Education in Malaysia

You may wonder why I went to the trouble of sending my children overseas to study when there are schools and universities aplenty in Malaysia. The reason is the decline of standards in education. Since independence, the problem of education has never been properly settled. There have been changes and changes, but none that have fully satisfied the multiracial, multi-religious and multi-cultural people of Malaysia. The bone of contention is the language of instruction in schools.

Chinese and Indian immigrants contributed greatly to the development of this country, which was administered by Britain in pre-independence days. The use of the English language in administration and education opened windows to the outside world. Because of merdeka (independence), the English language was relegated to second place and the slide in education standards began. Changing the language of instruction in schools from English to Bahasa Malaysia in schools did not cause much difficulty in the beginning, but after 1970, when the switch was complete, deterioration set in. This was not entirely because of the language switch but the manner in which it was forced on a people who were not ready for it. It became worse when the New Economic Policy, designed to benefit ethnic Malays, was applied to justify discrimination in matters of staffing and promotion.

Decades later, we see the policy on language was not wise. Letters have appeared in the press time and time again pleading to have the English language restored in our schools. Enforcing Bahasa as the medium of instruction has not had the results that our politicians expected. The nation has been polarised along racial and linguistic lines, and Bahasa has not broken the barriers down even though it is the national language.

Let’s look at our neighbour Singapore, where English has been the language of administration, commerce and nation building. With hardly any natural resources, they have done very well for themselves. It’s the English language and its hardworking people that have given Singapore the edge. Another example is India. Though Hindi is the official language of India, the use of English is wide-spread. It is the language that has kept the north and south, east and west of India as one nation.

Countries all over the world are wanting their citizens to learn the English language. East Asian countries like China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are making great efforts to provide facilities for the teaching and learning of English. Will Malaysians be left behind? There is no doubt that without the English language, our progress and competitive edge are severely compromised. With the Internet, knowledge, news and communication are literally at one’s fingertips – that is, if one is well-versed in the English language!

In pre-independence days, Malaya really had some of the finest schools among Commonwealth countries. The mission schools, run by the Catholics, Anglicans and Methodists, were at the forefront of education in this country. They made a tremendous contribution. After independence, education took a back seat to discrimination by race, quotas and language. There is no equality for students who are not ethnic Malays. The slide in standards stems from this practice.

In the Times Higher Education ranking of universities worldwide, the University of Malaya, our premier institution of higher learning, has been placed below 300, while our near neighbour, the National University of Singapore, is placed at number 23. Both of these universities were of similar standard at one time. What happened? Other universities in the country are so much lower down in the rankings as to be hardly worth mentioning.

Children are being sent abroad for studies as their parents are not satisfied with the present education system. Living in Johor Bahru, I have observed a large number of our students crossing the Causeway daily to attend school in Singapore. Busloads of children are ferried across as early as 5 am to beat the traffic, while some are pillion riding on motorcycles to get an education in Singapore.

Our leaders themselves do not trust and believe in our school system. They send their children abroad or to prestigious and expensive private schools in town and abandon the children of the common people to fend for themselves with the half-baked education they dish out in our national schools. There are thousands of unemployable graduates from local universities, because of the failure of our education system.

My wife and I determined that we would not allow our children to suffer this fate. Our efforts to secure a good income after retirement from teaching service were mainly directed towards the goal of ensuring they would benefit from a high-quality education.