I have written about the the vernacular schools issues briefly here where I questioned what schools are doing today versus what they are suppose to be doing. There is far too much emphasis on integration by the politicians. I feel this is totally misdirected and cannot but get the impression that these politicians are trying to get some mileage from their political parties - drawn along racial lines. We somehow have forgotten that we schools is much more then integration and surely even more than just the convenient playground for our politicians. What I feel is that children (naturally) make friends and "integrate" (though I do not feel that need to do it) while it is the policies from the highest levels that needs to be addressed. We do not see children engage in the type of fights / disagreements politicians engage in such as the one initiated by Datuk Ahmad Ismail. In short, do not blame the schools or the children.
It does not help either when the educationist becomes selfish and lay claims on their own languages. The chinese schools are fighting and even to the point of protesting that English get to stay outside the gates of the schools. In local Government schools, the fight to maintain BM is narrow-minded to say the least. I will not dwell into this as Kian Ming presented a very good article regarding these selfish attitudes here.
My concerns are more on the education policies and vision and the lack of vision and direction are setting our children, along with that, lose several generations of young Malaysians. From the perspective of the parents there are several key issues. Firstly, the overall quality and standard needs to be improved. If any parents does not find schools innovative enough (I am sure there are many), there are no choices. All schools teach basically the same things - curriculum decided and enforced by the Ministry of Education. Schools that want to do things differently will have to do it outside "official school hours "and hold the students back. Except for the medium of instructions, everything else remains the same. So when Marina spoke about Creating Polygot Kids, she talk about human rights, our children DO NOT have rights. according to her:
Article 26.3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children." But parents will not willfully choose a bad education for their children unless they had no choice due usually to poverty. Ultimately I don't think anyone cares what language their children's schooling is in as long as it's good schooling.
The question is do we have good schooling? Is it just about teaching English? When will we have good schooling? Do our leaders and politicians have it in them to provide "good schooling"? While we debate this (including Maths and Science in English), generations of our children would have been wasted. It is time schooling is liberalized and have many systems and approaches and keep up with the times. It s time to allow schools to being our the best in our children through proper education. Politicians can go somewhere else for their playground.
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