In regards to the letter National schools: Non-Muslim students exposed , I would just like to relate my experience as a high school student in a Malaysian national school, not so very long ago.

During my secondary education, I never once felt that there was any serious attempt to 'convert' anyone to the Muslim faith. That said, I must agree that certain staff members proved themselves to have very strong bias in terms of race, though this was not by far the majority, but rather a handful of people.

As for the students themselves, well, while there were definite 'groups' and 'cliques' of people, some of which based on race (which may be more due to familiarity than anything else), the vast majority of the school got along with each other. My own 'clique' consisted of close friends from many races.

In a very odd sense, we were united by the racist sentiments shown by the few overzealous teachers. The fact that adults who were supposed to be imparting knowledge to us could be so blatantly racist simply showed us that we could, and were, far better than them.

Needless to say, these teachers often became the butt of our jokes and were subjected to the lions share of our teenage disregard for authority.

I even remember a day when, upon missing the deadline for an assignment, a teacher remarked to me, 'Tengok-lah, ini perangai budak India'. To which a Malay Muslim friend of mine promptly stood up and said 'Teacher, my homework is late too, am I Indian?'

I apologise for beating around the bush. The point I am trying to drive at is that while I do feel racism among teachers is 'wrong' from a certain point of view, I do not feel it is 'bad' entirely. After all, let us face it, the world is hardly the fairyland of equality. Racist sentiments do exist. And yes, by being a student at a national school, we were exposed to such sentiments.

So how is that a bad thing? By being exposed to such sentiments, we learn to fight them and become better persons. In fact, I would consider it a valuable aspect of my education.

Perhaps, however, I may have been lucky in that my fellow students were not easily influenced by such teachers. Perhaps the fact that we were all 'city kids' played a role in this. I imagine the situation would have been far worse if, for instance, the majority of the teachers had been racist, and had thus influenced the majority of the student populace.

Still, for us, as students in a national secondary school, we found that not only were we able to cope with some teachers being racist, we were able to give as much as we received. My school years gave me experience, and exposure. It also gave me many close friends, from many different races and backgrounds. I could not have asked for more.