CHINESE AND INDIANS STUDYING IN SEKOLAH KEBANGSAAN BETTER OFF COMPARED TO THOSE WHO STUDIED IN THE VERNACULAR MANDARIN AND TAMIL SCHOOLS. WHY?

…MANDARIN AND TAMIL ARE FOR THEIR OWN PERSONAL COMMUNICATION AND NOT FOR ACQUIRING KNOWLEDGE.

By Mansor Puteh

What is obvious is that the Chinese and Indians or more specifically the Tamils who studied in the sekolah kebangsaan are the ones who seem to be settled well and comfortably in Malaysia.

They are also the ones who do not have issues with the Constitution and other national matters.

And most of all, they are economically better off, with none or not many of them who are in the illegal businesses.

But those Chinese and Tamils who studied in the vernacular Mandarin and Tamil schools seem to be the ones who have some or many of them.

They are the ones who support the opposition Chinese political parties and whose NGOs often raise sensitive issues like they do not know that they are in Malaysia and not in China, which ironically does not care about them, and they also do not relate to the Chinese that much.

The Chinese from China who work here or who visit the country as tourists are not fascinated with their brethren here or in the other countries; they cannot relate with each other.

The Chinese from Malaysia, too, feel the same way towards them and if they visit China, they hardly ever relate to the Chinese there.

The same with the Indians in Malaysia and those from India who work in Malaysia.

But it is not the same with the Melayu who can relate with their brethren from Indonesia who are working here and living in the country, and those in Indonesia or even Brunei.

The Melayu can relate with each other wherever they are in the world.

And those Chinese and Indians or Tamils who make it in education would find themselves being absorbed into the mainstream education system or sekolah kebangsaan.

But the irony is that they are the ones who think that the vernacular school they had studied at earlier in their lives was what had created them to be who they are now, so they try to exert themselves to champion the cause of the vernacular schools.

Unfortunately, even those Chinese and Tamils who fail in education at still attracted to such schools despite these schools having caused them to be where they are now, at the lowest rungs of society.

Many do well earning a decent living and speaking fractured Melayu and almost no English at all.

But there is a sizeable number of them who had no choice but to go into illegal trading, with some even entering the Crime Sector.

No wonder most of those loan sharks or ah-long are Chinese and they are the Chinese who failed in their education at the vernacular Mandarin schools.

And the Indians who have financial and social issues are mostly those who are in the same boat as the Chinese who are in the Crime Sector and doing illegal trading.

There are so few Indians who manage to rise in the society, but it is not the Tamil schools which had caused them to be at that level now, but the sekolah kebangsaan.

Yet, there are some Indian noise-makers and community leaders who insist that the government allocate places in the ministries and government agencies and also GLCs to accommodate them.

How could these agencies do so when the Indians do not have the proper qualification?

And the Chinese, too cannot be absorbed into the Public Sector for the same reason.

Worse, when the Chinese and also Indians do not write and speak well in Melayu.

Even those Chinese and Indians who excel in small trading have to use Melayu to communicate with the customers comprising mostly of the Melayu.

Without a good command of this language, they will languish and not able to communicate and relate with the general public which is now more Melayu than ever before.

The Mandarin or other Chinese dialects and the Tamils and other Indian dialects that the Chinese and Indians speak in are only good for social communication; they are not good for them to acquire knowledge or education.

So no wonder, not many or none of them had bothered to study at universities in Taiwan, Hong Kong, China and India where the medium of instruction are Mandarin or Tamil.’

The Chinese chauvinist groups who insist that their vernacular education system is superior do not know reality; they can behave so because they do not need to relate with anyone.

They are officers of their own NGOs or organization, so they can carry on with their lives speaking and thinking in Mandarin without having to speak in Melayu or even English.

But for the many Chinese and also Indians who have to face reality, they must be told the truth about the situation in Malaysia now.

It is not good for them to hole themselves up within their own communities which are shrinking.

They cannot assume that Malaysia today is like the Malaysia or their ancestors or past generation.

Malaysia today is more Melayu. And Bahasa Melayu is now more prominent and dominant than it was before.

Even the younger generation of Chinese and Indians speak better Melayu and can relate with the Melayu better than their parents or grandparents could.

This may be yet another factor why the leaders of the Chinese chauvinist groups are feeling an angst about that their own hold of their own societies too may be diminishing.

It won’t take them long to realize that they are being cornered. And soon, they too have to speak and write in Melayu, as much as their own children and grandchildren, who cannot survive living in the New Malaysia today and in the years to come.

Does the population of the Chinese and Indians in Malaysia have to shrink further before the numbers factor finally causes the most chauvinists of them to finally realize their lot?