The Chinese school silat
The Umno general assembly may not be the proper forum to discuss axing vernacular schools. Their defenders won’t be there.
Ishmael Lim, Free Malaysia Today
It’s the silly season once again, with politicians prodding each other to get media attention and thereby the notice of their party superiors. Among the relatively unknown, it’s a way of paving their way into the arena, where they will show off their political prowess by taking turns at the podium to joust with absent opponents. The object of this silat performance is to leave a lasting impression in the minds of the senior patrons—that here stands a fine warrior.
The deputy head of Umno Petaling Jaya Utara, Mohamad Azli Mohemed Saad, wants Umno to consider if Chinese vernacular schools should be abolished when it has its general assembly this November. He said this was because Chinese schools were being used by the opposition to incite racial and anti-government sentiments.
Is it possible to promote vernacular education without polarising the communities? The chief complaint against vernacular schools is the lack of ethnic integration since students come from mainly one ethnic background. This is true of both Chinese and Tamil schools. But due to the perceived lack of quality in the national schools, it is now common to see Malay and Indian parents sending their children to Mandarin medium schools. In some rural communities, the proximity of a SRJK(C) may simply make it a practical choice.
Haven’t we seen proof enough of this in the numerous television adverts and YouTube videos of Malay girls in tudung singing Chinese songs and Indian boys extolling the benefits of Astro’s educational programmes in fluent Mandarin?
What Azli is proposing is not a discussion about the pros and cons of learning one’s mother tongue in the national school system, or the teaching of a standard MOE curriculum in a medium of instruction other than BM. It’s about the radical axing of the vernacular system altogether or the assimilation of it into the national school system.
Hold on for just a moment. Azli wasn’t complaining about the system and its teaching medium. He wasn’t even referring to a lack of social integration. Azli was referring to the opposition making use of the Chinese schools issue to attack the government and its Umno administration. So he was in fact referring to the support of a long existent phenomenon that generates fodder for the criticism of Umno and the preferential treatment engendered by the NEP. And he would like to put a stop to that, or at least for the ethnic composition to be drastically altered to reflect the nation’s demographics.
Is the Umno assembly the right and proper place to discuss this issue? Probably not, because there are no Chinese in Umno to argue for or against any position. It is most unlikely that the solution to this problem will come from this forum.
A host of politicians from the BN side have already come out in defence of the SRJKs and against Azli’s proposal. Are they being too sensitive? MCA’s Religious Harmony Bureau Chief, Ti Lian Ker, has lodged a police report accusing Azli of sedition. We should remember that the definition of sedition in the act is certainly broad enough to accommodate this “ill will” felt by a community, brought about by Azli’s comments. Regardless of whether the issue of stopping vernacular schooling is constitutional or not, it is clear that Ti already interprets it as seditious because of the ethnic friction it will cause.
The proponents for the merger of the two school systems will often try to bolster their argument by reference to the success of the Indonesian model.
