Sober truths about vernacular schools and nationhood

 

I was away recently, in places where it was possible to tune out the madness that is Malaysia, though unfortunately not the madness that we call the world. Whenever I travel, I always get to the stage where, after seeing how things are elsewhere, I will say 

Malaysia not so bad lah

. And indeed, looking at the world around us, it’s not difficult to come to that conclusion.

Then after coming home and finishing the many servings of nasi lemak I’d dreamed about for weeks, Malaysian reality hits me, and I wish I was back on the road. And that’s indeed the case with my latest travel and coming home – it’s deja vu all over again.

The news that caught my eyes recently was the controversy about the supposed contributions to some Chinese schools by a beer company that have gotten a lot of people up in arms, and not to say yam seng either.

As always with anything political in Malaysia – and in Malaysia everything is political – emotion rules and common sense dies. Somebody somewhere did try to shut down the conversation, either because it’s not useful or it’s not comfortable – and the stuff hits the fan all over again.

Here are my perspectives, dear readers, honed by years of living in the Malaysian zoo and made more acute by a huge dollop of jet lag and back pain.

Education is basically political issue number one for most of the Malay political elites. They’ve had decades of mostly winning on such issues – medium of instruction, quotas for university entrance, content of school syllabuses (and Malaysian history…). Except for one: they haven’t yet managed to kill off Chinese and Tamil schools. This irks them no end.

Their main argument is the continuing existence of the vernacular schools isn’t helping racial integration in Malaysia. As far as arguments go, this is true – having Chinese and Indian Malaysians continuing to treat Malaysia as a little bit of India or a little bit of China doesn’t help us become a cohesive Malaysian nation.

The solution is of course to have a single educational system for all, though one that respects all the stakeholders. But decades ago, it was decided the national education system must have Malay as the language of instruction, albeit with grudging acceptance of the vernacular systems.

National school conundrum

Was this the cause of the decline of our educational system as many have said? Wasn’t it much better when our best schools of those days were teaching in English?

Well, yes and no. We did have many excellent English-medium schools back then. However, they catered only for a small slice of our urban population.

While kids of all backgrounds back then happily sat down and made hooha – in English – without care about race and religion (or so they said), the majority of Malaysians, myself included, lived in malaria-infested kampungs without electricity or running water, much less elite schools, or often any kind of school at all.

So that couldn’t stand. Unfortunately, those driving our educational system then put political ambitions, and not the future of our children, first. Malay-medium instruction triumphed but at the unnecessary sacrifice of English.

We could have easily benefited from becoming good at both a global language (English) and an increasingly important regional language (Malay). But we didn’t.

It wasn’t an either-or situation, but it has been made into one by the chauvinists. Of course, it is probably true that we could not have retained the high quality of the elite urban schools while offering universal education for all, but if that raised the average of our education to a B- it’s still better than having a small elite at A+ while the bulk was failing.

It’s the averages that matter. A B- average means there are still those with A+ now joined by many with C+, and a huge reduction of those with failing grades.

Between two systems

So now we’re left with the worst of both worlds, a government-mandated system of SKs and SMKs (and tertiary institutions) that hew to the increasingly-powerful bureaucracy that many politicians dare not confront, and a fragmented system of vernacular and private and international schools – and religious schools.

As our government-run schools become more and more like actual religious schools, producing more pious but not necessarily more moral students, the gulf between such schools and the other schools widens, with a diminishing chance of them ever coming together.

Most Malay families see it as their duty to support government schools, and see those who don’t as somehow disloyal. An increasingly religion-focused politics (and bureaucracy) pushes even harder against the vernacular, especially Chinese, schools with predictable reactions.

However, more and more Malay families are actually sending their kids to Chinese schools, seeing this as a pragmatic approach towards ensuring their kids’ futures. As such enrolments rise, amid perceptions that government schools somehow aren’t preparing their kids properly for life ahead (or perhaps preparing kids too much for the next life!), the divide between the two systems widens.

Interestingly, it’s not easy for the Chinese schools either. As the number of Malay students rise, they’re faced with some conundrums – these schools weren’t designed for non-Chinese, and some couldn’t handle simple issues such as allowing Muslim children time off for Friday prayers.

But the Chinese are, if not anything, pragmatic, and they’ll sort these issues soon enough. But for now, the schools remain as bastions of Little China, with real concerns about being taken over by a government system seen as becoming increasingly Malay chauvinistic, and increasingly less effective for preparing their children’s future.

The question of fundraising

So we come to the issue of contributions by beer companies, albeit not direct donations (or so they say), to these schools. There’s apparently no law (or not yet) against accepting such contributions from such companies, and perhaps even tobacco companies too.

Even without laws however, should such companies be allowed to make 

contributions

 to vernacular schools?

Here’s something such school boards need to think about – such contributions are not made out of the goodness of the companies’ hearts. Rather, they’re all part of a carefully calibrated policy to address some major business issues –especially the falling number of alcohol consumers (and of tobacco too) globally, as well as the increasingly tight regulatory framework on how such companies can advertise and promote their products.

No, it’s certainly not illegal to consume alcohol (or tobacco, or to gamble), but these highly profitable companies are facing headwinds everywhere, including Malaysia, and are increasingly targeting young consumers. But young people everywhere are smoking and drinking less, and there’ll come a time when they’ll look askance at how their parents allowed such associations.

So that leaves the core question unanswered – how to fund the vernacular schools? The simple answer – more of their funding must come from the government, as vernacular schools have a right to exist under our constitution, and they’ve contributed mightily to our wealth and growth as a nation.

Here’s the more complicated answer – the government schools must become more like the vernacular schools, aware of their duty to their young 

customers

, dedicated to this duty and not some ideology, run in a pragmatic way which respects and cherishes our diversity and which is more concerned about producing good morals than greater piety.

And as for the vernacular schools? Accept that their continued existence hinders the growth of true Malaysian nationhood, and that at some point in the future hectoring for their continued existence amounts to a chauvinism as bad as that which gave rise to the current sorry situation with the government schools. - FMT

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