We’re fighting over all the wrong things
The current debate on vernacular education and national unity misses the important question of how to reverse the trend towards racial polarisation.
Scott Ng, Free Malaysia Today
The issue of vernacular schools has popped up with alarming regularity over the years, often with one side decrying the institution, and the other arguing that it is a Constitution-given right to seek mother tongue education. The most recent criticism hurled at our beleaguered vernacular schools is this: “Many are of the opinion that Chinese vernacular schools have been exploited by opposition parties to incite hatred towards other races and spread racial and anti-government sentiments.”
Or so says PJ Utara Umno’s deputy chief, Mohamed Azli Mohemed Saad.
As expected, the retorts came hard and swift from the defenders of vernacular education – educators with their ponderous but vehement arguments, opposition politicians with their fiery verbal missiles and chest thumping MCA members who probably saw a worthy opportunity to shed their image as Umno’s whipping boys.
However, Azli probably did get it wrong. It’s nearly impossible for the opposition to even enter schools due to claimed political interference, if memory serves.
The argument that the opposition is the cause of racial hatred in vernacular schools is a straw man at best. The debate we should be having, however, is less about politicians and more about how we as a people are being affected on the community level when we choose to isolate ourselves within an insular environment where all we see from day to day is, well, “our” people.
Racism and insularity are not one and the same thing. One may lead to the other, but the correlation is coincidental at best. But insularity does lead to lack of understanding of how to interact and relate to “the other side”, marking the beginning of racial troubles when the clash of cultures occur outside the insular environment of a vernacular school.
We must understand that the current system is inherited from the divide-and-rule strategy of the British colonial administrators. They saw to it that missionaries run English medium schools, the mosques run Malay medium schools, and, of course, Indian and Chinese community leaders run vernacular schools. The system in and of itself was formulated for division and easy domination of already segregated sections of society, and despite its reformation into the format we see today, the root remains.
Restricted encounters
Imagine the life of a vernacular school pupil. His encounters with the other races that make up the melting pot we call Malaysia are restricted because the better part of his day is spent at home and at school. This leads to a limited understanding of the culture and ways of life of the “others”. As he ages, it is inevitable that he will run across people of other races, and his lack of understanding of their ways may lead to racial prejudice, and this may have been born out of nothing more than a failure to accept a point of view other than the one he is accustomed to.
All of this is strictly speculative, of course.
