Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, a very good afternoon to all of you. On behalf of Dong Zong, I extend the warmest welcome to all of you to attend our open house Chinese New Year celebration. We thank you for your support and for sacrificing your precious time to come all the way to Kajang.
Dear Chinese educationists and distinguished guests, this is a time to meet and renew our efforts to deal with the challenges faced by Chinese education in our country, particularly since the general election may be held this year and all political parties are trying their best to make adjustments so as to win the support of the electorate.
Even after more than half a century of persistent effort, Chinese education in this country is still facing the same problems such as the shortage of qualified teachers, inadequate allocation of funds, difficulty in setting up new Chinese primary and secondary schools in needy areas, government refuses to recognize the UEC exams, etc. Can all these problems be resolved?
The root of these long-standing issues lies in the educational policy of the authorities concerned. Although section 152(2) of the Constitution guarantees the right of the people to mother tongue education, the authorities concerned have tried through various administrative measures to realize the so-called “ultimate objective” of a monolingual school system. Such measures have met the strong opposition of the people. Section 3 of the 1957 Education Ordinance clearly stipulates that the educational policy is to establish a national system of education acceptable to the people as a whole which will satisfy their needs and promote their cultural, social, economic and political development.
Although the new 1996 Education Act is unsatisfactory in many respects, it still affirms the existence and position of Chinese primary schools. Section 27 stipulates that “it shall be the duty of the Minister to provide primary education in government and government-aid primary schools”. Section 28 states that “the Minister may establish national schools and national-type schools and shall maintain such schools’. Nevertheless, in practice, the government has placed many restrictions on the building of new national-type schools. For funding, the allocation of capital grant for the Chinese
primary schools under the 7th, 8th and 9th Malaysia Five-Year Plans have remained a meager 2.4%-3.6% of the total capital grant for Malaysian schools, although the number of Chinese primary school students is about 20% of the total primary school population.
It is sad to say that the shortage of qualified teachers in the Chinese primary schools is still remained unresolved for more than thirty years. The board of governors and the parent-teacher associations of the Chinese primary schools have been forced to raise donations to employ temporary teachers. This is very unfair as Chinese primary schools are all government-aided schools.
The principal reason of the shortage of Chinese language teachers nationwide is that the Education Ministry not systematically trains enough teachers for the Chinese primary schools. There is an excess in the number of teachers trained for the national schools, resulting in certain state education department forcibly sending these excess teachers to the Chinese primary schools in the name of giving “bonuses”. We therefore request the Ministry of Education to train sufficient suitably qualified teachers for the needy schools so as to resolve the problem once and for all.
In 1987, teachers without suitable qualification in the Chinese language were sent to Chinese primary schools to take up senior administrative posts. This had resulted in a country-wide protest. The sending of teachers without Chinese language qualification to teach various subjects in the Chinese primary schools by the Education Ministry have not only adversely affected the standards of teaching-learning and the emotional growth of the students in Chinese primary schools, but also have been viewed as an attempt to slowly change the identity of Chinese primary schools.
Recently, the Ministry of Education has prohibited the Chinese primary schools from engaging temporary teachers, and sent a large number of teachers not conversant in Chinese language to the Chinese primary schools. This is even more serious than the situation in 1987. We must therefore be vigilant and be prepared to defend the identity of our schools.
We urge all members of the Chinese primary school board of governors, parent-teacher associations and old-boy associations to report to the state association of Chinese board of governors or to Dong Zong directly, should they find teachers without suitable qualifications in the Chinese language are sent to their schools.
The Chinese communities in Kuantan have requested for setting up of one Chinese independent secondary school in Kuantan. It is regretted that permission has yet to be granted. As we all know, the student population in the Chinese independent secondary schools have generally increased in recent years and many such schools face the problem of inadequate places. This year alone, about six thousand five hundred students could not find a place in such schools. Several places have applied for permission to set up new Chinese independent secondary schools, but the authorities have so far ignored their applications.
The current trend is that our society should become more and more open and democratic. We fervently hope that the government would discard the obsolete ideology of a single medium school system and adopt multiculturalism so as to preserve and sustain “the growth of the language and culture of peoples other than Malays living in the country”, as prescribed in section 3 of the 1957 Education Ordinance.
Our Prime Minister has advocated the idea of “transformation” and “One Malaysia”. We therefore sincerely hope that the government will implement the concept of “unity in diversity” as stipulated in the Rukun Negara, in order to promote a united and harmonious Malaysian society. An important aspect is the fair and equal treatment to schools of different medium of instruction, especially in the funding of capital grant and the sufficient number of suitably qualified teachers for the Chinese primary schools. Furthermore, in view of the admirable contribution of Chinese independent secondary schools in the development of human resources in this country, the government should be more open-minded in allowing new Chinese independent secondary schools to be set up as well as providing unconditional grants to such schools and recognition of the Unified Examination Certificate (UEC).
We hope that the New Year has got off to a good start for everyone. Both ruling and opposition parties adopt the “unity in diversity” stand, and support our request for fair and equal treatment of vernacular schools in Malaysia and to transform our country into a prosperous and united society based on multiculturalism. We hope that this stand can be incorporated into their election manifestoes. We request the support of all Chinese guilds and associations in this country. Together, we will be able to effectively change the obsolete policies.
