Skip to main content

Advertisement

Advertisement

Mahathir slams education system for widening race, income gaps

KUALA LUMPUR — The social-economic disparity in Malaysia will grow bigger, with rich parents enrolling their children in international schools and abroad to study English, while the poor are left behind in national and vernacular schools, Dr Mahathir Mohamad has warned.

Dr Mahathir said children of the poor go to national schools in Malaysia and are at a severe disadvantage. Photo: Bloomberg

Dr Mahathir said children of the poor go to national schools in Malaysia and are at a severe disadvantage. Photo: Bloomberg

Follow TODAY on WhatsApp

KUALA LUMPUR — The social-economic disparity in Malaysia will grow bigger, with rich parents enrolling their children in international schools and abroad to study English, while the poor are left behind in national and vernacular schools, Dr Mahathir Mohamad has warned.

In a critique of the Malaysian education system, the former Prime Minister said the country’s races were already separated as a result of the government’s efforts to cater to all ethnic groups by having Bahasa Malaysia, Mandarin and Tamil as the formal languages for learning in schools, and this has been made worse by the proliferation of English-medium international and private schools.

“The result is that the rich go to private schools in Malaysia and the United Kingdom, while the poor go to national schools at home,” he said in his latest blog posting.

Dr Mahathir, who was Education Minister from 1974 to 1978, pointed out that most employers currently favour English speakers and this puts children from poor families at a severe disadvantage.

He said the problem first started when Acting Education Minister Aziz Ishak decided all schools should be turned into national schools, with the national language as teaching medium, which caused the Chinese community to raise a big row. The Cabinet then decided that vernacular schools would be allowed and redesigned under the category of national type, or “Jenis Kebangsaan” in Malay.

“Then another Education Minister (Hussein Onn) in 1971 decided to abolish government secondary schools which teach in English. The net result was an exodus of Chinese students to private Chinese secondary schools,” Dr Mahathir wrote, saying children of different races lost “all opportunities” to grow up together.

Then came international and private schools, he said, adding that they were not meant for Malaysian children.

“Then the ministers’ children, against national policy, started going to private schools and international schools, which use largely English as the teaching medium. The ministers also send their children to public (actually private) schools in the UK. So followed the children of the rich.

“All these will result in the separation of the races and the separation of rich high-class English-speaking people from the poor less-privileged national language-speaking people. There will also be a loss of the knowledge of modern science and higher mathematics among national school students,” he said.

Admitting that his own grandchildren currently study in private schools locally and abroad, Dr Mahathir said this type of schooling “widens the gap between races as well as between the rich and the poor”. “It seems that poor parents must accept poor education for their children so politicians can be popular,” he concluded.

Vernacular schools continue to grow in popularity in Malaysia, with an increasing number of non-Malay parents preferring to send their children to Mandarin- and Tamil-language schools over Malay-language national schools. Defenders of bumiputra special privileges for Malays and indigenous people regularly target these schools to deflect demands for equal treatment of the races after decades of race-based affirmative action.

International and private schools have also grown popular over the past few years, especially in the Klang Valley, with parents who can afford the fees preferring to enrol their children in them. THE MALAY MAIL

Read more of the latest in

Advertisement

Advertisement

Stay in the know. Anytime. Anywhere.

Subscribe to get daily news updates, insights and must reads delivered straight to your inbox.

By clicking subscribe, I agree for my personal data to be used to send me TODAY newsletters, promotional offers and for research and analysis.