“Education does not make you happy. Nor does freedom. We don’t become happy just because we’re free – if we are. Or because we’ve been educated – if we have. But because education may be the means by which we realize we are happy. It opens our eyes, our ears, tells us where delights are lurking, convinces us that there is only one freedom of any importance whatsoever, that of the mind, and gives us the assurance – the confidence – to walk the path our mind, our educated mind, offers…”
- Iris Murdoch
COMMENT | Iris Murdoch’s sober reflection on the essence of education offers Malaysians a good wakeup call after the 61 years of being subjected to flip-flopping education policies aligned to uncalled-for politicisation.
With a new government and a new education minister, it is time we start afresh to reconstruct a fair and far-sighted education policy for our country.
Education has been a contentious issue in Malaysia ever since Independence. If we are to progress as a truly ‘developed’ nation, we need a thorough-going reformulation of our education system founded on egalitarian principles both in terms of opportunities and in institutional practice.
Tangible educational policy must focus on nurturing all Malaysians regardless of social class or ethnicity to foster a nation of mature, critical and creative thinking individuals, and that bridges the huge differential between manual and intellectual labour in Malaysian society.
To this end, Malaysians deserve quality holistic education that encourages the learning of the arts and humanities, as well as scientific and technological knowledge required for research and development and vocational skills. At the same time, education must be secular and free of political and religious interference. Let academic freedom, students’ self-government and campus autonomy be the new environment in our tertiary institutions.
Free tertiary education for the B40
To meet the egalitarian goal of leaving no child behind, tertiary education needs to be totally free for the less privileged (say, with a monthly household income of RM10,000 and below).
To have a progressive and sustainable system, those from more privileged background (say, with a household income RM20,000 or more a month) should pay full cost tuition fees. Otherwise, the middle class who dominate tertiary institutions will be subsidised by the working class.
Those from households between RM10,000 and RM20,000 a month could pay on a sliding scale that is means tested. This will better ensure equal opportunities for all with no racial discrimination in enrolment into tertiary educational institutions.
The principle of free primary and secondary education for all should extend to the 60 independent Chinese secondary schools in the country because they have been maintained all this while by the Chinese community since 1961, and their Unified Examination Certificate should now be recognised by the Harapan government.
No politics in education
The bigger priority of our new education policy is ending the politicisation of education. To refer to just one event out of many in the last six decades – the decision to send unqualified administrators to Chinese schools in 1987 – led to protests which then saw the unleashing of Operation Lalang.
The unfair financial allocation to SJK schools all these years is also reflective of the way mother tongue education has been politicised, and forced the Chinese and Indian communities to pay ‘double taxation’ in order to maintain their schools.
The most telling indicator of the way education has been politicised is the statistics on Chinese and Tamil schools:
At Independence, we already had 1,350 Chinese primary schools, 78 Chinese secondary schools and more than 800 Tamil primary schools in the national education system.
Today, there are only 1,290 Chinese primary schools, 60 Independent Chinese secondary schools and 550 Tamil primary schools. despite the fact that the population of the Chinese and Tamils have doubled since Independence.
Furthermore, there are today nearly 100,000 non-Chinese students in the Chinese primary schools. Can you imagine the numbers in the classes in these schools?
Be proud of our mother tongue schools
Malaysians have good reason to be proud of our longstanding multilingual educational institutions. We should be proud that we have mother tongue education systems in our country that have been nurtured since pre-British colonial times.
The first Chinese school in the peninsula was established in 1819, nearly 200 years ago. The Tamil schools have also had nearly 150-year history. It is not true that the British colonial power built different schools to keep the Malayan people apart.
All mother tongue schools, including Malay schools were neglected during British colonialism. It was the far-sighted pioneers in the respective communities during those early days who built the schools in order to ensure their children received their respective mother tongue education.
Thus, our various ethnic communities should be congratulated for nurturing their mother tongue education all these years despite the colonial neglect. During the pre-Independence days, there was mutual encouragement among the Malay, Chinese and Tamil education groups. Thus, the Chinese education leader Lim Lian Geok encouraged the Malay-language lobby to develop Malay-language education beyond primary level during the pre-Independence days.
