At the risk of stirring a hornet's nest, please allow me to put into historical perspective the issue of vernacular education in this country. Originally, vernacular education was the main source of the transfer of knowledge amongst the peoples who occupied Malaysia before the arrival of the European colonialists.

Malays had their own language and used Jawi (an Arabic-based written script) to transfer knowledge from one generation to the next. There was also great educational influence from the Indian sub-continent and later, the Arabian peninsular. These comprised traders and teachers who brought with them Buddhist, Hindu and Islamic ideas.

The Chinese also brought with them their own educational system taught in the various Southeastern Chinese dialects. Unlike the alphabetical system, Chinese characters resemble hieroglyphs which made it possible to read in the various dialects.

Thus, vernacular education before the introduction of Mandarin meant dialect-based education. Vernacular Mandarin as the medium of instruction for vernacular schools was only introduced after the Chinese Revolution. Putunghua replaced classical mandarin in around 1917.

The late Lim Kean Siew in his book Eye Over the Golden Sands gave a vivid account of Hokkien vernacular education and how it was replaced by Mandarin in the late 1920s.

The first defence of vernacular education was in 1933. Kean Siew's father, the late Lim Cheng Ean, famously walked out of the Legislative Council in protest of the British colonial government's refusal to fund Chinese and Tamil vernacular education because the Chinese and Indians were regarded as non-natives.

This was during the Great Depression and the colonial government decided not to fund Chinese and Indian vernacular schools whilst supporting Malay vernacular schools.

From that point onwards, vernacular education became a thorny issue. To Straits Chinese like Cheng Ean, it was the duty of the colonial government to provide financial support for all forms of vernacular education as these communities provided the taxes that financed government.

Furthermore, those Chinese and Indians living in the Straits Settlements were British subjects and ought to receive equal treatment with British subjects of Malay ethnicity. It must be remembered that the Straits Settlements of Penang, Malacca and Singapore was a British colony.

By the 1930s, nationalism was on the rise throughout Asia and the vernacular education issue became a proxy for ethnic nationalist struggles. To the Malays, Cheng Ean's demand was a direct challenge to their rights as the indigenous peoples.

Chinese educationists considered the walk out an important milestone in the fight against colonialism. The English-educated elite supported Cheng Ean's decision to stand by his principles. This was expected of a British subject and the King's Chinese.

So, vernacular education for the Indians and Chinese remained self-funded and as nationalist activities expanded, their development came under greater scrutiny. This created a very negative reaction and a strong sense of anti-colonialism took root.

Chinese schools became the bedrock for anti-Japanese and later anti-Imperialist proponents.

Till this day, some associate Chinese schools with the Malayan Communist Party.

English education was regarded as the most useful way to achieve material progress. Blogs and newspapers still argue that English is the ‘language of business and finance’, the ‘language of globalisation’ and ‘a useful language’. Today, it is the scientific language of the world hence the teaching of maths and science in English.

Coming back to the development of vernacular education, it is obvious that from the outset, vernacular education has been associated with ethnic identity. It then became inextricably linked to ethnic nationalism and anti-colonialism.

During the Japanese occupation, Japanese came to replace the untidy Malayan education system but that experiment failed as the Japanese only ruled for three and a half years.

In the postwar period, vernacular education became the rallying point for many aspiring politicians. With the British on the way out, there would be a vacuum once English education was replaced by a national education system.

The English-educated elite were too small a group to insist upon English as the medium of instruction in government and schools. Without the buffer of English, all ethnic groups competed to install their respective vernacular as medium of instruction or at least to protect the survival of their respective cultures.

Finally, it was decided that Malay would be the national language. Typical of our Constitution, which is the result of compromises, all other vernacular languages were allowed to flourish. This meant the continuation of vernacular schools although for a while they were on the decline as English schools remained popular.

Only when English was removed as a medium of instruction was there a resurgence in vernacular education. Today, we are a nation split down the middle as non-Malays rightly or wrongly regard national schools to be Malay rather than ‘national’ schools and of poor quality.

Other than for official purposes, Malay is not an international language and parents often view it as an extra burden. The resurgence of China as an economic powerhouse also gave incentive for students to enrol in Chinese vernacular schools. To many Malays, this type of attitude is evidence of a lack of patriotism.

They argue that national schools have become ‘Malay’ schools because non-Malays shun them. If they are more ‘Islamic’, it is because the student population is overwhelmingly Malay.

There is no point in dragging UiTM into this discussion as it has to do with the NEP and less to do with the place of vernacular education within our national education system.

So, it seems that we are set to continue being a nation divided by language if the current education system persists. The burden of history makes it very difficult to change mindsets.

As the demographics of Malaysia change with a further reduction of non-Malays, the pressure to continue preserving Chinese and Indian identities through vernacular education will increase.

But ultimately, one day in the distant future, education in Bahasa Malaysia will be so overwhelming that all other types of education will be inconsequential. The historian Professor Khoo Kay Kim is correct when he suggested that minorities must learn to adapt to their new situations however unpalatable that the reality may be.

Until then, we can only hope that the old way of thinking – to insulate oneself in the cocoon of ethnicity and vernacular pride – must give way to a more national platform. This will require sacrifices.

The Malays have already sacrificed Jawi for the alphabet. If we are to have only one type of education system, they must now ponder about giving up their religious schools (pondok and madrasahs) if the Chinese and Indians are asked to give up their mother-tongue education.

Sacrifices are necessary on all sides for the road to national unity is never a one-way street.