Are vernacular schools a breeding ground for intolerance and an obstacle to national unity?

Malaysia-Today:

Are vernacular schools a breeding ground for intolerance and an obstacle to national unity?

Last updated Mar 16, 2024

I am pretty sure that all races, not just the Chinese, do this. It is however, quite strange for Teo to notice how the Chinese sometimes look down on the Malays, without noticing how the Malays also sometimes look down on the Chinese.

Nehru Sathiamoorthy


According to Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia’s (UKM) former Professor Teo Kok Seong, vernacular schools are obstacles to national unity and a breeding ground for intolerance because the Chinese look down on the Malays.

Is there any truth to his allegations?

Well, in the way that I see it, there is no right way to address his accusation because his accusation is improperly conceived from the onset.


Let me explain what I mean.

I see Teo’s accusation as badly conceived, because it is self evident to me that vernacular schools are not created for the purpose of breeding intolerance or obstructing national unity.

If that is not the purpose of creating a vernacular, then what is, you may ask.

Well, to me, the self-evident purpose of creating vernacular is to pass down the identity of one generation to another generation.

Everybody who has children wants to pass down their identity to their children. To pass down their identity to their children might even be subconsciously, the main purpose that a person has as a child in the first place.

There is even an evolutionary reason as to why a generation is inclined to pass its identity to the succeeding generation.


If you can’t pass down your identity to your child, you probably won’t be able to identify with your child nor will your child be able to identify with you. If you can’t identify with your child or your child can’t identify with you, you won’t take care of your child, simply because we never take care of anything that we can’t identify with, even if it is our own child.

To identify with our children, we have to do things like share the same language, believe in the same concepts and be attached to the same lineage or tradition. For this purpose, a vernacular school is created, so that a child of a particular race or culture will be indoctrinated with the same ideologies and concepts that his or her parents were indoctrinated with, in the hopes that the common indoctrination will facilitate the ability of a parent and a child to identify with each other.

By identifying with the identity of his or her parent, a child will also be able to identify with their parent’s parent and their grandparent’s parent. This chain of identification, when extended, will allow a child to be connected to an entire lineage that extends throughout time. This connection with the past is necessary, for it allows a child to believe in themselves at a time when they may not yet be capable of believing in themselves.

It is only if you believe that you come from a great lineage or a culture or nation, that you will be able to motivate yourself to achieve difficult things, at a time when you do not believe in yourself. When you fail in your exams or find yourself broke or defeated, for example, you will find the strength to get up and try again, not because you believe that you can do it, but because you believe that you come from a lineage that is capable of doing great and difficult things.

Identifying with your parents, in other words, is also a means of identifying with the past, and identifying with the past is something of great value, because it will allow an individual to tap in to the glory of his or her people and lineage, which will grant them self-respect, self-esteem, strength and motivation, when they are unable to find a reason to believe, respect or motivate themselves.

So does this mean that vernacular schools do not breed intolerance or or obstruct national unity?


No, that is not true either.

The problem with being in multiracial country is that the more you try to connect with your past, the more likely you will be disconnected with your present.

This is not a problem in a homogenous country, where the more you try to connect to your past, the more will be connected to your present, because your past and your present is itself connected.

If we were a homogeneous country like Japan, for example, when we try to connect with the language, beliefs, customs and traditions of our ancestors, we will be more connected to our peers, because when our peers try to connect with the language, beliefs and customs of their ancestors, we will all be connected to the same past, which will then connect us all together.

Unfortunately, the same effect doesn’t occur in a multicultural society. In a multicultural society, the more you try to identify with your ancestors, the more estranged will you become from your peers, who have a different ancestor from you. In other words, in a multicultural society, the more you try to connect with your past, the less will you be able to connect with the present.

National identity requires you to identify with your peers within the country more than with foreigners outside the country.

However, if you share the same ancestors or past with foreigners outside the country, and you go to an institution like a vernacular school that will actively attempt to connect you to your past, you will likely find it easier to identify with foreigners outside the country than you will with your peers within the country.

