Furor (And Hidden Story) On Malays Attending Chinese Schools

 Furor (And Hidden Story) On Malays Attending Chinese Schools

M. Bakri Musa

 

 

The schools of a nation are its future in miniature, goes an ancient Chinese wisdom. For Malaysia, I would substitute “community” for “nation.” The recent furor over the increasing number of Malay parents sending their children to Chinese schools is an acknowledgment that this insight is now finally registering among Malays. It also reveals a hitherto hidden or unacknowledged story

 

            Implicit in that Chinese wisdom is that you can tell much about a nation (or community) by its schools. When I visited a small rural school in Sweden some two decades ago, I did not need the thick laudatory Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development Reports to tell me the superiority of the Swedish schools. Likewise, when I visited a school in Haiti in the 1970s, I could see as well as sense the despair in the students and teachers, and with that, the nation. As for its future, well, that’s the Haiti of today. 

 

            I have never visited a school in China. However in 2000 on a visit there, I was surprised that the plane was full of American teachers and professors on assignment there. My daughter too at one time taught Law at Tsinghua University. I learned much about China and her future smart leaders from her lecture hall observations. 

 

            As such I am not surprised that today’s learned publications, think tank reports, and the social media are filled with news of China’s rise economically and in technological innovations. Indeed in all fields except perhaps religious studies. Thanks to social media, I do not need to physically visit a Chinese school to buttress my conclusion. 

 

            A recent video (https://youtu.be/OYL0s79z_t8?si=VqeVBwhTZZ0fLVTB) of a school in Shenzhen cemented my conviction. Such recent American measures as imposing stiff tariffs on Chinese products and restricting their students from entering American universities would have minimal impact on China’s trajectory. On the contrary, those measures could hurt America. Chinese-made electric vehicles are now a quantum leap superior to American ones and fast eclipsing the latter in global markets. As for restricting Chinese students, many American campuses are now reeling from the consequent reduction in income these students would otherwise bring. Chinese talents like earlier Japanese and South Korean ones are now abandoning America to return home to start their own enterprises.

 

            That Shenzhen public school’s technologically-wired classrooms would put to shame even the most well-endowed American prep school. It was not all technology however. Its performing arts center rivals that of Petronas Dewan Philharmonic, and its athletic facilities would be the envy of any national Olympic Training Center.

 

            By contrast, Malaysian national schools face a triad of formidable obstacles. First, underfunding and severe misallocation of resources. Imagine had the resources expended on the Forty Hadith Module been diverted to building laboratories, “wired” classrooms, and supplying computers! Then those students could learn Forty Hadith on their own, listening to the global spectrum of interpretations. That would be liberating intellectually as well as spiritually. Though a major obstacle, the funding issue is at least quantifiable and thus potentially solvable.  Not so with the other two impediments.

 

            One is the hypocrisy of Malay leaders and scholars. This began early. The late Tun Razak, first Minister of Education and the man who started the current system, was exhorting Malay parents to enroll their children in Malay schools back in the mid 1950s. Meanwhile he was quietly sending his (all five of them) to English schools, and in England to boot. 

 

            As for Malay language scholars, Nik Safiah Ismail felt little need for Malays to learn English, dismissing it as the language of the colonialists. To her, at most only about 20 percent of Malays need to be proficient in it; the rest could get by with Malay only. That was the core message she had imparted to generations of Malay students. Left unstated is that her children and grandchildren would be in that small select group, a la Razak.

 

            By far the most formidable barrier is the increasing Islamization of the national stream. That not only drives away non-Malays but worse, results in indoctrination passing as education, with young impressionable Malays the victims. Education Minister Fadhlina Sidek is determined to “out Tahfiz” the Tahfiz schools.

 

            Leaders of National-type Chinese could accelerate this increase in Malay enrolment by providing halal food or have Malay hawkers (subject to strict hygiene guidelines) to set up stalls on campus. That would endear those schools to Malay entrepreneurs and community. Another would be to change the name to National-Type Mandarin schools, thus emphasizing language, not ethnicity. Recent attempts to discredit Chinese schools for their accepting donations from beer companies reflect desperation and would have minimal impact.

 

            If English is the language of the colonizers and thus of the past, then Mandarin is of the future as well as one spoken by more people worldwide.    

 

            Today’s national school students remind me of their Chinese counterparts during Mao’s era. Then those Chinese kids were busy demonstrating in the streets and chanting the “Thoughts of Chairman Mao” while waving his Little Red Book. Malay students today are entranced with their zikir while waving Imam Nawawi’s Forty Hadith. Same psychological obsession, just different manifestation but no less distracting and destructive.

 

            Deng Xiaoping jolted the Chinese into reality. Meanwhile Malays are still in the grip of their khayalan(fantasies) and cursed with their many mini-Mao leaders. The good news is that ordinary Malays are now awakening and defying their leaders, using the same evasion and resistance techniques as per James C Scott’s “weapon of the weak.” This seismic shift in Malay mentality is here to stay. That augurs well for Malays, and thus Malaysia.