YOURSAY | 'Vernacular schools a symptom, not the cause of disunity'

YOURSAY | 'Where did it go wrong, Kinabatangan MP Bung Mokhtar Radin?'

Dong Jiao Zong refutes Bung’s claims vernacular schools the cause of disunity

Bobby0: In the 60s and 70s, parents sent their children to government schools. These schools had all the races studying and playing sports together.

Back in those days, parents of different races strived to find places for their children in government schools.

Where did it go wrong, Kinabatangan MP Bung Mokhtar Radin? Before you start pointing at vernacular schools to find an excuse to place the blame, study the history of our education syllabus and system first.

Why did former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad say that the government schools have, more or less, become religious schools? Why would parents, at times, send their children to vernacular schools, which cost more?

Bung, you should ask how many politicians send their children to vernacular schools and why. Ask why our MPs do not trust government schools to educate their children.

You will get the answer, instead of blaming vernacular schools for causing disunity.

GalaxyM: Some politicians, especially those from the Muafakat Nasional, are invariably misleading the people by accusing vernacular schools as the cause of disunity.

These politicians are not only disingenuous, but they are wicked and deliberately making false statements to cause disharmony and misunderstanding among the people.

Does Bung Mokhtar know 100,000 or more Malay parents send their children to study in Chinese vernacular schools throughout the country?

Why not ask these parents their reasons for sending their kids to vernacular schools and check if they agree with him that vernacular schools do not instil unity and harmony?

Bung should also try to answer the question if Mara and many national schools are hotbeds of disunity due to their monoethnic intake and overemphasis on religion.

Doc: Vernacular schools are a threat to Umno and politicians like Bung.

These schools provide good quality education that is affordable and accessible to all Malaysians. This is why up to a fifth of the students enrolled in Chinese schools are Malay.

The last thing Bung and Umno want is for Malays to become smart and educated and realise that they are being duped and taken for a ride by racist and corrupt politicians from Umno and PAS.

Hence, Umno and Bung want to ensure that Malays continue to be educated in national and religious schools where the emphasis will be on Agama and Bahasa Malaysia, and less on English, Maths and Science.

This is to ensure that Umno can continue to hoodwink the Malay community to ensure the community stays dependent on the party for their daily survival.

Enlighten: Vernacular schools never taught children racism; hence they did not create disunity.

Disunity started after they joined national schools or the workplace where they learn about policies that favour Malays.

Ericomc: Indeed, it is not vernacular schools that cause disunity, but the institutionalised racist policies favouring one particular race over the others.

Matters are made worse when race supremacy, as well as religious rhetoric, are played to the hilt by political parties representing certain segments of society with virtual impunity.

The elite in the government seems to condone these actions, which are mainly to divide and rule to advance their own political interest.

BlueKiwi2462: For once, I support Bung. Yes, we have to start from the basics.

We should have one school system. This should be a national school system for all students from all ethnicities. This is where the main factor of racial harmony starts.

Look at the future of this country as a whole and not the future of a single race.

YellowSinga4147: Singapore closed down their vernacular schools and look at where they are today.

Dizzer: @YellowSinga4147, Singapore has race-neutral schools with exams modelled on the Cambridge O and A level system (these are tougher than the ones in Malaysia). They also have high standards of English and a multicultural faculty.

They had implemented such a system a long time ago. Now compare their racial harmony versus Malaysia. Mother-tongue language should be taught as a subject in schools, not as a school itself.

Our problem is that after 1971 schools were not “Malaysianised” but “Malayanised”. By the mid-80s (under then PM Mahathir and then education minister Anwar Ibrahim) the religious components were ramped up massively.

Teachers and school leadership became almost exclusively Malay, and the entire system was geared towards promoting the bumiputera agenda.

I agree that vernacular schools are polarising, but they and the flourishing private/international parallel systems are a symptom, not the cause, of our deteriorating performance.

Tan Kim Keong: Bung was spot on when he said our children have been taught and unfortunately, continue to be taught, division through national schools and vernacular schools.

National schools (including tertiary ones) are part of this country’s institutionalised vehicles for promoting, and in many cases indoctrinating, the superiority of race and religion masquerading as nationalism.

On the contrary, vernacular schools promote nationalism through diversity and acceptance. Hence, we have this disunity between the products of these two types of schools.

Coward: The biggest cause of disunity in this country is the politicians exploiting our differences for their selfish gain. They not only stopped our hard-gained unity but are actively destroying it.

The unity they had destroyed is the most precious and most difficult to cultivate, i.e. a unity that had evolved naturally and organically, which takes decades to start, let alone evolved to what we once had. - Mkini