Other than causing you to be estranged from the present by connecting you too strongly to the past, a vernacular school will also likely reinforce the exclusive nature of an identity, which to an outsider, might be interpreted as an active promotion of intolerance.

Identity is by nature, something that is not only internally experienced but externally justified. What this means is that for me to say that I am Indian, for example, I can’t just feel joy or pleasure when I eat Indian food or listen to Indian music internally, I must also enjoy listening to Indian music and Indian food more than I enjoy, say, Chinese food or Chinese music.

To enjoy my Indian identity, in other words, I will also have to a degree, justify to myself externally that Indian food and Indian music is better than Chinese food or Chinese music.

When you say that your music or your food is better than other people’s food or music, often, it might degenerate or be misinterpreted as you looking down on their food or music.

In other words, when Teo Kok Seong were to remark that in Chinese school, the Chinese look down on Malays, this is not entirely wrong. I am pretty sure that all races, not just the Chinese, do this. It is however, quite strange for Teo to notice how the Chinese sometimes look down on the Malays, without noticing how the Malays also sometimes look down on the Chinese. It is so strange, I would go so far as to doubt the objectivity of Teo’s observations and conclusions.

But coming back to the subject of identity, looking down on other identities is an inevitable aspect of possessing an identity. Regardless of whether you identify with your race, religion, gender or even football club, you will inevitably, at least to some measure, look down on other races, religion, gender or football club. You will, because an identity is not just internally experienced, but externally justified.

When you have a tendency to identify more with your past than with your present and a tendency to value your identity more than other identities, yes, it will indeed become hard to achieve national unity.

So how now brown cow? Should we let go of our past for the sake of the present or should we let go of the present for the sake of the past?

Well, this is actually as difficult a question to answer as the question do you love your right eye more or do you love your left eye more?

The question is so difficult to answer, that we likely will have to become a more refined, cultivated and wiser person before we can answer it satisfactorily.

Trying to answer this question before we become a more refined and wise person, is like trying to solve a university level calculus problem when you can’t even add or subtract well yet. It is pointless. You are just going to stress out not only yourself, but everybody else involved in the process.

Rather than try to answer the question just because it is before us, it might actually be better for us to realise our level and put it aside for the time being, and focus more on refining our heart and mind first.

Once we have developed our talents and abilities, and we have cultivated such things that refine our heart like kindness, compassion, generosity and appreciation, with time and experience, the answer to the question will dawn on us, just like how developing and refining our mathematical ability, will over time, allow us to appreciate and answer university level calculus question.

Part of the reason why Malaysians are mired in identity related tensions such as those involving race and religion, is likely because Malaysians today have an exaggerated sense of self-worth.

When you have an exaggerated sense of self worth, you tend to think that you are capable of doing difficult things, like solving a calculus problem, when you can’t even do something easy like add or subtract just yet.

This exaggerated sense of self worth not only causes us to be so self absorbed that we cannot value anything other than ourselves, it also causes us to attempt to do things like attempt for national unity, when we are not even that good a people yet.

According to the Department of Statistics, approximately 3 million migrants, or 8.9 percent of the 33.4 million population of Malaysia is made up of foreign workers. This is just the official count of the number of migrant workers in the country, by the way. If we include the number of undocumented migrant workers, the percentage of migrant workers might be as high as 20 percent.

All of our foreign workers, documented or undocumented, are at best a little exploited and at worst, suffering from a grave injustice.

When this is how much we have refined and cultivated our heart and mind, you can imagine our level of pomposity and conceit, to believe that we are at a position to discuss national unity.

Sometimes we can become our own worst enemy. The reason we suffer from a lot of problems is not always because the world is a bad place that is bent on doing good people like us wrong. Sometimes, it might just mean that we are a problem that is assuming that we are the solution. Because of that, the more we try to solve the problem , the bigger our problem becomes.