Schools and Nation-building (Part 2)

As pointed out in Schools and Nation-building, the primary education in Malaysia is by nature racially segregated, which comprised of national, vernacular Chinese and Tamil schools.

The segregated primary education was a compromise negotiated among the ethnic groups when Malaya gained its independence in 1957. After 50 years of independence, the national schools had became the point of criticism and the student enrolment were predominantly Malays while Chinese parents preferred to sent their children to Chinese primary schools. This resulted in a worsening situation of segregation among the ethnic groups.

In order for schools to play a greater role in nation-building and fostering racial harmony, thorough revamp of the education system seems to be an unavoidable initiatives. To the general understanding, Chinese and Indian students in the vernacular schools received their primary education in a mixture of their mother-tongue along with Malay and English. The students in the national schools were taught in Malay and English with the Muslim students being taught Arabian.

As all students were expected to master 3 languages, perhaps the revamp of the education system could integrate the primary education into a common schools. All students are required to learn Malay language and English language while the remaining subjects are conducted in English. In addition to that, Malay students should be taught Arabian as the third language while Chinese and Indians studied Chinese language and Tamil respectively. To further ensure greater objectivity in the evaluation of students' achievement, the third language should be given a lighter weightage as compared to Malay and English.

With a united education system, then primary and secondary schools could played a greater role in enhancing nation-building and racial harmony among the students. Then it could truly reflects that education is indeed an investment that will produce the next generation of Malaysians that are truly Bangsa Malaysia.