Vernacular Schools in Malaysia

Malaysia-Today (from FMT):

Vernacular Schools Are An Obstacle To National Unity, Say Experts

Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) professor Teo Kok Seong, an expert in ethnolinguistics, said vernacular schools were an obstacle to national unity as the majority of children enrolled there were only proficient in their mother tongue.

“The trend is that only the smart ones know Malay and English. The others can only speak their mother tongue,” he told FMT.

I agree and disagree with his remarks. While it's the basic right of every citizen to learn his or her mother tongue, I have to agree that teaching Chinese and non-Chinese children in separate schools represent a huge obstacle to national unity.

The fault lies not so much with the Chinese parents and their preference for their children's primary education because the standard of national type schooling has since 1980-ish became so buruk lah. Chinese have always been particular about education because as I have often written, it's one of the Chinese central cultural pillars. It's Confucian ideology through and through.

Education is the only means by which the very poor in society, especially in Chinese society (more so, Chinese Malaysian society), hope their children will become "Lotuses" - I won't go into what "Lotuses" mean to a Chinese, save to invite you to read my earlier post (published on 08 June 2011), namely: Scholarships.

Thus the remedy (for all Malaysians) is for national type schools to regain their pre 1980 standards to re-assure non-Malay parents that the education standard is once again 'gold'.

Reference again Prof Teo's remarks “The trend ..... English. The others can only speak their mother tongue”, I disagree.

Nowadays young Chinese student in (C) vernacular students (as I have observed, in Penang) can't and/or won't speak Penang Hokkien, the mother-tongue of the majority - this could have been due to the strict discipline of vernacular schools in enforcing Mandarin and discouraging mother tongue in school, even with very "strong measures" - I recall my Form II & English teacher (an Indian man with impeccable English) slapping me and Chinese classmates whenever we drifted off into Penang Hokkien, wakakaka).

The brats today speak only Mandarin, even at home - my young nieces and nephews do that with me and I studiously ignored them (because I can't speak good/fluent Mandarin, wakakaka).

I dare say my FB matey Anas Zubedy, and many Malay, Indian, Bhai and Eurasian friends & relatives (yes, I do have relatives among the 4 mentioned communities) speak far far better Penang Hokkien than some vernacular (C) students in Penang do - as mentioned, some of those brats can't.

Thus Mandarin is gradually killing the lingua franca of Penangites, both of Chinese and non-Chinese ethnicities, as it has done to many Chinese non-Mandarin languages in China - not just dialects, as Hokkien, Canto, Teochew, etc are so different from Mandarin that each of them cannot be termed as 'dialects'.

As Paul Jules Antoine Meillet, a Frenchman, was believed to have written: “A language is a dialect with an army and navy”, meaning when a community (race, nation) is powerful enough, its lingua franca becomes a 'language' and thus vice versa (eg. American English is a distinct language and not an Americanised version of British English, and eff the Poms if the Limeys don't like it, wakakaka).

Paul Jules Antoine Meillet 

And we can see (assume) that China wouldn't be too happy to recognise Hokkien, Canto (especially in Hong Kong), Teochew, etc in the various regions of Chinese as languages, as such linguistic 'sovereignty' may breed unhealthy nationalistic ideas, wakakaka. Thus the Chinese authorities have categorised them as 'dialects' in the same way the Malaysian government deem, as examples, Kelantan and Johor Malay as 'dialects'.

Back to young Penangites in vernacular schools losing their mother tongue (Penang Hokkien, though there are some Penangites whose mother tongues are Teochew (yours truly), Canto, Hainan, Hakka, etc, but we are the 'minorities' in Penang), if there is no significant effort to preserve the continuity-longevity of Penang Hokkien, I predict the Island's so-called mother tongue will be extinct in 30 years time - that's right, in just 30 years time when the young punks (eg. my nieces and nephews) become parents themselves with schooling kids of their own. Mandarin then will become their mother tongue.