Is it racialism that causes Malaysian Chinese to be cliquish? Or is it just bad faith? Let’s explore the reasons why some Malaysian Chinese youth can’t integrate into society and why abolishing vernacular schools may be just a blind shot at solving a growing problem.

Chinese School Entrance | Source: Wikimedia Commons
Chinese School Entrance | Source from https://www.loyarburok.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/ChineseIndependentHighSchool002.jpg

Eu Jienn’s story

Chong Eu Jienn is 15. He lives in Kepong, KL. He speaks fluently in Mandarin. If you ever get lost in Kepong and bump into him, please do not ask for directions in English. He will not know how to respond to you. If you switch next to Bahasa Malaysia, he might be able to bring up a broken explanation consisting of recognisable words like “sana” or “depan” but the rest might be in Mandarin so you’d better know a bit of the language yourself if you want to understand what he is telling you.

Eu Jienn is a product of the vernacular schooling system. His parents decided long ago that their children would be educated in a Chinese Independent School. Firstly, China was quickly becoming an important economic power. Secondly, friends with children in National schools were lamenting about the quality of teachers in such schools. Thirdly, Eu Jienn’s parents came from very strict family backgrounds – discipline was top priority for them and Chinese schools were renowned for discipline. Fourthly, Eu Jienn’s parents were DAP supporters. His grandparents were aligned to BN due to the presence of MCA which was felt to represent the Chinese voice in government. But the loyalty ceased as the political landscape shifted with Mahathir, in favour of the Malays. Besides, what was so important about English or Bahasa Malaysia anyway? If Eu Jienn performed well academically, he could get a good job in Singapore or China. Singapore, for one thing, was close enough to stay in touch with their eldest son. Singapore was also kind to the Chinese. And, yes, in Singapore, people spoke Mandarin.

You could hardly blame Eu Jienn’s parents for such a narrow view. For them, vernacular schools were the best bet to ensure a future of better opportunities for their children. They must have known how important English was as it is still the lingua franca of the business and working world. And yet they somehow chose to ignore this point in shaping their son’s future.

Why?

Why are Eu Jienn’s parents also unconcerned with their son’s inability to speak the National Language? The National Language is something every citizen of every country should be proud of and be able to converse in comfortably – a badge of their national identity. But before we clamour for the abolishment of these vernacular schools or talk about racism (not to be confused with Chinese patriotism), we should look at the big picture and consider all the factors that led Eu Jienn to where he is today.

Then and now

My parents went to Chinese schools but they both speak English. My dad is more fluent because my grandfather spoke English at home with all his children. My mum is less so because her parents spoke Hokkien and Mandarin at home. I used to catch her learning grammar from a self-help book months before a team presentation at OCBC where she worked as a bank teller. During the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s, English was a more important language to master due to our colonial heritage, so Bahasa Malaysia (henceforth referred to as BM) for Chinese families was left on the wayside to rot into Pasar Malay, also known as the hybrid of Chinese dialect-inflected BM our grandparents and parents spoke when shopping at the wet market (e.g “Lu banyak pasal. Wah beli ikan kembong lu, lu bagi harga baik lah.“)

The point is – language needs to be put into practice or it’ll leave our working memory.

My time was the 80’s and I was enrolled in a Kebangsaan school. Malay and English were the medium of instruction for me and my lot. Even though our syllabus was in Bahasa Malaysia, if the teacher of the subject was Chinese, she would give instructions in English but refer to the terms and formulas of our syllabus in BM. Furthermore, BM was compulsory on Wednesdays – i.e everybody had to speak in BM on that day, throughout the day. Failure to do so might score a deviant a black mark in the prefects’ “little report book”. Among friends of different racial backgrounds, we conversed in a mixture of BM and English. So you could say that a lot of us were pretty well-versed in both languages, although for the Chinese and Indians, BM rolled less easily off our tongues. (It must also be said that I spoke English and Cantonese with my family.)

Again, the point is – if language is not put into practice, it’ll leave our working memory. We’ll eventually slip back into the language we’re most comfortable with – i.e use more often.

Now, if the issue of the day is “the inability of Chinese students to function in society due to the complete lack of proficiency in English and the National language“, then the Education System is a little flawed against both the Nationalism platform and the Prime Minister’s objective of turning our country into a high-income one. This is because that would mean all our students need to be able to compete on the world stage and not just among the best within Malaysia.

Let’s get better

Yet this issue can be arrested if the Ministry of Education steps in to ensure that English and Bahasa Malaysia are taken seriously at such schools. Make them compulsory subjects which have to be passed, NOT History which apparently has become very subjective. And lift the pass mark while we’re at it. Ensure there are qualified Language teachers teaching the subjects. Turn a day of the week (or two) into a BM-only day or English-only day. Incentivise the kids to do well in these subjects – cash prizes, discounts off computers, a free AirAsia ticket to the historical cities of China, etc. These are examples of possibly a long list of what can be done.

