YOURSAY | ‘The powers-that-be are afraid of citizens who can think and reason.’

Single-stream education system is the way, ruler reiterates

TC Chan: HRH Sultan Ibrahim Sultan Iskandar is absolutely spot on. Kudos to him for saying what must be on the minds of many Malaysians. The current multi-systems are divisive and do not foster racial integration.

Anyone else saying this will meet a barrage of police reports for sedition and haul up for questioning. Anyone brave enough to report HRH (His Royal Highness)?

Politicians from both sides of the divide? Perkasa? Chinese or Tamil educationists?

Asitis: It is not just a matter of switching to single-stream education. The standard of teachers and the syllabus need to be improved to be in line with the need of a globalised world.

Education needs to be liberalised to promote a culture of thinking and reasoning among students. Herein lies the problem. The powers-that-be are afraid of citizens who can think and reason.

Norman Fernandez: While single-stream education should be the ideal education system, we must ask why did non-Malays abandon the national school system in favour of Chinese (and Tamil schools).

Once government English schools were schools of choice so much so that Chinese schools suffered poor enrolment. Some Chinese schools like Han Jian Chinese schools had to depend on Thai and Indonesian Chinese students for enrolment.

When education was politicised, the system polarised and overemphasis on Islamisation in schools (there were incidents of non-Muslim school children being converted without their parents’ consent), together with teachers who are not committed, dedicated and competent (as compared to teachers in Chinese schools), were enough reasons for non-Malays to send their children to Chinese schools where education standard, discipline and teaching are far ahead.

6th Generation Immigrant: Tuanku, Malaysians are well aware that the powers and influence of the rulers were curtailed in order to shore up certain political party influences.

Malaysians are disappointed that a number of PMs made mistakes along the way leading to the current Malaysian glum.

The Council of Rulers can still be a force to reckoned with even today, at least for the majority of apolitical Malaysians.

For example, the suggestion to investigate the RM1 billion budget for the Malaysian Islamic Development Department (Jakim) and the general views of the one-stream education can be discussed in the Council of Rulers and the findings made public through the council’s press releases.

Malaysians and rural folks will then be provided with alternative views (from other revered people) as opposed to those just from Najib Abdul Razak, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, Ismail Sabri Yaakob, Abdul Rahman Dahlan, Salleh Said Keruak, Ahmad Maslan, Liow Tiong Lai and Dr S Subramaniam.

The simple people and rural folks must be awakened from the spell cast since 1981. Malaysia can be saved.

P Dev Anand Pillai: With the greatest of respect to His Royal Highness, the majority who are in charge don't seem to see it in the same way.

We cannot be waiting for the federal government to make a decision because it has miserably failed many times before and the younger generation is losing time.

International and private schools where one can take overseas examinations are just too expensive for even the middle class.

It will take a Malay leader with vision and guts to be able to change this predicament. Till then we will continue to live in a facade that will have been built where we act and pretend to be together as Malaysians.

Hamzah Paiman: The more HRH the Sultan of Johor shares his thoughts, the more Johoreans are seeing hope in this nation.

He is doing what the politicians on both sides of the divide ought to be doing instead of counting their respective votes. We need a firm and just figurehead to steer our nation back to sanity.

Wandering Star: I was at my granddaughter's pre-school graduation concert in Singapore recently, I was so proud of her when she spoke in faultless English introducing her class and events they would be performing.

After her, a boy spoke, almost in faultless Mandarin. What moved me was they were so confident and not intimidated by the big audience. No wonder Singapore is or already, achieved developed nation status.

Look at the shameless Umno cybertroopers in this Malaysiakini forum who could not string together a sentence of readable English. They are no doubt the pride and dignity of the so-called "ketuanan Melayu".

HRH the Sultan of Johor, you spoke the truth and it is timely to put things right in our educational system.

GE14Now!: The level of English in the country has deteriorated because those who are in power in Umno prefer to keep their supporters out of touch with the goings-on of the world outside of the proverbial coconut shell.

Yes, all one has to do is to look at the comments written by Umno's cybertroopers and the nonsense they spout in totally incomprehensible English. These are the failed legacies of Umno's education policies.

They believe that the world owes them a living but then realise too late that the world does not, that life is not fair and then they find that they cannot compete (unless of course, they have a six-month rent-free tenancy ).

Retnam: Actually poor command of English is a problem only for the Malay community. Chinese and Indians are quite okay with English because they don't have any phobia.

So this problem must be left to the Malays to resolve. Chinese and Indians need not "campur tangan".

Pisasu 7: When the inspector-general of police (IGP) can get confused with the word "royal", what about the rest of the ruling elite?

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