Deminegara’s “Satu Sekolah Untuk Semua” – Tam Dalyell’s Response & My Reply to Him

ARCHIVES 2009

By admin-s On Jun 1, 2009

1Sekolah is the best idea yet coming out of the 'tiny' heads of tiny peoples of Malaysia who look forward positively towards Malaysia that belongs to everybody dead or alive, just born or yet to be born. All we need to do is to give it a chance. In the past many tiny heads shot down such move initiated by big minds. The Sekolah Wawasan is an example.

By Malaysian Heart

Tam Dalyell is one of the Deminegara bloggers who created the "Satu Sekolah Untuk Semua" project. Kijangmas describes him as "Pakcik Dal the urbane mountain man, resident sage and voice of reason at DN", who "almost single-handedly collated the relevant narratives from past comments at this blog" for the SSUS memorandum. Dal was good enough to reply to my comment on Rocky's post MCA Youth to lodge police report against 1Sekolah promoters". I post his reply here, and add my response to him below that.

Here is his reply in full:

Dal said…
Dear Malaysian Heart;

Today, 1Sekolah is the best idea yet coming out of the 'tiny' heads of tiny peoples of Malaysia who look forward positively towards Malaysia that belongs to everybody dead or alive, just born or yet to be born. All we need to do is to give it a chance. In the past many tiny heads shot down such move initiated by big minds. The Sekolah Wawasan is an example.

Today 'big heads' have started their moves in shooting down this 'tiny ideas by tiny heads' which is only repeating the same ideas mooted 50 years ago by 'big people' who cared a lot.

No one is out to subjugate anyone in this national effort to give our children a better chance fora better future in a better Malaysia. How better it is going to be is up to us and our leaders.

Let's not look at who is initiating this move. We Malaysians should give this idea a good look, improve on it, fine tune it, give it a proper honing, and then hand it over to those big wigs to push it down the throat of our elected leaders who have no taste for comradeship and goodwill for us tiny rakyat.

It may take a long time to realize this. It may take two or more generations to work this out; but at least we parents can be satisfied that we have handed down to our children something positive to work for together instead or a legacy of childish bickerrings that we seem to relish so much.

We should be ashamed of ourselves that we should be quarreling in front of our children, purportedly for their good, while we know that all the time we are actually indulging to satisfy our selfish greed all for ourselves.
8:41 AM

My response to him is:
Dear Dal,
The measure of how good any idea is, is not the sizes of the heads involved or who tried to shoot down what. To evaluate the idea and determine how good or bad it is, we need to look thoroughly at its intent, proposals & probable consequences, then compare that with what all Malaysians aspire to. That is the least that we owe to our future generations.
To properly evaluate an idea of such import, there needs to be space for discussion & debate; as you yourself have said, "Malaysians should give this idea a good look". What I observe in this memorandum is this: while it claims to promote unity & integration, it does more than just propose a single school stream. It contains some very disturbing premises & key elements, just 2 of which are:

a) that it seeks to institutionalize intolerance against the so-called "foreign" cultures & languages of some Malaysians, by proposing that these be ghettoized, i.e. set apart from & denied its role in the public life of Malaysia, and
b) that it espouses assimilation rather than integration.

Neither of the 2 elements above is in any way necessary for true integration & unity. On the contrary, they will work against "comradeship and goodwill for us tiny rakyat". Elements like these (as well as the intolerant language used in the memorandum) hardly make for a "struggle of all Malaysians irrespective of their colour, origin, creed or breed".

Added to that is the attitude of some promoters of SSUS. While they are quite happy to repeat over and over again the professed objectives of the project and the fact that 1 school for all will promote integration, they seem to want to ignore the fact that Malaysians have concerns & reservations over some elements & aspects of the SSUS. There seems to be an effort to deem people with such concerns as unpatriotic or even racist; and to paint anyone who tries to delve below the surface of SSUS & its promoters (& tries to share it with others), as, in your words, a "provocateur with malice and hidden vicious agenda”. Why this unwillingness to address those concerns? Why this hurry to railroad the SSUS without due diligence & deliberation? If this idea is as good as you say it is, won't it sail through scrutiny & criticism with colours flying?

You wrote, "No one is out to subjugate anyone in this national effort to give our children a better chance for a better future in a better Malaysia". I sincerely welcome your statement; indeed Malaysia cannot be united or strong as long as we seek to subjugate one another.

However, let's look at something else also written by you, in response to this comment of kijangmas, in which he refers to Field Marshal Phibun Songkhram's Thai Ratthaniyom policy, describing it as one "where all Chinese schools, newspapers, culture and names were banned under penalty of imprisonment. Within one generation, the 30% ethnic-Chinese population became fully Thaicized". (Bold emphasis is mine)

Your response to that was:
Tam Dalyell said…

Quote "When the Duli-Duli Yang Maha Mulia Raja-Raja Melayu agreed to the wholesale dishing out of Malayan citizenships –even inexplicably waiving Bahasa Melayu proficiency tests — to a million and a half unwanted, abandoned stateless Chinese (and Indians) in 1957 …"unquote

Hmmm … what would happen if The Duli-Duli Raja-Raja Melayu did not agree, and Malaya had its own Phibun Songkhram or Plaek Khittasangkha with a Malayan version of "Ratthaniyom" back then?

But may be, today's individual parts of "Ratthaniyom" can be build up and put into action … no?