If racial integration is the key issue, then we must acknowledge that this is a much larger problem to tackle. It requires that we consider politically driven policies, climate, and environment beside the Education System itself. I personally feel that this issue has exacerbated the conundrum of language proficiency. How?

Most parents who insist their kids go to Chinese schools, for instance, insist because they no longer believe that National schools have the quality teachers to teach well. Chinese schools are known to be strict (read: disciplined) with high emphasis on good performance. Parents subscribe to this perception. Secondly, with China burgeoning into a Superpower in her own right, parents are convinced that the Mother Tongue is taught and taught well in schools, something that does not exist in National schools anymore. Thirdly, because of the political climate we are in, with all the race-tinged statements floating about in National newspapers as well as race-skewed policies affecting our education system (quotas and scholarships for example), these parents withdraw to self-sufficient mode. It’s a “Ok, I’ll work around the system then” kind of attitude. They believe they can survive and thrive against these odds because they can rely on their work ethic. As long as they can pursue their goals in life without too much interference or restrictions from the government of the day, they’ll just “do their thing“.

Malaysian Favelas?

Favela in Rio | Source: Flickr. Photo by Paula Le Dieu.
Favela in Rio | Source: Flickr. Photo by Paula Le Dieu.

You could categorise this behaviour as being self-imposed isolation smacking of racialism. But I see it as communality driven by self-preservation. There’s a bit of this in the favelas of Sao Paulo and Rio De Jeneiro. Essentially composed of the marginalised poor, favelas are shanty-like towns that make perfect hideouts for drug lords because they know a shootout with the police will cost innocent lives, a risk the police would prefer not to take. At the same time, drug lords offer protection to the residents (faveladors) from thugs and thieves in return for loyalty and silence about their identities and exact whereabouts in the maze of makeshift homes. Code words are used and every home has an open-door policy should a drug pusher find himself being hotly pursued by the cops.

Meanwhile these faveladors get jobs from the richer families that live and operate on the outer ring of the towns for their cheap labour – or at the bottom of the hills should the favela be built on the hillside. Kosher or not, there is a system that governs such favelas and systems make people feel safe and secure. Kosher or not, they get leadership and the time of day from the drug lords. Malaysian Chinese and South Americans are, of course, worlds apart in many ways, not least in the area of the economic power each community holds. But there are similarities.

If you visit typically Chinese-skewed townships in KL, you’ll notice that there is a little economy giving pulse to the communities there, making them self-sufficient neighbourhoods consisting of banks, markets, small law practices, supermarkets, tailors, pharmacies, cobblers and schools. Facilities you will also find in favelas – although to a lesser degree and in humbler forms. The factors influencing the strong communal behaviour of both cultures are also somewhat similar: there are signs of marginalisation of some form, pragmatism linked to some form of threat to their livelihood or well-being, and the basic belief of strength in numbers.

For Malaysian Chinese, there is the added threat to their culture, the very essence of their identity. With the seeming Islamisation of the country, there is also a cogent fear among Chinese working class families that their culture will soon be swallowed up, dismissed or forbidden. This may sound flippant to some but if you could send your kid to a school that celebrates your culture, subscribes to high standards of discipline and performance versus a national school where you believe the teachers are lazy (and just pile up homework on your kid rather than teach), discriminatory (what with those reported insults of headmasters and mistresses in the news recently) and themselves not fluent in English or BM, then what would your choice be? Wouldn’t you want the former even though the possibility of your kid not being able to mix around later is high? What’s more important – being able to mix around or having the values and skills to be able to have a good career that could take you out of an increasingly hostile country?

Root out the illness, not the symptom

To summarise, the source of the problem is the Education System and its quality which affects the reputation of our National schools. The political climate and policies that are increasingly race-tinged and biased are secondary “viruses” threatening the Chinese community. Parents who insist on vernacular schools are just a symptom of the problem. The “illness” that is manifested are the children of these vernacular schools who are not able to function in society due to language proficiency issues.

If we want to treat the symptom, then, yes, just abolish the vernacular schools without doing anything else. If, however, we want to prevent the illness itself, we’ll have to go to the root of the problem, the source. We’ll have to revisit the medium of instruction for Math and Science. We’ll have to consider introducing Chinese and Tamil as subjects in schools. We’ll have to pay teachers a lot better, improve the selection criteria get good teachers – we’ll even have to review the teaching courses in our institutes and universities. And then some.

It’s sad that kids like Eu Jienn are destined to be another digit in our brain-drain statistic. It’s even sadder that he’ll grow up unable to mix with people other than his own race due to a language problem. That he is a foreigner in his own country. That, even if he ends up in Singapore or China, he will still be “middle-tier” even if he’s a genius back home because his academic performance may still not be as good as his regional counterparts. Whether partly by his choice, or his parents’, it doesn’t matter. Leaders have a great opportunity to shape the country, the pillars of society and bring out the best in its rakyat simply because they’re in power and they’re supposed to, well, lead. As a result, they are primarily accountable for the way things have turned out.

