The ‘Allah’ issue and the recent confiscation of copies of the Bahasa Malaysia Bible by the Selangor Islamic Religious Department (Jais) has raised concerns among thinking Malaysians about where the country is heading.

While the present situation is serious, my assessment is that a bigger danger lurks in our schools. Unless it is tackled urgently, the situation will reach such proportions that there will be no turning back for the country.

The religious and social tensions that we are witnessing today with their periodic blow-ups are still manageable. Manageable because we still have a critical mass of Malaysians of all races and religions who are sensible, moderate and committed to a multiracial, multicultural and multireligious Malaysia.

To see a group of Malays visiting the Lady of Lourdes Church in Klang recently with peace offerings of flowers is indeed heart-warming and assures the hopelessly disillusioned that there is still hope for the country. But the underlying divisive forces are strong and will become stronger with time unless decisive measures are taken to address them.

There are many things wrong with our society. Here I wish to address one issue that I feel is critically important and needs immediate attention. I am referring to our schools.

To say that our schools have many problems will be an understatement. But many of these problems, such as quality, can be fixed relatively easily. What I am really worried about is the output of the school system - the values, mindsets, attitudes, and perceptions of the students coming out of the schools. In other words, are our schools producing students for a society that is multiracial, multicultural and multireligious?

While improving quality and other educational components are important, I believe a far more significant matrix to measure our schools is the value component of the education they are providing. What is the kind of students that our schools are churning out in terms of their worldviews? What is their perception of themselves and others? How do they see other cultures, religions and races?

Intolerant mind hard to change

Producing incompetent students, though a problem, is not as serious as producing intolerant students. Incompetency can be corrected through subsequent education, training and self-learning. But a misguided and intolerant mind, once firmly formed, is hard to change.

I have not seen any study or research on the value dimensions of the education our schools are providing. Given the structure of our society, our schools have an important socialisation role to play - to prepare our young to live in a country that is diverse in race, religion and culture. This socialisation must take place when the students are still young, when their minds are free of misconceptions and values that are detrimental to living in a plural society.

In the school the primary agent in this socialisation process is the teacher, supported by school administrators and policy makers. The school needs to socialise our young with the right set of values to live in a diverse society. Is our school system playing this role or is it dysfunctional to the needs of a diverse society?   

My fear for the future is that our schools are becoming a breeding-ground for racial, cultural and religious intolerance. There is growing evidence of this from the actions of teachers, school principals, and policy makers on issues of race, culture and religion.

The evidence clearly points in the direction of intolerance for diversity. This is where the nightmare lies. If this trend is not checked but allowed to grow and even subtly encouraged, we will be laying the foundation for more Perkasa-style of thinking.

Fortunately, the old school system has left us with many moderate and rational Malaysians with courage and conviction to protest against of all forms of intolerance and extremism. My worry is that we may not be able to rely on this pool of goodwill in the future. We cannot rely on our schools, as presently structured and managed, to produce people who can provide leadership for a plural society.

The authorities don’t seem to understand this potential danger or are prepared to ignore it for political expediency. Malay political leaders, especially the Perkasa-type, are obsessed with Malay solidarity and suffer from a siege-mentality. They see a threat to Malay supremacy in every nook and corner. To deal with this perceived threat, they work up the Malays using race, language and religion.

The national schools are packed with Malay teachers, supported by Malay principles and Malay policy makers. Many years ago when I was in the education service, there was an unwritten policy and practice that if the director of education (in those days they were called chief education officers) was a Malay, his deputy must be a non-Malay. This was a simple, sensible policy. The schools were more balanced in terms of teachers, school heads and students.

This structure made it difficult for any form of bigotry to take root in schools. The school curriculum and teaching was also a lot more secular.

Fertile ground for closing of the mind

All this has changed dramatically now. The school has become a fertile ground not for an open education and scientific enquiry of knowledge but for a closing of the mind to understanding the global and diverse world that we live in. This is not only dangerous for a plural society like ours but a disservice to our students, especially Malay students whose thinking is being circumscribed.

Those who will eventually suffer most from such a school system will be the Malays who will be ill-prepared to function in a globalised and competitive world. They will be able to function only in a Malay environment. Such environmental opportunities are becoming less and less. The government cannot continue to absorb them into the civil service, government-linked companies (GLCs) and other public agencies.

The students do not have the mindset to function in an environment that is culturally, racially and religiously diverse. This is why they find working in the private sector so difficult. It is not that private businesses discriminate against them. The schools have effectively excluded the Malays from functioning in the modern business world.   

Apart from producing students who are not culturally and emotionally competent to function in a plural Malaysian society, our schools do not create a secular mind that is so importance for scientific inquiry and innovation. They do not prepare our young for working and living in the global world because our schools are too Malay- and Malaysian-centric.

The global environment which is diverse and fiercely competitive is too uncomfortable for our young, especially for the Malays because of their skewed mindsets and worldviews. What is sad is that the people who will suffer most from our school system are Malays who will become “misfits” in the rapidly changing Malaysian and global environment.

Malay political leadership is clearly shortsighted in trading-off the long-term interests of the Malays for short-term political gains.

So, there are good reasons why we need to relook at our schools and the way we run them. Asking Mckinsey (an American consulting company) to draft the Education Blueprint for Malaysia is the last thing we need. Mckinsey are not stakeholders or players in the system. We Malaysians need to sit down and do some hard thinking, negotiate, compromise, and come up with a school system that can best serve the present and future needs of our society.

Compromise and trade-offs needed

The fragmented school system that we presently have does not help toward producing ‘Malaysians’. At the same time, the legitimate right of all to study and use their own language has to be acknowledged. It is here that compromise and trade-offs are needed. The minority communities have lost confidence in the national schools. They see them as ‘Malay’ institutions, offering poor quality education.

The government is taking measures to tackle the quality issues, but has done nothing to address the cultural environment in the schools. The reluctance of the government to restructure national schools to reflect multiculturalism and secularism will nullify any attempt to make national schools the preferred choice for Malaysian parents, especially for non-Malays.

There is enough evidence to support the view that even Malay parents are equally concerned and frustrated with the learning environment in our national schools, as exemplified by the demand for the teaching of science and maths in English.

The government has to be bold and take some hard decisions. Our schools cannot be allowed to become a breeding-ground for racial, cultural and religious bigotry. If we do nothing to address this issue or undertake only cosmetic changes and leave the basic structure and system alone, there is real danger that the future will see more and more people with Perkasa-kind of thinking, both among Malays and non-Malays.

We don’t want to reach that point because at that stage we may not have enough people like Marina Mahathir to offer flowers in the name of peace.