ARE SUPPORTERS OF THE VERNACULR MANDARIN AND TAMIL SCHOOLS PROOF THAT THEY DO NOT SUPPORT ASSIMILATION?

…WITH THE MANDARIN VERNACULAR SCHOOLS LOSING ITS RELEVANCE TO MALAYSIA TODAY AND WITH THOSE WHO STUDY IN THEM ALSO NOT MIXING WITH THE MAJORITY MELAYU! …WHERE ARE THE LEADERS OF DONG ZONG IN THE EVERYDAY SOCIAL, CULTURAL AND INTELLECTUAL LIFE OF THE COUNTRY?

The fact that the leaders of the Chinese education associations such as Dong Zong are missing from the everyday social, cultural and intellectual life of the country is bad for them; it only proves that they do not embrace nationalism and want to be aloof to what is happening in the country to fight a cause which may be a lost one.

If they think they can be of any use to the country, then surely, their leaders, too, would be everywhere participating in the creation of that society they think they can enhance and better.

But this has not happened; they are nowhere to be seen unless if they are complaining about something especially how the vernacular Mandarin schools are slowly being marginalized, and so on, when they pop up to make their appearance and noises heard. 

Or has it slowly dawned upon them that the vernacular Mandarin schools they are championing to be anathema to the national cause?

This can happen if they see around their own families at their own children who would surely have studied and are also studying at such schools known as the Sekolah Jenis Kebangsaan Cina (SJKC) to be losing a lot that they are starting to realize their own folly in not allowing them to mix more freely with everybody in the country so that they do not live in a cocoon and away from everybody else.

They can also be made more aware of the problems with the SJKC if they see around themselves and read in the media how so many Chinese boys and girls who drop out of such schools and who could not find proper employment, that they have to find it in the unconventional way by pasting illegal stickers or other unconventional jobs.

And the Indians who dropped out of the SJKT or Sekolah Jenis Kebangsaan Tamil have to steal manholes and other metals to sell to the many scrap lots to eke out a living.

What future do these boys and girls who studied in the SJKC and SJKT have if they do not make the grade and drop out after Standard Six or Form Three?

Those who can make the grade and can move on to Form Six and later to the universities are okay; and they are seen as poster boys and girls for the SJKC and SJKT but the numbers are not that many.

Still the matter is why did they have to crave to enter such universities where the medium of instruction is Melayu and some English which the supporters of the vernacular schools reject?

No doubt the Constitution allows the study of the mother tongue, other than the national language which is Melayu; but this does not mean that the government has to provide for the Chinese and Tamil communities land and money.

Of course every other country in the world except for a few that do not have too many Chinese and Indians or Tamils that do not have such a clause in their own constitution.

But this does not mean that all the countries would provide for these communities and build special schools for them, by also offering financial allocation every year.

They can establish their own schools but at their own personal expense.

The other reason is because in the other countries the sizes of the Chinese and Tamils communities are not so large so they are not able to use or misuse this factor to put pressure on the governments to use the racial card and abide with their demands; the young Chinese and Tamils simply had to be sent to the local or national schools.

Here in Malaysia the clause in the constitution has been misused and with the sizes of the Chinese and Tamils to be quite substantial and with the divide in the majority Melayu native community, they are able to force or twist the arms of the predominantly Melayu government to accept their demands.

So Malaysia has the national schooling system or Sekolah Melayu or Melayu Schools and also the vernacular Mandarin and Tamil schools.

And why aren’t the Natives of Sabah and Sarawak not making similar demands; most of them choose to send their children to the national schools of Sekolah Melayu.

And for that matter why are they aren’t schools in the other languages or dialects?

The reason being that the sizes of these communities are too small to allow their community leaders to make those demands.

So in the meanwhile as long as the sizes of the Chinese and Tamil communities in Malaysia are large their community leaders can continue to make those demands, despite the fact that there are now some schools in Mandarin and Tamil had to be closed down because they were in areas where the number of Chinese and Tamil students had dwindled considerably so much so that having those schools there would not be tenable anymore.

Many Chinese boys and girls learnt the hard way because their parents had chosen albeit wrongly and misguidedly that sending their children to such schools where the medium of instruction is Mandarin would give them an upper hand and a better quality education in Malaysia compared to those that the could get in the national schools or Sekolah Melayu.

If this is the case then why are those non-Melayu and Sino-Bumiputeras who had studied in such school not doing well in life? Where are the success stories?

At the most the few non-Chinese who had studied in the Mandarin schools can do or have is the command of Mandarin, a language that they can still find no real benefits in the real world. None or so few of them had gone on to pursue their education in Taiwan or China.