It’s time Tamil-speaking Indians sit down and have a serious soul-searching session on Tamil schools without getting emotional.

I am the product of our English-medium schools of years gone by. I speak and write Bahasa Malaysia, English And Tamil. I also speak Cantonese, Hindi and Malayalam. The Tamil I learnt during the Tamil classes held within the English-medium schools.

There were also Mandarin and Agama classes going on side-by-side with no problems really. It is the best solution for racial integration.

But let’s take a look now (without getting emotional) at what a Tamil-trained student is going to do in today’s job market. He or she can become a Tamil schoolteacher, that’s for sure. Or become a Tamil DJ or newscaster, a court interpreter or a salesperson in a Tamil-owned shop.

But everything else around us can be done without an in-depth knowledge of Tamil.

Of course, there are Tamil school students who have become professionals but they will tell you how tough it was for them to make it through university. These are the people who wouldn’t put their own children through the same system they went through.

I know a Tamil school headmaster, who came to that vocation because his parents had put him through a Tamil school in the estates. I once went to his school to donate some classroom chairs. During the small function there, he went on and on extolling the virtues of a Tamil education.

At the end of the function, while walking back to my car, I casually asked him how many children he had and whether they were in his school.

The man told me they were in the national type schools. When asked why, he shyly said: ‘I don’t want them to become like me. My parents made a bad choice, and I am stuck here.’ ( pointing to his dilapidated school).

I then told him, ‘But you just told all those people to send their children to Tamil schools.’

‘Ya lah ... otherwise we won’t have any work!’ he replied cheekily.

So this is the problem with Tamil schools. Those who advocate them rarely send their children to the same schools. How many politicians you know send all their children to Tamil schools?

Those who insist on keeping these sad schools alive should show proof that they have their own children enrolled in them. Otherwise, they should keep quiet.

Tamil schools and double standards exist because race-based political parties want to keep their voter base large and alive so that they will always remain in power.

Take a trip to Tamil Nadu in India and see for yourself how much importance is given to English education instead of Tamil education alone.

The best Indian universities teach in English and hence a huge demand for their graduates all over the world. When the Indians in India can move in the right direction, why are we insisting on keeping our children in the dark?

Chinese students from China enroll in private colleges in Malaysia for a good English education. But our own students seem to have no such choice and the standard of our own English is so bad.

The British built the Tamil schools in the estates so that they would forever have a source of cheap labour. Our cheap politicians are now exploiting that situation for votes. This is why the Tamil community in this country is in dire straits.

The same British built beautiful English schools in the towns. And it seems that we have dumped the good and retained the bad. How sad.

Those big English schools are more than a hundred years old and but are still standing tall with neither structural defects nor fungus. Plus they were built on flat ground so that there would be no landslides!