Nevertheless, since Independence, Chinese and Tamil school lobbies have grown to distrust Umno’s attempts to change the character of these schools while refusing to allow any further increase in their numbers.
The mother tongue education lobbies have doggedly defended their schools against attempts to convert them to English-medium and later into Malay-medium schools. The statistics speak for themselves and the controversies at practically every general election reflect the politics of race and assimilation in this country.
Those who do not comprehend the suspicions by the Chinese and Tamil school lobbies of Umno’s agenda should read the protean saga I have written about in The Chinese Schools of Malaysia.
The lesson to be learnt from the acrimonious controversies of the last 61 years is that the disingenuous attempts to assimilate these mother tongue schools are bound to fail because the Chinese and Tamil communities will defend their schools tooth and nail.
Human rights provisions cannot be segregationist
The arguments against the existence of Chinese and Tamil schools are always the same, namely that they do not promote national integration. This is sheer hypocrisy when we do not hear the same strident condemnation of the racist enrolment policies at UiTM and other Mara institutions even though these institutions are paid for by all Malaysian tax payers/
I have argued against the inconsistent arguments of the “melting pot theorists” elsewhere. As the educationist Ken Robinson has advocated, “Ultimately, education has to be formed around how children learn and what they need to learn to form themselves.”
Unesco studies have shown that while middle class children in more privileged family environments can cope with a second language as the main medium of instruction, those from less privileged home environments fare better when the medium of instruction at pre-school and primary level is their mother tongue.
Having said that, I have greater respect for the democrats who genuinely hope for greater contact between children of the different ethnic communities as they are growing up. Allow me to put forward a progressive vision for all concerned.
Schools provided by elected local councils
The promise of elected local government in the Harapan manifesto for GE14 is fundamental to this vision.
Once we have democratically elected local councils, education can be decentralised with schools built according to the needs of the local communities based on local survey findings rather than the prevailing top down racial politicisation of education.
Thus, if a community expresses a need for a Chinese-medium school in Petaling Jaya or Kajang or Kuantan or Johor Bahru, the local council would build it based on that need. The same applies to the other communities, for example, in providing English medium schools for Malaysians whose mother tongue at home is English. Why not?
Education precincts to promote integration
At the same time integration can be nurtured via ‘education precincts’ set up by the local government to include new Malay-medium, Chinese-medium, Tamil-medium, and English-medium schools.
These precincts would have parks and sport fields, theatres, ICT centres, libraries, gymnasiums, and other excellent facilities to be shared by students from all the schools in the precinct.
Thus, besides allowing for opportunities to integrate, such a design will ensure greater equality among the schools in terms of quality of schools, facilities and financial allocations.
The Chinese and Tamil schools will have no reason to complain about being discriminated against when they receive proportionate government assistance. And existing schools can similarly be grouped to ensure they have access to shared facilities and opportunities in their vicinity.
Thus, not only will students from all the various streams have the opportunity to mix and mingle in these education precincts, they can participate in joint cultural performances, quizzes, elocution and debating competitions, societies and sports meets. This will not only promote integration but also enhance the quality and standards of all schools.
The underlying principle in creating education precincts is qualitatively different from the old government’s ‘Vision School’ concept, in that the various schools in the Education Precinct are run autonomously. The only difference is that the schools are completely catered for and funded by the government.
Such a fair and egalitarian system would offer a progressive way forward for the whole nation and would herald a new era of truly Malaysian cultural understanding both in education and society.
For our system of education to be high-performing, it has to be well-focused and well-resourced, investing in professional training, appropriate technology and such common support services as in the proposed education precincts.
Once the new Harapan government honours its aspiration of creating a Malaysian Malaysia and to enact the provision of local council elections, it would be a short and appropriate step to adopt education precincts as an integrationist blueprint for our new education policy in Malaysia.
The mother tongue lobby in the Chinese and Tamil communities must likewise consider this proposal to have education precincts if they are serious about wanting to promote national integration. After 61 years of never ending controversies over our mother tongue schools, it is time to say: ‘No politics in education please, we’re Malaysians!’
KUA KIA SOONG is the adviser of Suara Rakyat Malaysia (Suaram).
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.
