OBVIOUS BUT UNKNOWN FACTS ON VERNACULAR EDUCATION IN MALAYSIA. …OH, HOW GOOD IT IS TO STUDY IN THE SJKCs AND SJKTs.
By Mansor
Puteh
There are many who are often
confused when they say 80,000 Melayu are enrolled in SJKCs. Earlier it was said
to be 60,000 Bumiputera students.
But the truth is that the so-called Bumiputeras are mostly
those who are the so-called 'Sino-Bumiputeras' of Sabah and Sarawak .
There is no such a thing called the Sino-Bumiputeras. They
are Chinese, since their fathers are Chinese and mothers, Natives of the two
states. They just want to claim Bumiputera rights which they are not entitled
to get.
Of the
real Melayu, there are at the most 12,000 in SJKCs.
Unfortunately analyses by many on this matter do not take
into account the failures of those Melayu (Malays were British subjects), how
all of those who had studied in the SJKCs finally enrolled into the Sekolah
Kebangsaan including the Chinese who did not dare to go to universities in
Taiwan or Hong Kong and even China where the medium of instruction is Mandarin.
They cry and complain if they are not given places in the
universities in Malaysia
And of
the many Melayu who had studied in the SJKCs, how many finally get to go to
university, or even excel in the secondary school? How many get a string of As
for SPM and STPM? Virtually none that Dong Zong could be proud of to show.
And of the many Melayu how many who are experts in Mandarin
and who had gone to study history to decipher the ancient Ming Dynasty
manuscripts to reveal more historical facts surrounding the history of the
Melaka Sultanate? None.
And this one fact will startle you: The many students who
dropped out of the SJKCs especially the Chinese students, and also those who
drop out of the SJKT, end up going into crimes.
They
cannot be absorbed into the workforce in the private as well as the public sectors.
Therefore, they have to sell counterfeit DVDs in the pasar malam, or paste
stickers on public properties, creating the third sector - ‘Crimes Sector’.
Get the facts from Bukit Aman and ask for the profile of the
petty crimes and those who are involved in the vice trade and illegal
entertainment outlets in the country, and the bottom line is that they are all
dropouts of SJKCs and SJKTs.
Those who have higher morals amongst the dropouts take up
petty trading in the pasar malam or sell telephones and doing other things.
Can Dong Zong be described as a chauvinist group? How many
times do their leaders encourage assimilation? Do they ever attend Merdeka and
Malaysia Day parades or watch them?
Do
they speak in Melayu? Do they allow their children to mix with the other
non-Melayu children?
And no Chinese companies actively asked for Melayu with
proficiency in Mandarin as an advantage, to work for them.
I hope the NST can organize a public forum with Dong Zong
and ask them to speak in Melayu. They won't accept it. In fact, they even send
their press releases to TV3 in Mandarin as were shown on television themselves.
Vernacular education in Malaysia
The
position won't be tenable in the future if the size of the communities shrinks
and with the empowerment of the Melayu in the economy and politics of the
country.
It is estimated that by 2050 the population of the Melayu
will be 80%. If this happens, there is no way for anyone not to be able to
speak in Melayu.
In fact, if the government was insistent, there will not be
that many non-Melayu who are eligible to get driving licenses since the written
tests are conducted in Melayu, when most of the Chinese and Indians are not
even capable of reading what is written in the tests.
How many of the Chinese and Indian taxi-drivers could truly
pass these tests?
It is a shame that NST if offering Rita Sim a special column
to express her support for vernacular education, when all that she does is to
use it as a propaganda platform, spouting predictable and one-sided views on
the matter.
The vernacular Mandarin or Tamil newspapers won’t have any
column that extols the virtues of the Sekolah Kebangsaan over the vernacular
ones.
It is also pertinent to note that of the Chinese and Indian
groups, on Mandarin and Tamil are favored or championed by them.
But how come the other Chinese and Indian groups such as
Hokkiens, Cantonese, Malayalees, Punjabis, Telugus and so on do not demand the
establishment of their own schools in Malaysia
The problem is that their numbers are too small for them to
make such demands.
