Despite the Chinese Organisation Congress being cancelled, Dong Jiao Zong and several Tamil groups’ delegates today sent a memorandum to the Education Ministry, urging the government to include the school boards as one of the decision-makers in the Jawi issue.
They also sent a formal letter to the ministry, to make an appointment with minister Maszlee Malik to have a dialogue as soon as possible.
Dong Zong president Tan Tai Kim and Jiao Zong president Ong Chiow Chuen arrived at the Education Ministry around 2pm today.
The Deputy Director-General of Education Habibah Abdul Rahman received their memorandum and had a 45-minute meeting with them.
According to Tan, the two-page memorandum was the agreement made by 17 Chinese organisations on Saturday. Their demands include that school boards should have a say in the Jawi script lessons and also cancel the Jawi script lessons for Year Four students, among others.
The memorandum was then accepted by the other Tamil groups such as Tamil Foundation, Global Organisation of People of Indian Origin, Educational, Welfare and Research Foundation, Child Information, Learning and Development Centre, and two groups from East Malaysia — Partners of Community Organisations (Sabah) and Save Rivers (Sarawak).
Tan said the meeting was conducted in a peaceful and friendly manner.
On Dec 28, Dong Zong wanted to hold a Chinese organisation congress to discuss the Jawi lessons in vernacular schools. However, the congress was cancelled after the police obtained a court injunction to stop the congress.
Discuss with ruling, opposition parties
On the other hand, Tan also revealed that Dong Zong will send a letter to both the ruling and Opposition parties to explain the misunderstanding among them.
He said many people have misunderstood that Dong Zong opposed the Jawi script lessons.
He stressed what Dong Zong opposed was the way the Jawi script was introduced.
According to Tan, Dong Zong had agreed to the multicultural calligraphy course in 2015. At that time, except for Jawi script, students would also learn Tamil and Chinese calligraphy in the Bahasa Malaysia syllabus.
However, he said, only Jawi script was introduced to current students, which was against the multi-language context in Malaysia.
He urged the education policy of the country to be more diverse and democratic.
Guan Eng understands the sovereignty of school boards
Separately, Tan also said he felt grateful because DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng understood the sovereignty of the school boards.
He was referring to a joint interview of Lim by the Oriental Daily and Kwong Wah Daily yesterday. According to the report, Lim said there was still room for discussion on the sovereignty of the school board directors.
“At least he heard the voices of the Chinese community. If the government included the school boards as a decision-maker, I think the controversy could be quickly put to rest."
Tan reiterated that Dong Zong’s stance is clear, which is to empower the school boards to decide on the Jawi script lessons.
However, in the report, Lim was also dissatisfied with Dong Zong because they urged the government to cancel the Jawi script lessons altogether.
Lim said if Dong Zong only wanted the school boards to have a say in this matter, then the current racial issue would not have been provoked.
Asked to respond to some opinions which wanted to ban Dong Zong, Tan said Dong Zong's existence was protected under the constitution.
Yesterday, Gamis and several other Malay-Muslim organisations held a rally to defend the Jawi script and called for Dong Zong to be banned.
PTA, parents as decision-makers
According to the latest Education Ministry’s guidelines, the schools’ Parent-Teacher Associations (PTA) are to administer a survey to all pupils’ parents at the school to ask whether they agree that Jawi lessons should be implemented.
The three pages of Jawi lessons, which are part of the Bahasa Malaysia syllabus could be introduced to the students, only if both PTA and more than half of parents agree to it.
In other words, if the PTA disagrees, the students will not need to learn Jawi script even though more than half of the parents agree. - Mkini
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