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We seem to be blaming Chinese education for the flaws of our National Education Policy which is simply changed at whim each and every time a politician feels it is right to do so.

Just when we were about to see the results of teaching a generation of students the subjects of Mathematics and Science in the English language, the language fanatics being the self-appointed guardians of the rural Malays lambasted this development. Now, when our education system seems to be producing students who are just worried about the lorry loads of ‘A’s that they can score to mark their ability, we blame the Chinese Schools!

Ever since the missionaries bid farewell to the schools that they had once helmed and left the country, we are only seeing the Chinese schools carry on the legacy of good education, standards and discipline which these missionaries had instilled in the schools that they headed.

The simple basic reason  that our national school system is so pathetic is because it is filled with a mono-ethnic teaching workforce. When there is only one race who forms the super-majority of the teaching workforce, the entire demographics of the education system changes.

What we need is a change from the bottom right up to the top levels. We don't need expensive consultants or copy systems from other nations, we just need to look back at our own history and how we developed well in the 60s right up to the early 90s before the wave of mono-ethnic policies took root.

There was a healthy mix of races in our schools and the Non-Malay teaching force were very much part of the whole system. But sadly today we just don’t seem to see what we used to take for granted 25-30 years ago. Our schools have become little ‘madrasahs’ where the rights and sensitivities of the non-Malays don’t seem to matter any more.

One has yet to see a non-Malay headmaster of a premier secondary school these days, have they become extinct? Or is it a policy that when the senior non-Malay school head retires, a Malay principal should take over?

The non-Malays will not have any objections if the Malay principal runs the school without fear or favour and in a fair and equitable manner with only the students’ interest at heart instead of allowing politicians to dictate how a school should be run and what should be taught.

If the Malay principal is bold and courageous enough to ensure that religion will not be mixed with the administration of the school, then confidence can be brought back to our national school system. But sadly what we seem to have now is segregation between the Malays and the Non-malays which turns the National Schools into ‘little madrasas’. What choice do the people have then?

When politics enters education, educating takes a back seat. Politics will attempt to use education to mind-mould the young which is what we are seeing today. Schools become nurseries for future party cadres.  

The entry of party politics into education

The Chinese schools seem to be favoured because there is some level of discipline being maintained and the children are coached to strive for the best that they can muster in a system like ours. Such a concern or effort seems absent in National Schools. National Schools were the best at one point of time but what we have allowed now is the entry of petty party politics into education.

Every time a minister is changed, so does the policies being imposed. How then do we as the people respond? Further, the National schools seem to be having a subtle religious agenda in the way lessons are delivered and the school is administered.

This was not the case back during the times the missionaries were in charge of the premier schools in the country. The priests who headed most of the missionary schools would insist that the Muslim children attend their ‘agama lessons’ when the period is due. They would never indulge in attempts to subtly convert the children under their care.

Sadly now what we seem to hear is a subtle attempt by the school authorities to try to convert the students as had recently been reported in Negri Sembilan and Sarawak. Any non-Malay parent would naturally fear such a predicament and thus what better alternative would they have then to send their children to Chinese schools where such a threat is virtually non-existent?

What we have created over the last 34 years since 1981 and more so after the retirement of the last batch of capable Non-Malay teachers from the past, is a system that has bastardised education and turned it into a money making scheme. The system that seems to be ruining the lives of the young of Malaysia today is a system that has created ‘a paradise for those in power’.

Good education has now become a commodity which is made available to the ones who can afford it. In such a system, parents who are not well-off financially will have to look for various ways and means to ensure that their children get a decent education so that they will not be left out. One of that ways will be to choose the Chinese school.

The only way we can see a better future ahead is when we lift all the racial and religious barriers and let the capable take the lead in revamping Malaysian education and returning it to what it was 30 years ago before ethnocentric and religious based policies took over and brought it to its knees like what we have to bear today. So please don’t blame others for what you yourselves have destroyed! Experimenting with education can make or break a nation.

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