians have jumped with unabashed fury at every statement supporting the idea.

However, that is the sanest idea to have come out of Umno for quite some time.

Mother tongue education has long been a form of electoral candy, with each election bringing promises of more funding and assurances that it is provided for by the Constitution. Let’s be honest with ourselves here. The Constitution does not “protect” or “demand” mother tongue education. It merely states that citizens have the right to learn their mother tongues, and stretching it to mean that vernacular schools are sacrosanct is a blatant distortion of what it says.

I spent my childhood in national schools, and being born and bred in the very Malaysian area of Petaling Jaya meant that my classmates were from all kinds of families across the social and racial strata of the country. We spoke in English and Malay, and those of us who were inclined to learn our mother tongues did exactly that, since there was no obstacle to it.

But more important was the intermingling of Malaysians of all colours in our school. Race did not matter very much, unless it came down to disagreements between gangs at school, and even those gangs died out by the time I had reached Form Three and the seniors had already graduated. We joked around, we helped each other, we existed as a microcosm of what Malaysia should be like while becoming familiar with the little idiosyncrasies that define the different communities in Malaysia.

You see, racism at its very root is the rejection of that which is different. It is through constant contact, and thus constant improvement of understanding, that the different becomes the familiar and we can coexist in harmony. There are Malay schoolchildren who have never met a Chinese or Indian, and vice versa, because we have given ourselves a way to segregate ourselves from each other. This breeds a sense of communalism, a fear of “the other” that we are not familiar with.

Chinese educationists will chime in here to note that there is non-Chinese enrolment in Chinese vernacular schools, but until each Chinese school has a sizeable non-Chinese population, the argument that vernacular schools insulate children from children from other races remains a fair point of debate.

There is also the matter of prioritising English, the lingua franca of the world, and Malay, the lingua franca of our country. I find it extremely curious that some Malaysians can’t even speak Bahasa, and they include Malaysians of my generation too, mind you, which sounds almost impossible.

How can we even call ourselves Malaysian if we cannot even speak the mother tongue of our nation? It boggles the mind. As Malaysians, we should all be able to speak Bahasa with each other. It’s the common, uniting factor that instantly identifies a fellow countryman. In fact, it is even more important to learn Bahasa with the current vernacular system, because then we’ll all have a common language to fall back on no matter what.

I am proud of being able to speak Bahasa to the waiter at the mamak restaurant, the makcik who sells kuih outside the 7-11 near my house, and to the “bro” who proclaims himself my mechanic because it shows that we have a common tongue. English has given me a livelihood and a roof over my head. But the national school system has given me the joy of calling Malaysians of all colours my friends.

Vernacular education is not a bad thing, in and of itself. But when a single stream offers us greater unity as a nation without robbing us of cultural identity, perhaps it is the better route to take. We must move forward as one, and that means we must accept greater proximity to each other for the sake of a better Malaysia.