Vernacular Education System or Single National Education System?

You prefer to continue vernacular education system or change it by having single national education system?


The vernacular education in Malaysia was started since the British colonial, and the system is implementing until today accordingly with the Federal Constitution. These different vernacular schools is always supported by the racial based politic party to ensure the position and important of their mother tongue as well as their ethnic position.

According to the statistics, 93% of Malays students, 90% of Chinese students and 70% of Indian students often attend different primary school systems according to their mother tongue, curbing opportunities for interaction between young of different ethnic backgrounds.

It is obvious that education system is the one of the obstacle to our nation unity. Despite, we are witnessing there are a lot of non-government organizations (NGOs), individual and nevertheless party politics are claiming that they are championing the vernacular schools. In our nation, a lot of struggles to develop these vernacular schools and some politician even politicking this issue for their personal benefit. They have forgotten that it is their responsibility to upgrade the schools. Such politicians are fooling the people and the people also being cheated again and again in many occasions.

Race relations were better just about three to four decades ago. English-medium schools era was an example. Many urban Malays, Chinese and Indians attended English-medium schools back then. The Alis, Ah Chongs and Mutus did everything together unaware of their difference. They spoke a common language – English or Bahasa Malaysia. The Chinese and Indians themselves did not speak their mother tongue well or did not speak it at all except for a handful and had remained divided among themselves in their own dialect groups mainly speaking their own dialect.

A step was taken by former Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir, he believe that by building Vision School to achieve unity, that students use classes on the Constitution and other such activities to bring students together, we should be glad that such quality good school is exist in Malaysia, but what happen when some school still have problems such as lack of classrooms, lack of basic amenities and some schools even no roof to protect the students from sun and rain? Vision School is not the best solution, it is wasting money.

We must ready to change and to be changed. We must bring one system which only with national schools. However, it may raise the strong protest from Chinese educationists and various parties with a tendency to become another racial issue.

From my opinion, I suggest and support government to end up the vernacular school system and having a single national education system, I call it national school.

The definition of my suggested Single National Education System is Bahasa Malaysia as the first language, English as the second language, Chinese and Tamil made compulsory for their ethnic groups. Even it is national school not vernacular school, but this system still take care of each ethnic group and maintain the important of their mother tongue. This education system may unite young generation but we cannot make a prediction that they are able to handle English language.

In this moment, they put mother tongue in first place but look on further. It is no doubt that English language is an international language, but mother tongue language also significant for Malaysian, because we know the important of the multi culture factor can bring economy benefit to the country.

Government should maximise the pros and minimise the cons when they set up an education system. An independent multiracial central education committee or body can then be set up to monitor and ensure the proper implementation of this newly revamped national school system. Language board must also be set up to uphold the standards of the languages taught in school. Other types of schools that encourage racial segregation should also be reviewed, such as MARA junior science colleges, matriculation colleges and residential schools. These are NEP-related institutions which must also be sorted out to be in line with the new national school system. All races combined in a schools striving towards one direction and vision. Students won’t care about the difference of race when they are in the primary school.

Politicisation of our education must be terminated and drastic measures must be taken to improve the standards of Malaysia education. The recruitment of more dedicated and depends someone ability but not their race background. Nobody with a sound mind would want to shun national schools and universities if they provide an exceptionally high quality of education.

What you think?