Do not compromise the practical for the abstract: Academic performance for the ideal of national solidarity. The case for Vernacular schools in Malaysia.
We cannot conclude that Vernacular schools promote national cohesion although we also cannot infer that it threatens national unity.
Origins of the Vernacular School: A Colonial Legacy
Informal education in Malaysia can be traced back to the 15th century but was limited to the privileged feudal society. It was not until British colonisation when they immigrated mass groups of coolies and rubber tappers from China and India into Malaya along with their own forms of education. Under the divide and rule policy, the British were contented to let the multiple types of schooling conduct their respective activities meanwhile creating geographical segregation along ethnic lines, further reinforcing interethnic divisions. Four kinds of schooling existed with English, Malay, Chinese and Tamil being the mediums of instruction. Today, there exist Chinese, Tamil and Islamic vernacular schools that are publicly funded.
The issue of abolishing publicly-funded vernacular schools has always been a hot button issue for more than 30 years.
Malaysia often views its policies through racial and ethnic lens to understand and craft national policies in the major domains, education is no exception to the rule. Research (Crouch, 2001) has found that the state is largely founded upon ethnic policies and deemed an “ethnocratic state” or “ethnic democracy”. Likewise, the same research found that civil society was taught to think of themselves as members of an ethnic group first, before they are individuals with a national identity. This is due to several divisive factors, including politicising education.
Challenge 1: 30 years later, still unable to come to a consensus
After World War 2, efforts were initiated by the British colonial government to build a national schooling system towards independence. The effort was then continued by the post-colonial Alliance government to reorganise the education system to address nation-building. The 20 years from the 1950s to 1970s were crucial for reorganising education in Malaysia. They aimed for a national schooling system using English and Malay as the medium of instruction to replace the segregated vernacular school system brought by the colonial period. Throughout this time, much education reports, policies and reviews regarding vernacular schools have been made. The i) 1951 Barnes Report, ii) 1952 Fenn-Wu Report, iii) 1956 Razak Report, iv) The Education Ordinance 1957 (based on the Razak Report), v) 1960 Rahman Talib Report, vi) The Education Act 1961 (based on the Rahman Talib Report) were among the different iterations of education systems proposed, the debate mostly surrounded the medium of instructions in school. The issue of abolishing vernacular schools was revived and has then made headlines for more than 30 years. For a long time, the Malaysian government was unable to agree on where they stand on this topic. At the time of writing, much discourse is still made around vernacular schools which continues to keep ethic-based issues top of the national agenda and is predicted to ensue.
Challenge 2: Politicising Education
Aforementioned, Malaysians think of themselves as members of an ethnic group first, before as individuals with a national identity. A study by Cordingley (2001) shows that only 10 per cent of the students surveyed thought themselves as “Malaysians first,” while the rest tend to identify themselves by their ethnicity. I believe this is because since the 60s, virtually every policy in Malaysia was made with an ethnic-lens in mind, from business licensing to foreign policy (Haque, 2003), this made politicising education tempting. For example, a few months ago, Khairul Azam, a lawyer and vice-president of a Malay nationalist political party challenged the government declaring that vernacular schools are unconstitutional. He argues that according to the Federal Constitution, the national language is the Malay language which means that vernacular schools that teach mainly in Mandarin or Tamil, are unconstitutional. However, the courts dismissed this application, stating that the existence of vernacular schools did not violate the law. Given Khairul Azam’s political position, his court challenge was perceived as not to uphold the constitution, but rather for his own political gain in a climate of racial tension. Political elites who are against vernacular schools normally do not contend about the quality of the schools. Ironically, political elites often do not attend national schools or place their children to national schools.
Are vernacular schools a threat to national unity?
A case study from Singapore.
Due to shared history, Singapore is often cited as a comparison in favour of abolishing vernacular schools and moving towards a single national school system. Similar to Malaysia, the Chinese community raged against this policy. This policy brought criticism, claiming such policies aimed to ‘anglicise’ Chinese schools and erase Chinese education and culture (Sai, 2013). Although bilingual vernacular schools continued to exist in Singapore until the late 1970s, in 1987, a centralised language policy was established, with English as the standard medium in all schools. Three other languages, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil were taught as ‘mother tongues’. Today, Singapore has stabilised its education system using English as the main medium of instruction. Founder father Lee Kuan Yew believed that “For political and economic reasons, English had to be our working language. This would give all races in Singapore a common language to communicate and work in.” and making Chinese the official language of Singapore would provoke revolt among the 25 per cent non-Chinese in the country.
There is reason to believe that having different streams of schooling proses challenges for unity. However, the key difference between Malaysia and Singapore is that the drive to change the medium of instruction was for economical reasons; to remain competitive as an individual and to remain internationally competitive. While the unity factor is important, it renders itself secondary to economics as English education is regarded as a means for economic growth.
Understanding the bottlenecks to abolish vernacular schools.
