Let UEC students, now cultural outcasts, reintegrate into public universities

Denying them the chance to reacquaint themselves with students from other communities will only heighten the chances they will drift away from Malaysia once they enter their career years.

Twelve years ago, I made it through the gruelling Unified Examination Certificate and went on to study for my degree in the United Kingdom. For personal reasons, I halted my studies there and returned home to retake my bachelor’s degree at Multimedia University, then on to a master’s degree at Universiti Malaya which I completed this year.

As someone who has navigated through overseas and Malaysian private and public tertiary institutions, the debates on recognition of the UEC spark some thoughts.

First, the word “recognition” (or “pengiktirafan”) is too loaded; it would frame UEC, a semi-alien institution, as part of the national education system. I prefer to frame its recognition as establishing a pathway for UEC holders to study in our public universities.

Next, the position of UEC schools in the education ecosystem, which has caused much consternation among Malays who oppose such schools.

I spent six years in Foon Yew High School (one of the oldest Chinese schools, with a history dating back to 1918, which now boasts of three campuses). Its environment does not represent the social fabric of Malaysia, nor is it conducive to facilitating national integration.

In my final year in 2018, there were about 5,000 students and staff members on the campus. The environment was quite “Cina”: the syllabus was infused with Confucian ideology, and Mandarin was the lingua franca – we spoke, read, wrote, thought and even dreamed in Mandarin.

Safe to say, the demographic picture was overwhelmingly Chinese at 90%. Such a monolingual, monoracial and monocultural schooling environment does not reflect the country’s incredibly diverse and colourful reality – a similar criticism levelled against the Bumiputera-centric campuses of UiTM.

It was only after I returned from the UK and began my tertiary studies back home did I see the wild discrepancies between the environs of my secondary school and the variegated society of Malaysia, which I enjoy immensely.

Strict regimen

To give credit where it is due, I am grateful for my school’s strict academic regimen, its six-day school week and 60% passing-score grading system, with those who fail to meet the threshold having to retake the same year. This moulded me into a disciplined person and a believer in diligence and merit.

I also take pride in our competitive maths and science courses, which make SPM Science a piece of cake for most.

However, I found to be rather dubious Dong Zong’s dedication of my second senior year (Year 5) to learning China’s history. The syllabus felt overly ethnocentric – just like how my national school counterparts had “Tamadun Islam” choked down their throats in secondary schools and universities.

That said, I benefited immensely from the final-year course on Southeast Asian history, with a focus on Malaysia and Singapore. I later learnt that this was far more informative compared with the cherry-picked history textbooks of national schools.

Another phenomenon worth pondering, and lamenting, is the future trajectories of my cohort. I estimate half of my peers now work in Singapore, with 20% in Johor Bahru, another 20% in Kuala Lumpur (including myself), and the rest overseas.

Since entering public university was never an option at the outset, most studied either in local private institutions or abroad, especially in Taiwan, which offers competitive tuition fees for “overseas Chinese”.

Path to reintegration

Notwithstanding these fundamental flaws of independent Chinese secondary schools, I categorically disagree that UEC holders should be denied entry to public universities. The reason is simple: public universities can serve as places for culturally outcast students to reintegrate into Malaysia’s diverse social fabric.

Should UEC students be further denied a chance to reacquaint themselves with students from other communities, the chances of them drifting off the borders of Malaysia will exponentially increase once they enter their career years.

The criticism of UEC schools being “alien” could also apply to pondok schools and international schools. Experts have suggested that these institutions already divide the nation along religious and class lines. Yet, ready mechanisms exist to enroll them into the public universities.

For the independent schools, the way would surely involve revamps of their curricula to strengthen the students’ use of Bahasa Melayu and streamline their courses with the national syllabus.

Meanwhile, the government should make national schools more attractive and provide UEC holders the same leeway to enter public universities as provided to students of foreign institutions.

Beyond fiery rhetoric

Most importantly, this perennial issue can only be resolved when Malay nationalists and Chinese educationists are able to hold rational dialogues. Frankly, the issue is mainly a technical one, impeded by heated identity politics.

As Sarawak premier Abang Johari Openg rightly pointed out, education should not be politicised. It appears that Sabah and Sarawak are consciously observing the failures of peninsular politics, plagued by racial sentiments from before Merdeka until now.

Further denying UEC students will only brew further bitterness among those like me, who enrolled into monocultural institutions under our parents’ instructions.

In a diverse country like ours – for good or for bad – any national policy should be dealt with cool rationality rather than emotive arguments, aiming for practical outcomes, but this is truly easier said than done.

I will not lose sleep over the UEC issue. We live in a country where the Federal Constitution was written based on communal negotiations. Consequently, its politics are bound to be based upon electoral concerns rather than egalitarian principles. Malay-based parties will never recognise UEC for fear of grassroots backlash; Chinese-based parties will only raise the issues temporarily when they perceive a cascading loss in ground support.

For now, there remains no sustained and concrete political will to forge consensus between opposing camps and to expedite UEC students’ entrance into public universities. - FMT

Rex Tan is a journalist in FMT.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.