So the main factor here is 'numbers'. This means if the
numbers of the Chinese and Indians in Malaysia
In Singapore
Lastly there are at least 30% Melayu who have Chinese
ancestry including all of mine. Therefore, one can say most of the Chinese in Malaysia of an earlier time had rejected China
The Chinese today are those who aim to create a colony in Malaysia
In fact, according to a book written by a Chinese in Indonesia , any Chinese who left China China
If he chose to leave China
That is why the Chinese who went to Indonesia
Therefore, what I am saying here is that the issue
concerning vernacular education in Malaysia
Comments
2.Cry and complain that I saw on news are those people that did extremely well in exam, including their malay paper, do not get into the course they want or not even have a place in malaysia university. It is not fair as their malay counterpart that did less well on exam able to get a place while those did better do not. They accept Malay is the prerequisite for entrance, they are not opposing it and understand very well that to get into local uni, pass malay, do well in exam is important. Complain came when they feel they did thing right but gov being unfair.
3. You simply assume that melayu in SJKC will have difficult time in future because of poorer Malay language grasp, that is oversimplification.
4. I do not think that expert in Mandarin only useful way is to decipher Ming dynasty manuscript. In fact it is not important at all to waste your skill on that.
5. Yes, high drop out rate is a problem. Something that can be better deal with by maybe enforce more malay classes or learn all 3 languages scientific term so as to make them better prepare for secondary school, get them able to speak bahasa first before they are into independent chinese secondary school. My point is, DO NOT ABOLISH IT BECUASE IT CAUSE PROBLEM AND IGNORE ITS CONTRIBUTION TO THE SOCIETY. Find way to solve the problem and preserving the good. Something gov ernment and Dong zong can work hand on hand.
6. Further illustrate my point no.5. Give you an analogy, Islam is a religion of peace and high moral. Because of extremist who hate western, retaliate with suicidal bombing (analogy to vernacular drop out student), do not make it a bad religion (analogy to vernacualar school). Your method would be abolish the religion because minority did the bad thing but i strongly oppose it. I would rather solve the extremist problem like better trade and economy opportunity to poorer Muslim nation that normally easily breed extremist thinking. I will solve it, not destroy it.
8. It will be added advantage in Malaysia to know mandarin esp business world, that is current situation and even demographical changed, make not much different. 70% of business controlled by Thai chinese & Indonesia chinese although they made up of 10% and 3% of population respectively. Businessly yes but not so much of an advantage when working for others or job that require no or little mandarin skill.
9. Not just number that determine the survival of vernacular school. In malaysia northern or southern of west malaysia consists of mainly Hokkien decesdant while middle part of malaysia made of cantonese decesdant. If based purely on make up, Hokkien school can have in Johor, Penang or Melaka. But there is no Hokkien based school in the world, China medium language in Hokkien province is mandarin so as Taiwan where a lot of Hokkien ppl moved there. Even established Hokkien, cantanoses school, no any dialetical group including their own will attend because no economical benefit from learning the language. Long ago foresighted chinese ancestor from different dialectical group see the importance of the langauge and thus willingly send their kids to mandarin medium school. In fact, im more toward change of tamil school to hindi school as it will be more important language economically in india.
In fact it is not a difficult idea to understand, I believe even in Malaysia Melayu, they have made of minangkabau, Java, sundanese etc that have diff language or diff style of Bahasa. Why not set vernacular school on those? Because they are no economical significant to do so.
11. Singapore is a good example of governemnt preserving mother tongue on its ppl. Which is why Melayu still able to learn their bahasa in the nation.
In short, what I do want to express is vernacular school do not do harm to assimilate other race as malaysian, it did not separate student by their races, it accept student from other races. Just like sekolah kenagsaan integrate every races where I have chinese friend who study at sekolah kebangsaan from primary to secodnary school. More encouragement should be given to melayu to study in chinese vernacular school for better integration, after all, it is just the medium of instruction that will bother them a while (language more easier to grasp up as a child) but in long run, their bahasa will not compromise they still learn bahasa in school, speak bahasa at home. Regardless what primary school they are from, let every races have the freedom of choice, encourage more chinese into sekolah kebangsaan and encourage more malay into sekolah jenis kebangsaan.