Chinese School

I think Tan Sri Dr. Khoo Kay Khim does not know what he was talking about when he said that Chinese/Tamil schools should be closed down.

First of all, he believed that by closing down the schools it will help the children to be more competitive in the globalized, international market. I think Tan Sri Khoo has lost touch with the reality of our schools. The hard fact is that there is such a discrepancy in the quality of schools that everyone is shunning and staying away from national schools. Parents who do not want to send their kids to vernacular/religious schools are sending them to private/international schools. If he cares to come back to University of Malaya, just ask any of his colleagues; how many of them send their children to the national schools?

The other oft-quoted reason is that having too many languages in the schools contributes to the polarization in our society. The facts are:

1. There are more national school leavers today than ever, yet polarization is also worse than ever! Chinese and Tamil schools enrollment rates picked up only in the last 10 years. During the 70s and 80s, enrollment was so poor in these schools that some of them have to close down. The majority of the working adults today come from national schools, not the vernacular schools. Proof? Ask your parents or your friends who are in their 30s to 50s, how many of them come from national schools and how many from vernacular schools? Therefore, if anything, this proves the failure of the national schools to combat polarization.

2. Just because we make every child goes to the national school does not mean we have solve the problem of social polarization. Just ask any national school leaver, are they different from the vernacular school leavers in their attitude? Absolute not! The reason is simple, the root cause of polarization is not the schools!

3. If we believe that children should mix around at young tender age to combat polarization, then not only should the government get rid of vernacular schools, but also all schools that segregate children - and this includes the Mara schools, the special boarding schools for bright Bumi kids, the Islamic schools etc. In fact, the government shouldn't even send anyone overseas because there is no opportunity to mix with other Malaysian kids there! You see how absurd is this! Moreover, strange, isn't it, whenever the Chinese schools get blamed on this, none of the other equally segregating schools get mentioned. The fact is, the diversity of our education system is a strength, not a weakness.

Ultimately, the root cause of racial segregation is the government's policies. All these others are just smoke screens and scapegoats.