Malaysia’s Gallant School System in Need of an Overhaul

Abstract

A recent controversial pronouncement by the Sultan of Johor state on the language of instruction in Malaysian schools immediately brought renewed attention to the present condition of the education system in the country. The Sultan had called for English to be further encouraged as the medium of instruction. The issue represents the tip of the iceberg of controversies over the education of the young which have plagued the country since its very beginnings. For starters, it discouraged the newly independent Malaysia from adopting a monolingual education system as a means to unify its ethnically diverse populations into a one-nation, one-language community. Instead, decolonization politics resulted in the continuation of the British colonial state’s multilingual school system that, after independence, evolved into Malay-medium primary and secondary national schools and vernacular Chinese and Tamil primary schools. Policy makers such as the pioneering educationist Aminuddin Baki, were already aware of the potential centrifugal effect of a multilingual education in encouraging schooling to occur along ethnic lines. The initial plan was to turn the Malay-medium national schools into the preferred education stream for all ethnic groups. Instead, various developments and exclusivist policies and programmes after 1971 accentuated ethnic segregation in the educational system. This essay highlights some key aspects of ethnic segregation in the public educational system, especially at the primary and secondary school levels.