Education and racial integration are two subjects very close to my heart. As such I am compelled to respond to a spate of letters that have appeared in malaysiakini .

I would particularly like to comment on certain points raised by MGG Pillai Malaise in a multiracial society, (Dec 24) and Prof P Ramasamy Racial segregation a microcosm of Malaysian politics, ( Dec 25) .

As someone who has been following the writings of the veteran journalist and the learned professor in malaysiakini and elsewhere for sometime, I sincerely hope that these two social commentators were misinformed of the facts in penning their commentaries.

For I was utterly shocked and deeply disturbed by the tone and seriousness of accusations that were so liberally and carelessly hurled. Even as a non-Malay, I found these allegations to be distasteful and grossly unfair and I shudder to think of the feeling of our Malay brothers and sisters when reading them.

I appeal to all Malaysians not to racialise or politicise this issue. I have always spoken against the ills that plague our education system and I will continue to do so in the future. But our criticisms need to be tempered with reason and with sensitivity in respect to our multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious society. Otherwise, instead of promoting integration we will end up creating misunderstanding among Malaysians.

Let us examine the facts of the 'racial streaming' issue. According to an estimate by the National Union of Teaching Profession (NUTP), around 10 percent of all national schools practise some form of 'racial streaming' or quota system.

We need to understand that there are two types of 'racial streaming' or quota systems being practised in these schools. One is the streaming according to the students' ethnic background without considering their academic merit. This fully deserves our collective anger and condemnation.

The second type is the system where the school management decides to allocate a certain number of students from other ethnic backgrounds to make a class more multi-racial in composition. For example in a class of 40 students at a secondary school, one might find 40 non-Malays (as it often happens in science streams).

To improve the racial integration and to help the Malay students, the school administrators might decide to allocate a certain number of places for Malay students. So in this case, the quota system does not appear to be so sinister and does in a way encourage racial integration as long as it is done in a just and a transparent manner.

The school administrators who stream the students by race alone give a number of reasons; main one is to simplify the scheduling of moral and religious classes. This, as many have commented, is totally unacceptable as it defeats a far more important purpose of the national schools  students, parents, teachers, NUTP, employers, administrators and other concerned parties and not just the officials at the ministry and state education departments.

Many have also questioned the conduct and U-turns made by Samy Vellu on this matter. Well, it is easy to understand if we discount the conspiracy theory. In the ruling coalition Barisan Nasional, matter such as this is considered sensitive and normally discussed and solved behind closed doors.

The failure of MIC Youth to be patient until the matter was resolved through the proper channel and going to the press is seen as not keeping up with the spirit of BN.

Clearly Samy Vellu has been caught unprepared or embarrassed by this episode and as such tried to downplay the matter, knowing that he and his party are likely to be reprimanded in private by his fellow coalition members in the BN. Also realising that the racial insinuation has hurt the Malays, he tried to keep the topic from getting overblown.

Another question that has been asked by many is why did NUTP remain silent all this while. I believe the main reason is they felt, rightly or wrongly, the officials at the ministry would not act on their complaints.

Musa should take note of this and as mentioned earlier, should arrange for more face-to-face sessions with NUTP and other independent bodies to receive the real feedback on the weaknesses and problems facing the education system directly.