Media
Statement by Tony Pua, DAP National Publicity Secretary and Member of
Parliament for Petaling Jaya Utara in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday, 24 July 2013
When National Schools Cultivates Schism and
Seggregation
I am a
proud product of a Malaysian national school and continues to harbour romantic
notions of how the school was able to bring various races of different
religions together under a single roof.
Unity |
However
today, such thoughts are mere nostalgic reminiscenes of days long past. Instead of bringing Malaysians together, the
national schools have become the ironic reason, directly and indirectly for our
young to be seggregated by race and religion.
There
are two key reasons why the non-Malays of this country, particularly the
Chinese community has chosen to shun the national schools today. This will include parents who have gone
through the national school system, who often don’t even speak a word of
Chinese besides their own name.
The
first and perhaps the most dominant reason is the drastic decline in the
quality of teaching at the national schools.
Parents who can’t afford private schools would prefer to send their
children to the Chinese vernacular schools to ensure that they receive an
education of sufficient rigour and quality.
National test results have proven that the Chinese vernacular schools
outperform the national schools significantly.
However,
the quality of education isn’t the only factor.
No parents would want to send their children to a school where their
child will be seggregated and discriminated against, by teachers, schoolmates
and the school administration.
Malaysians
are up in arms over the news reports yesterday of photographs which have
emerged online allegedly showing non-Muslim students of a primary school being
made to eat in a shower room during fasting month. The pictures show students of SK Seri
Pristina in Sungai Buloh sitting around tables set up in the school’s changing
or shower room.
The
school authorities have made the students eat in the makeshift dining room,
located next to the toilets. No food is
believed to be served in the canteen, which is said to be closed during
Ramadan.
Although
the Ministry of Education has “pledged” action on this matter, the above while
extreme in its nature, is certainly not the first case, nor will it be expected
to be the last. Over the past few years,
we have read many such reports, including a principal in Kedah telling off the
Chinese pupils for being insensitive towards their Muslim peers by eating in
the school compound during Ramadan and telling them to “balik Cina”.
There
were equally ridiculous cases of cheerleading teams being disbanded, decrees
for lion dance without drums during Chinese New Year as well as blanket bans on
Christian fellowship groups. And certainly,
if one were to pay a visit to practically any national school today during the
month of Ramadan, non-Muslim students are seggregated in secluded corners
during recess, to “respect” their Muslim peers.
Even
during normal months, students in many schools are seggregated so as not to
contaminate Muslim food and utensils.
What’s more, many students have in the past complained that they were
forced to take Arabic or attend Islamic classes despite being non-Muslims.
Is this
the “respect” that our national education system seeks to cultivate? Shouldn’t it be such that while non-Muslims
understand and give respect to Muslims who are fasting, Muslims should equally
understand and respect non-Muslim who are not?
The
“transformation” of our national schools into such religious hardline schools
has major negative ramifications for the country’s future. Not only are non-Malays extremely deterred
from sending their children to these national schools, those who do – both
Malays and non-Malays – will be scarred for life.
The
non-Malays who attend these schools, such as SK Sri Pristina above, will see
the entire country’s system as biased against non-Malays and they will forever
be discriminated as unworthy second class citizens. The Malay students who attend these schools
will on the other hand deem it is right and proper to subject other races,
religions and cultures to their own beliefs and practices.
If the
BN Government is serious about making the national schools, the school of
choice for Malaysians and the grounds to breed national unity, then some very
drastic reforms need to take place.
We call
on the Ministry of Education to mete out swift and severe punishment to the
school authorities who had the audacity to come up with policies demeaning our
Malaysian children in SK Sri Pristina.
More importantly, we call upon the Ministry to come out of strict
guidelines on these matters in our schools.
For example, non-Muslim students must be allowed to eat in school
canteens during fasting month, and the canteen must be operated instead of
being closed. The failure to even come
up with, and enforce such guidelines would only mean that the Ministry is
granting tacit approvals for such actions, and will almost certainly make
racial polarisation in Malaysia an irreversible process.
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