Since the late 1940s, when the British attempted to reorganise the educational system in favour of English and Malay, they faced strong opposition, mainly from the Chinese community who had by then built a comprehensive Chinese school system involving primary and secondary schools. Back then, the Chinese were proud of their language and culture and fought to maintain it through Chinese education propagation; Today, contemporary 2013 findings suggest that Malaysian Chinese students’ ethnicity and national identity are best expressed through Mandarin because of strong identification with their Chinese roots. In this study, mandarin was the students’ preferred language both inside and outside school, which alludes to the lack of a sense of unity amongst them. This study also alludes to the potential difficulty of enforcing a one stream schooling system to achieve national unity. It is not politically feasible to eliminate Chinese-medium schools as this will lead to political instability for the nation as it deals with identity.
Moreover, the enrolment rates of non-chinese in vernacular schools has not dwindled. It is not uncommon for Malay parents to enrol their child to Chinese vernacular schools. With the rise of China as an economic power, mastery of the Chinese language was increasingly viewed as an asset. Furthermore, Chinese vernacular schools are also perceived to provide better quality of education and higher discipline and work ethics compared to the main-stream school. Indeed, these factors influenced the increased number of non-Chinese parents to register their children in Chinese vernacular schools. Ex-Minister of International Trade, Rafidah Aziz was quoted saying “[national schools] teach too much religion” and parents “want them to learn maths”. From 2010 to 2014, non-Chinese enrolment in Chinese vernacular schools increased by 20.7%; from 11.8% students in 2010 to of 15.3% in 2014. In 2016, non-Chinese students made up nearly 18% of the total enrolment in Chinese vernacular schools such that they are now more ethnically diverse than the main-stream schools, which are mainly mono-ethnic. In fact, in the state of Sabah, as of 2018, non-Chinese students accounted for 58.1% of the students in the 83 Chinese vernacular schools, far more than the 41.9 per cent or 14,946 Chinese students there. The proportion of non-Chinese students in recent years already exceeded that of ethnic Chinese students in such schools in the state, with the gap continuing to widen.
Given these findings, where do we go from here?
Make national schools more competitive than vernacular schools.
Abolishing vernacular schools may limit the few choices that remain for poorer parents who desire to provide their children with quality education. Instead, in the same vein as the recommendation above, it would be more productive to focus on raising the level of education in the country. This could be accelerated by a choice-based system via vouchers as was done in Chile. Although both vernacular schools are partial to fully state-funded, national schools may improve their school quality in response to competition induced by choice. With vouchers, we provide school choices for the public, so that more options are made available to students. A revamp in the national curriculum is also needed to elevate the teaching standards and stay relevant. In fact, there is also a cause to reinstall the English stream to remain internationally competitive. National schools should make a second language compulsory such as is carried out in Singapore via the mother tongue syllabus to the sake of cultural preservation. This would promote a multicultural Malaysian identity and can possibly increase opportunities for Malaysians in the global economy.
Adopt the best practices in vernacular schools and incorporate them in national schools.
National schools may incorporate the best practices of vernacular schools such as the pedagogy of teaching or management practices. For example, many parents are drawn by the tighter discipline imposed on the students by the school staff. In Chinese vernacular schools exists a culture of Confucianism. Generally, Confucian values are associated with a preference for order, strong work ethics, and strict adherence to authority. Thus, we can see how we can utilise Confucian values to embued hard work and discipline. It should be noted that this may be controversial and potentially difficult to implement as it takes into account the different preferences of “rigour” and “strictness” to balances the need of the masses. However, should this policy be executed well, it not only solves the dispute over vernacular schools, but also to reduces the education gap in Malaysia.
Remain Status Quo and let nature take its course.
There has been a nation-wide trend of decreasing enrolment rates of Chinese and Indian students into vernacular schools in absolute numbers as shown in the figure below:
Figure: Decline in total student numbers (2008–2018) enrolled in Chinese Vernacular school. Source: Malay Mail
Despite Malaysia’s overall growing population, the Chinese community’s lower birth rate and ageing society has coincided with lower enrolment into vernacular schools. Over the years, the Chinese population has been decreasing by 0.2 percentage points from 2018 to 2019 and is estimated to further decrease. Likewise, Chinese vernacular students have decreased by 110,000 over the last ten years. This trend started from 2011 following the trend in lower birth rates. A plausible policy option is thus, to let nature take its cause and let the numbers dwindle down. For example, as some vernacular schools were established to cater for the education of rural communities such as those who lived in the estates, we should let them dwindle naturally because of the rural-urban plight.
This may be the least contentious and politically feasible policy option as it does not require political participation or a revamp to the system. However, in the long term, it does not solve the issue of lower quality national schools.
REFERENCE
Cordingley, P. (2001, January 26). Mahathir’s dilemma. Asiaweek, p. 18.
Department of Statistic Malaysia, Dosm.gov.my. (2019). Current Population Estimates, Malaysia, 2018–2019. [online] Available at: https://www.dosm.gov.my/v1/index.php?r=column/cthemeByCat&cat=155&bul_id=aWJZRkJ4UEdKcUZpT2tVT090Snpydz09&menu_id=L0pheU43NWJwRWVSZklWdzQ4TlhUUT09.
Haque, M.S., 2003. The role of the state in managing ethnic tensions in Malaysia: A critical discourse. American Behavioral Scientist, 47(3), pp.240–266.
Sai, S. M. (2013). Educating multicultural citizens: Colonial nationalism, imperial citizenship and education in late colonial Singapore. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 44(1), 49–73.