Too bad for Eu Jienn though.

Lisa Ng is a human being. She used to be a copywriter in the advertising industry. But now she just writes. For whatever helps us regain the lost art of “giving a toss” towards things that matter to the human race.

Lisa Ng is a human being. She used to be a copywriter in the advertising industry. But now she just writes. For whatever helps us regain the lost art of "giving a toss" about the things that matter to...

74 replies on “Malaysian. Chinese. Totally Foreign.”

  1. Lisa Ng,
    You are a rather ignorant person. Not many of the generation of Malaysian Chinese born after Merdeka are unable to speak the Bahasa ? Don't blame the Chinese schools for the lack of inter-racial mixing, their students are taught not only Chinese. In fact they are also taught BM and BI. The lack of social intercourse among the races is due to other reasons which you should find out before coming up with your Anglophilic utterances ! Your sycophantic regards for your former colonial masters are pretty obvious. Now tell me if it is not creditable for a Malaysian to be able to speak as many languages as possible and that include Mandarin as well as all the Chinese dialects he or she can speak. It is of utmost importance for a Chinese to be able to know his own language, in both the oral and written forms. The Malays have a saying, Hilang bahasa, lupa bangsa. Do take note of the deeper meaning of the saying, you cultural turncoat !

  2. Seriously people doesn't get it. Back in the days, before 70s the unity amongst Malaysians were the highest and they had vernacular schools too. This basically tells you vernacular schools aren't the problem.

    If the 13 May didn't happen, you can be sure the unity would still be high. But hey, that happened. So deal with the consequences I say.
    This event broke the trust between the two races. If you ever noticed, this has since gotten worse with the recent political issues.
    Just like how white Americans are complaining about African Americans. Your ancestors or old folks did something bad, now it's time for pay back.

    Even until now, extremist African Americans still hate white Americans and America had no vernacular school as well.

    Want this to stop? The only way is for the majority to give way. Sadly, the majority is full of extremists, so that'd be hard.

  3. Nishicienjia,

    No, I am not suggesting Chinese educated people are disadvantaged. You must be reading the article wrongly.

    No, I am also not suggesting that a Chinese should speak to another Chinese in foreign language. Again, you must be reading the article wrongly.

    Since it appears that you have taken the wrong meaning out of what I've written, I would say I have answered your queries. But I would also like to add that it is not in the Chinese culture to be so brash with the usage of swear words.

    Ni ke yi shuo wo bushi zhende huaren. Danxi wo bu tongyi. Zhe shi ni de yijian.

    Xieh xieh.

    1. " No, I am not suggesting Chinese educated people are disadvantaged. You must be reading the article wrongly. "

      You didn't say it but you implied it strongly.

      " No, I am also not suggesting that a Chinese should speak to another Chinese in foreign language. Again, you must be reading the article wrongly. "

      Same answer again.

      you bangsar pondans are always cowards, never say anything direct, always implying , only this time you have been caught out.

      I have no queries to ask you and I don't need your kind in any way shape or form – what part is unclear ?

      limian nide fumujinde gangmen, wo pai pai pai !

      that's all you are getting I don't talk to bangsar chinese in Chinese unless it is in derogatory terms.

      You who have no clue to your own language and culture, are in NO position to tell us what is chinese culture and what is not.

      Anyway I thought you are a fully paid up member of the wannabe gwailoh culture ?

      what's the matter ? The west bankrupt and dying causing you to change boats yet again ?

      Trouble with you people is that you are totally disingenuous, you are this when it suits you are then something else when it doesn't – nobody trusts you and we the real Chinese DON'T want you.

      btw it's xie xie no h

      bodoh bangsar Chinese

  4. Are you suggesting that somehow Chinese educated are disadvantaged ?

    LOL what joker you are and clearly just another jealous Bangsa….r Chinese. Grow pair and learn the Fg language and stop blaming others for your failure.

    1) in Chinese culture, Chinese should NEVER speak to other Chinese in foreign languages.

    It would be like you beloved Englishman speaking Italian to another of his kind. Clearly a bullshit sentiment, thus the same applies to the Chinese.

    2) You said it yourself these small communities are doing well and don't feel sorry for " Eu Jien ", because I guarantee he will be doing a lot better than you in a few years time whether in China or here.

    Lastly

    ni bushi zhende huaren, ni nali chidao women yeo shenme wendi haishi ling waide dongshi

    hahahahah !

  5. Is it Shuzeng's?

    I stopped reading his blog after 2nd article. Too much of hatred for my liking. And yes, I did read what he penned down about your piece.

    His writing shouldnt affect you (easy for me to say cz im not at the receiving end) because he is simply uncivilised.

    It does not matter how interesting his article is and it does not matter how passionate he is about his beliefs because it just puts me off when he bash people at such atrocity. He shouldve done it in a more classy manner.

    Agree on the government weakness which caused a heck lot of trouble in education system here.

    Good day

    Penguin

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