On Merdeka eve, this coming Monday, I have a ‘date’ with an assistant superintendent of police to record my statement for their investigations on me. I am required to present myself at his police station to answer some questions regarding a breach of the Sedition Act, says the notice served on me.

What Aug 31 ‘independence’ is enjoyed by Malaysia when its society has so little freedom of speech, and critical thought is taboo?

One reader calling himself ‘Yobama’ responded to my Aug 16 article, commenting: “Who calls Malaysia home? I call Malaysia home and majority of Malays and lots and lots of ethnic Chinese Malaysians and ethnic Indian Malaysians call this country home. That’s for the info of Ms Ang. I hope that answers Ms Ang’s question.”

Well, Ms Ang is happy to be informed that Yobama is happy to be home sweet home. However, other Malaysians who are not bruised so black and blue from such patriotic chest-thumping must surely be seriously contemplating their children’s future.

NONE Ever since I was in primary school, year after year, and perennially, the families of my classmates emigrated and taking along the little eight-year-old, nine-year-old, 10-year-old girls who had sat beside me in class. Another wave of classmates went abroad after Form 5 and never came back upon finishing their studies. And later, yet another clutch of girls married expats and moved overseas.

Apparently sociologists have this theory that people generally react to stress with either ‘fight or flight’. I do not at all blame those who have chosen to leave this country. Especially if they were - today from afar - to read the current news from Malaysia about the behaviour of the school principals in Kulai, Johor and Sungai Petani, Kedah.

I’m not particularly shocked either that there are school heads who take issue with non-Muslims eating in a common area during fasting month. There was a journalist exactly like that back in the New Straits Times when I was there. Some readers attribute the religious bigotry to a kampung mentality; however the ex-colleague I just mentioned was not from the rural area but a VIP’s daughter.

indian ngo pc 221209 increasing tamil school student intake program poster Here’s the sticky situation presently confronting non-Malay parents. The Kulai and Sungai Petani episodes are merely what the minorities have anticipated all along.

This week, controversy is swirling around the Malay Consultative Council’s call for vernacular schools to be abolished.

The agitation against Chinese and Tamil schools has been in the air for some time now and was last year spearheaded by the most racist blogger I’ve ever had the displeasure to read. It was he who initiated the ‘ Satu Sekolah untuk Semua ’ (read: Get rid of Chinese schools) campaign that garnered enough momentum to have the ear of Education Minister Muhyiddin Yassin.

Animosity against Chinese schools

I came across a rather interesting table in the ‘Media Planning Guide Malaysia 2010' giving the country's literacy statistics, sourcing from Media Index 2009. Malaysians literate in one language are 96%. Malaysians literate in Malay are 86%, English 48%, Chinese 25% and Tamil 7%.

The figures are based on our population of 14.6 million aged 15 and above. The number of Malaysians literate in Chinese and Tamil roughly corresponds to the percentage of the two respective communities in the country.

It is hardly encouraging that less than half of adult Malaysians are illiterate in English. On the flip side of the coin, how many readers who have been aggressively arguing with me here read the Malay media daily? Or watch TV3? And have an inkling of their content?

The language barrier does not only impede those who are monolingually Malay but impacts the other way around too on those monolingually English.

toni kassim book launch gathering 250609 kua kia soong Dr Kua Kia Soong ( right ) must be commended for putting on record the long struggle of the Chinese educationists in his book ‘The Chinese schools of Malaysia - A protean saga’. In it, he has collated illuminating statistics from the Education Ministry, Dong Zong and others.

In 1970, there were 1,346 Chinese primary schools. By 2004, the total had decreased to 1,287 despite an increased demand.

Clearly, these schools are bursting at the seams and have too many classes each standard than can be accommodated by the existing infrastructure. It is equally clear the government is adamant that vernacular education must be contained at the present level - in 1990, there were 1,290 Chinese primary schools and in the year 2000, there were 1,287.

Not a single new Chinese school has been built over the last two decades.

Pot calling kettle black

Then we have the misguided souls who maliciously label the products of these schools as “racists”, all for loving the Chinese language, Chinese literature and for taking a keen interest in Chinese history and culture. Is this criminal?

And how can we blame the kids from the Chinese education stream for their bent when the national schools have an inordinately narrow focus? Today, the insistence of the subject syllabus, for example, is that all the history we need to know began in the 1400s with the Malacca sultanate, and only Islamic civilisation is worth emphasising.

I wouldn't be surprised if more parents decide to enrol their children in the (private) independent Chinese secondary schools.

The drawback of taking this path is that the Chinese-medium equivalent O-Level exam - called the UEC - is not recognised for entry into Malaysian public universities. [Note: Although UEC holders can join the Utar intake, the university is not a public institution of higher learning.]

university students multiracial Hence, students holding UEC qualifications would necessarily pursue their tertiary education in Singapore, Taiwan and other countries that accept this certificate.

Nonetheless, the phenomenon of youths brain-drained away is not confined to those with means to afford private schooling. Malaysians without diplomas or degrees also skip the country to work blue collar jobs illegally in Europe and the USA.

Or otherwise the father or mother is cook or kitchen helper in a foreign country without a proper working permit, and consigning their children to single-parent households back home. Or if one believes Ridhuan Tee’s assertion that eight out of every 10 rich Malaysian are Chinese, then these illegal labourers abroad must be the remaining two poor Chinese out of the 10.

That flag-waving reader calling himself Yobama believes he has answered my question regarding who calls Malaysia home.

My Merdeka Day conundrum: Do the “lots of ethnic Chinese Malaysians and ethnic Indian Malaysians” that Yobama alludes to still have their family intact here, or are their children and siblings scattered everywhere by the four winds?   

HELEN ANG used to be a journalist. In future, she would like to be a practising cartoonist. But for the present, she is in the NGO circles and settling down to more serious writing and reading of social issues.