UEC recognition: An utterly egregious conversation

Pakatan Harapan has a choice to show the moral courage and political will to break with the past and return the country to genuine national integration.

COMMENT

By Kua Kia Soong

The pussyfooting over the recognition of the UEC which was one of the election promises of Pakatan Harapan (PH) and the misrepresentation of the facts of the issue amount to an utterly egregious conversation. Why do I say this?

1. The only new factor is the PH election promise

It is clear that PH won the majority of the Chinese votes during GE14 mainly because, among others, the PH manifesto and the PH leaders pledged to recognise the UEC, the school leaving certificate of the Malaysian independent Chinese secondary schools (MICSS) that has been maligned by Umno all these years since 1975. Voters were given the impression that such recognition was part of PH’s reform in a new and inclusive Malaysia.

The UEC has been held every year since it started in 1975. Today, hundreds of foreign tertiary institutions around the world recognise the UEC and our MICSS students are found in countries all over the globe, including France, Germany and Russia.

Since the 80s, the National University of Singapore has been poaching hundreds of top UEC students not only for their academic excellence but also for their trilingual capabilities in an effort to balance the cultural mix of its Anglophile Singaporeans.

Education Minister Maszlee Malik has insisted that any decision by the government to formally recognise the UEC will only be made “after a comprehensive and holistic study on the issue has been completed… whether the formal recognition of UEC could potentially compromise unity and harmony among Malaysians… the status of Bahasa Malaysia as the national language… but no decision has been made on the matter so far”.

2. Glaring ignorance of Malaysian Chinese secondary schools

Just today, a reader in a mainstream newspaper was calling on the government not to recognise the UEC because “no public university in Malaysia is using Mandarin or Chinese as its medium of instruction”. Obviously, this reader is not aware that in many MICSS, students also sit for SPM during their fifth year of secondary education at Senior Middle 2.

I’m proud to say both my children scored Grade 1 in their SPM while they were in MICSS. What does this say about their command of the Malay language and the misleading belief that MICSS “only teach Chinese based on Taiwan and mainland China curricula”?

Furthermore, although I don’t agree with such a policy based on pedagogical principles as it puts a further burden on our students, some MICSS even make provisions for their students to sit for the Cambridge A-levels in their sixth secondary year of education at Senior Middle 3. What does this say about the encouragement not only of Malay but also of English which are compulsory subjects in MICSS? Many Malaysians may not be aware that the six-year system of secondary education in the MICSS is actually modelled after the US system of education.

When I was in charge of the campaign to gain recognition for the UEC from around the world from 1983 to 1985, the US colleges and universities were the first institutions to recognise the UEC. They did so after a thorough study of our curriculum, textbooks, examination papers and visits to our schools. And that was in the early 80s!

The National University of Singapore and other universities around the world have allowed the same accreditation of the UEC. The new education minister is only now talking about “a comprehensive and holistic study of the UEC” after opportunistically making the election promise to recognise the certificate.

3. What is there to compromise?

I was asked this question in a recent interview: “Isn’t there a way to compromise on this controversy?” Is this after a handful of Malay supremacists demonstrated against the recognition of the UEC?

The MICSS system has existed in our country for exactly 100 years. The first Chinese primary school in Malaya was founded in 1819, 200 years ago. During the independence struggle, Chinese educationist Lim Lian Geok constantly encouraged the Malay educationists to expand their secondary school system which did not receive much support from the colonial government.

At independence in 1957, Chinese and Tamil schools were part of the Malayan education system, and the government education department also set the examination papers for Chinese secondary schools. This was because Article 152 of the Federal Constitution allows the use, learning and teaching of any other language besides Malay. Furthermore, Section 3 of the 1957 Education Ordinance pledged to make the Malay language the national language of the country “while preserving and sustaining the growth of the language and culture of peoples other than Malays living in the country”.

The 1961 Education Act which embodied Umno’s “Malay Agenda” changed all that, and there were only 14 Chinese secondary schools left to fend on their own with community support. Since 1975 when the UEC was established after the MICSS were left out of the national education system, tens of thousands of UEC students have graduated from MICSS. Most have had to pursue their further studies abroad.

For decades, mother-tongue schools in this country have been treated like stepchildren in a Grimms’ fairy tale. So what is there to compromise? Like I said, the only new factor is that before GE14, PH made the election promise that if it won, it would recognise the UEC because it was supposed to be more liberal and less bigoted than Umno. How do you compromise when PH now reneges on that promise? What do these supposedly God-fearing politicians tell their children when they break promises or tell lies? How do they compromise with their children then?

4. What will the country lose by not recognising the UEC?

Well, if the new PH government reneges on its election promise by not recognising the UEC, it will prove to the people that it is no different from the old administration dominated by Umno. Our country will remain divided if graduates from MICSS are denied the opportunity to participate in nation-building and national integration by being refused admission into our tertiary institutions, our civil and armed services and GLCs.

Isn’t it amazing that the MICSS system is frequently accused of being segregationist even though all ethnic groups are welcomed into their schools? On the other hand, Mara institutions such as UiTM flaunt their apartheid “Bumis only” policy even though they are funded by all Malaysian taxpayers. And while UEC graduates want to be part of national institutions, they are being told they cannot because their certificate is not recognised?

Recognising the UEC will help promote greater integration among Malaysians and alleviate the financial plight of MICSS graduates who cannot afford tertiary education at private colleges or abroad.

The country also loses when its restrictive policy holds back the creative development of our human resources. Since 1975, thousands of UEC graduates have left, forced to further their studies and seek employment in foreign countries. Foreign countries including Singapore and Taiwan have welcomed them. For the information of Malaysians, the inventor of the thumb drive was a graduate of the MICSS who went on to study in Taiwan.

For decades, our Umno-dominated country has told them “good riddance”. The PH coalition won so much support from the Chinese voters in GE14 because it promised a more liberal and enlightened policy including recognising the UEC without any conditions. Actually, just before GE14, even Barisan Nasional was forced to recognise the UEC with two conditions: a credit in SPM Malay and a pass in History. But that’s history…

The PH government has a choice to show the moral courage and political will to break from the years of Umno bigotry and racism and to return the country to genuine national integration, inter-cultural understanding and creative development. Otherwise, the pussyfooting and backtracking on its election promises makes this all an utterly egregious conversation indeed.

Kua Kia Soong is the adviser to Suaram. -FMT