There is no one Malaysia, and all the national schooling in the world will not change that.

Readers who advocate eliminating vernacular education for the sake of some ethereal Bangsa Malaysia goal are treating the symptom, not the problem.

And the problem is?

The fact that there are different races in Malaysia, the fact that every single policy reminds us that we are 'different', and that some are actually more 'different' than others. No wonder some non-bumi parents would want to send their children to race-based vernacular schools the government loves to remind them that they are 'different' anyway.

In fact, it is a little hypocritical to criticise the vernacular schools. After all, no one complains when bumi students go to Mara colleges not exactly hotbeds of ethnic diversity after Form 3 or Form 5 for schooling in our 'differences'.

The debate over the teaching of Mandarin is also equally amusing. Even if the government were to successfully convince Chinese Malaysians to stop speaking Mandarin so that they can be more patriotic, the economic reality is that 10, 20 years from now, everyone will be trying to brush up their Mandarin for both fun and profit.

Just look to Hong Kong for how fast economic imperatives can drive language adoption. In fact, it might do Malaysians well to compel every child to learn Mandarin if we are interested in staying competitive for Chinese tourism and investment ringgit.

Not long from now, Malaysians will no longer be able to fall back on assembling hard disk drives, air-conditioners or badly-designed national cars to make a living. Those will probably be done at a much cheaper cost somewhere in rural China or India.

Based on my rudimentary understanding of the law of comparative advantage, we will likely win in areas like tourism and services that cannot be done in China or India. While our Malaysian English is portable in India, a good grasp of Mandarin would be essential if we absolutely have to deal with those monolingual Mainlanders (gasp!)

My fellow Malaysians, I urge you to not look to the past and blame colonial education policies for our sorry, divided state of affairs. Instead, look to the future and memorise your pinyin.