I am really appalled and saddened by the way teachers are imparting the spirit of multi-culturalism amongst our young pupils. Of late, there was an incident where non-Muslim students were given conditions on what food to bring from their homes to participate in a Canteen Day at a particular school.

The conditions were so stringent and strict that they would deter any right-thinking non-Muslim parent from sending his child to participate in such a gathering organised by the school.

Telling non-Muslims to not bring 'wet food' from their homes for the function in school only goes to show where we are heading and the lip-service being paid to the amount of unity that we are supposedly practicing.

These teachers have failed to realise that by sowing such seeds of dissent among the young, we will be creating a society that is based on racial lines which will turn discriminatory in time. We cannot allow such practices to take place in this country which we proudly claim around the world to be multi-racial and multi-cultural.

We must note the fact that our history is so intertwined that by removing the participation of the non-Muslims and non-Malays, we would have no history at all. The racial and religious bias being shown by some schools shows that government schools are totally dominated by the Muslims. The efforts of the Education Ministry will be a total waste if these discriminative and dissenting practices are not halted immediately.

We may be Malay, Chinese or Indians but we must know that it takes all three and the rest to make Malaysia what it is today. We seem to attract others to come here to set up their second home but are we making ourselves a home in the only home that we know as Malaysia?

Can we blame the best brains if they say that they are not interested in returning? Racial and religious bias in schools have got to stop and the government must be serious in doing so.