Additionally, I believe having vernacular schools accelerates racism and racial segregation because of preferences towards a particular race. Children should mingle around with kids from other races because it is that stage that we humans are most innocent.

No education system can be perfect, but can we have our education system guided by educationists, not politicians?

(1) To master reading and speaking of basic Mandarin and learning of Chinese language, which is important for their future career and laying foundation to preserve my ancestral culture and values. Teaching Chinese as a single subject in public school as a third language (Bahasa Malay first, English second) can’t fulfill the role, only Chinese vernacular schools using Mandarin as the medium of instruction can do that.

(2) Chinese vernacular schools are sponsored by the community and are much more economical compared to private school.

(3) Fear of conversion to Islam and “Ketuanan Melayu” racism in public schools.

(4) Meritocracy, non-racial and non-religious discrimination in Chinese vernacular schools.

(5) Chinese vernacular school principals are more accomodating of the sensitivities of different cultures/religion/customs of various races.

@kahseng : Nut Graph has certainly opened a can of worms running this series. I doubt they can elaborate let alone challenge the assumptions laid out in your 99 theses of sorts. Since the desire has been born I am sure other readers will look forward to you picking up where Nut Graph has left off. You can then ask parents all over Malaysia to nail this 99 theses at the door of their respective Jabatan Pendidikan Negeri. I heard that’s how Martin Luther did it to bring Christians into a new age. Perhaps the same can be done for education.

I have my doubts whether people can appreciate the need for such an in-depth commitment to statistics, facts and deliberate thinking but the only weapon against an institution embodying itself as a temple of intellect is a higher level of intellectualism. Only when the walls have fallen can Intellectualism lay its weapons down for other attributes to take their deserving place in the third millennium.

@Farish : A simpler way is to stop demand for dumbed-down schooling. When schools empty out en masse the rakyat can then say, “Off with the Heads! Return the tax dollars, we’re hiring our own teachers!” (My premise: “Deschooling Society”, Ivan Illich).

The ratio of Farish A. Noors to incompetent teachers is something like 1 :1000. So even if we (as Malaysians) sack all those teachers and hire academics like yourself, you would need some kind of content and learning management system to duplicate yourself digitally to compensate for the 1000 non-Farish A. Noors.

One surprise though. My son’s class is very well “mixed” with over 50% Malay [Malaysians], 40% Chinese [Malaysians] and 10% others. And from what I gathered, they are having a good time together. That’s very reassuring.

21. The ignorant by many English-educated parents on what constitutes “mother tongue”. Despite the spoken linguistic difference, the Chinese language is considered by its speakers to be a single language. As Mandarin is the most commonly used Chinese language, it is therefore not wrong to assume Mandarin, and with it only one writing system, is the mother tongue for most Chinese.

22. The assumption that vernacular schools do implement racial segregation. Unlike the elite schools, there is no a single vernacular school that implements racial segregation.

Slowly but surely, Malaysia is heading that way..

I am continually amazed with the stories I hear coming out of government schools today and they do not reflect a system that is adapting well to change.

Farish Noor in his letter pointed out that it isn’t only in our education, but it seems to be with everything else. With more and more private security companies employed to protect high-end housing estates. That is true, and perhaps not so easy to say it reflects a growing affluence. But it does.

The gap between the rich and poor is becoming wider and it is a problem that needs to be address. But we also need to address the [apparent] decline in public services (education, security, etc.). I would say it has to do firstly with having a highly centralised system. A big bureaucracy, controlled from a centralised committee, reacts slowly. That is good in terms of policy, but bad in day to day management. When mid to senior level government officers do not dare or are not able to make decisions on their own, they cannot become effective managers.

But I disagree with what Farish has to say as a solution, it isn’t just political will that we need, but we also need to respect that for the moment and probably the next twenty years, a bulk of our government servants are not going to be able to meet quickly the demands of society. Sacking those who fail to meet the standards is not the answer. We have to return to a more basic question first; if Farish, in his own words chose to build his career elsewhere because he felt teaching locally would “effectively bring my career to a halt and destroy both my credibility and employment prospects in the long run”, how do we expect the system to improve? Yet not withstanding the dent to their credibility and the end to future prospects, there are good people who continue within the system. Perhaps they recognise the mediocrity in government as a sign of a system failing to adapt to change. But change in this respect will have to come from sacrifice. Adaptation is a slow and deliberate process. We will improve, we have to belief that. We have to strive together to make that happen. It won’t happen over night. And it won’t happen from afar. It will need people to engage with the system.

The politicians need to decentralise the government. But once we decentralise, we need people willing to come back who will work together with others to bring change; not someone who will bark orders and sack people, but leaders who have proven themselves elsewhere, who are capable in their field, but who also have compassion and wisdom to realise the larger implications of harsh actions.

Finally, we need to recognise technical weakness from bad politics. Both are tangible and real. But we need to recognise that they are not the same thing. In this respect, just increasing salaries of government officers alone will not solve the problem with the delivery of service. To improve the delivery in government services we need both structural changes, but also and attitudinal changes. But above all, we need to stop discriminatory policies that are based on religion and race (this is where advocating change in politics comes in). To do all this we need people who understand, appreciate and are able and willing to sacrifice to lead the way. Politicians as good intentioned as they may be, cannot be there in each department running the daily affairs. This is where we have to start seeing the country as ours, and believe that if we want change, we need to engage with it. We need to vote, we need to push our political representatives to represent our interests, we need to join the government if need be. Basically, we need to get involved.