KUALA LUMPUR: Putrajaya’s education policies have resulted not only in widening the gap between races but also the rich and the poor, said Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

The former prime minister said children from wealthy families went to private schools in Malaysia and abroad while the children of the poor were left with no choice but to attend national schools.

“Apart from the racial separation because of the ethnic language-based schools, we now see a separation of rich children and poor children,” he said in his blog, chedet.cc.

Furthermore, he said, the rich now spoke English while the poor in Malay, Chinese or Tamil, adding that the current job market favoured the English speakers.

Dr Mahathir, who was education minister from 1974 to 1978, reflected that after achieving Merdeka in 1957, Malaysia had a clear idea on education.

“We wanted every Malaysian child to go to national schools where the medium of teaching would be Bahasa Malaysia.

“[By doing this] They would know and be close to each other, get used to their different cultures and be distinctly Malaysian.

“For a time, the ‘English Schools’ were to be allowed to go on. The students at these schools were from all the ethnic groups in Malaysia,” he added.

However, when acting education minister Abdul Aziz Ishak decided that all schools must be converted to national schools with the national language as the teaching medium, he said the Chinese “raised a big row”. As a result the Cabinet then decided that vernacular schools would be allowed and redesignated as “jenis kebangsaan” or national type.

He said it was a political decision as nothing in the Federal Constitution provided for vernacular schools. In 1971, he added that then education minister Tun Hussein Onn decided to abolish government secondary schools which taught in English, which resulted in an exodus of Chinese students to private Chinese secondary schools.

“With this, the children of different races lost all opportunities to grow up together; the Malays to national schools, the Chinese to Chinese schools and the Indians to Tamil primary schools.”

Dr Mahathir also noted that the language nationalists had not protested vociferously as they protested against the use of English for Science and Mathematics.

“Incidentally, the Malay language nationalists also helped promote the use of the Chinese language in Chinese schools and in business. Even Malay parents like their children to go to Chinese schools. And in Sarawak, the natives prefer Chinese schools,” Dr Mahathir said.

However, he said, international schools using English were allowed to exist, adding that local private schools using English as the medium were then set up.

“Malaysian children were not supposed to go to these private schools,” he said, noting that in any case, the fees charged by private schools were high.

But the ministers’ children, against national policy, started going to private schools and international schools which used English as the teaching medium.

“The ministers also send their children to public (actually private) schools in the United Kingdom. So followed the children of the rich.

“The result is that the rich go to private schools in Malaysia and the UK while the poor go to national schools at home.”

In the end, he said the result was the separation of the races and the separation of rich English speakers from the less privileged national language speakers.

He admitted that although all his children went to national schools, his grandchildren attended private schools in Malaysia and abroad.

“They do speak the national language but their kind of schooling widens the gap between races as well as between the rich and poor.” — The Malaysian Insider

This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on November 19, 2014.