OCT 6 — This month, the education ministry marks two hundred years of Tamil education in the country. Which provides an excellent window to do the right thing — to close Tamil-medium schools.
With a caveat.
These Tamil-medium schools are to cease only when there are only single-tier public schools with superior Tamil language instruction matched with tougher language examinations.
Tamil speakers will learn to read and write in their mother tongue inside the walls of national schools which emphasise Malay as the medium with a strong English teaching spine.
The end of Tamil language-only schools must be accompanied by high levels of Tamil language instruction and examination in the new reframed single-tier public schools system.
In summary, the schools are integrated but the language survives in local use and its speakers thrive through the access to better education which extends beyond language — to count, to read, to write, to measure, to experiment, to student exchange, to recognise an a priori, to finish a spy novel and to code for example.
That’s why the previously Tamil-medium primary school if its location and capacity matches will turn into a regular national school — with a strong Tamil language faculty and retains its name of yore. Vivekenanda and Shah Alam’s Midlands will continue to exist but as national schools serving all Malaysians. This measure does not remove heritage or identity or previous achievements. Hwa Chong and Anglo-Chinese have thrived and continue to thrive long after they were forced to become English-medium schools in Singapore.
The streamlining of the medium of instruction will open all of the integrated schools to Malaysians regardless of race, religion and language.
Non-South Indians attending these schools over time will temper their misconceptions of Malaysians with South Indian ancestry. Which would be a wonderful addition in Shah Alam.
After all, the 200 years refers to when Penang Free School was started in 1816 with education using all the various vernaculars including Tamil. All the communities were under the same roof, educating the masses in their own languages.
The object of this column is to co-opt Tamil language education into our single public schools system as they did in Penang Free two centuries ago.
This is about celebrating Tamil education by continuing the language in schools, and not by isolating South Indians by stacking them in race-exclusive Tamil language schools.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t
This column risks being mauled for its title. Though I’d implore readers to read more before judging me. Realise though that these days we face serious problems. If views are formed from headlines and not the content then society is afflicted and will find itself further from solutions.
For example, a friend rejected outright claims that the mono-culture environment in Tamil schools was negative and grates race relations. For I pointed out that the physical separation of national schools from vernacular ones, engenders mistrust and ignorance between the groups.
He debunked it by saying the people in and from those schools are intrinsically nice. I did not say they were not born nice, I was saying that creating artificial silos will prevent them to naturally realise through their nice faculties all the niceness around the world.
Humans fear what they are unaccustomed to — or worse unaware about. States utilise schools as their key tool to normalise interaction of races through socialisation.
Which is why they need to be in the same space to learn about sharing space, from young.
It would be perfect if all citizens have the same ideas language. Perfect but improbable. The second, lower denominator, is to have all citizens comfortable in Malay.
I am cognisant and appreciate the critique that I did not graduate from a Tamil-medium school.
Certainly I’m embarrassed writing and reading in Tamil like a Primary One student. The weekend classes did not work out for me, when I was in La Salle Peel Road. My older brother went through the same experience but he emerged with proficient grasp of written Tamil. The language class was an opt-in and the young me was not mature to know that language is the passage to my heritage. Further, my late father attended the Cheras Road Tamil Primary school and only that. My mother had few public school years in Alangudi, of the Sivaganga district in Tamil Nadu. I’d fail badly the Tamil bar set by the family.
Naturally my shortcomings worry me, and it is no surprise I want any child I have to speak Tamil. Yet, it cannot be at all costs. For I want them to be happy Malaysians, not just Malaysians. Which requires them to balance language skills as positive attributes and as not barriers to their integration in multicultural Malaysia.
Which is why race-exclusive schools are major risks.
Ethnic Tamils generally will struggle to speak well in Malay if they are couched in a non-Malay environment —as Tamil schools inevitably are — both at school and home.
It mimics how only-Malay speaking children in rural zones struggle to pick up English when all their classmates and neighbours only speak Malay.
Meanwhile, the Chinese schools are primarily urban and increasingly multicultural, not so at Tamil schools.
Which helps explains why the Swiss public school system is left to the planning of the 26 cantons but every student is expected to learn his mother tongue, one other local language — there are four, German, French, Italian and Romansh — and English.
Grouping people — with multiple ethnicities and language diversities — encourages dynamism and a space for language pickup especially by young children.
Go defence, go defence
Some Tamil language advocates say it is unfortunate to blame their language exclusivity and since their space is diminishing they need to stand their ground. Playing hardball will result in governmental appeasement, so they calculate.
Get what we can is exactly the point.
The community has to choose, either to be uncompromising about numbers of Tamil-language schools irrespective of the quality, resources and registration for these schools, or target better educated Tamils in public schools who are competent in Tamil.
A large consideration when preferring the latter should be the realisation the Tamil school system presently lacks the financial muscle of Chinese-medium schools. Because they do not have enough alumnus or community money to offset low state contribution.
Second, these schools face low enrolment in some sectors. Why? The Tamil-medium schools were largely by-products of plantations and that era is over. The tree felling to accommodate construction has resulted in these isolated schools to become suburban overnight. The South Indian population used to high concentration is now spreading thinner across the federation. The people and school matches are challenged by geography and the absolute number of South Indians.
Bukit Fraser Tamil School was a good example of four students in total being allocated six teachers and a headmaster.
Microscale and lack of funds for the average sized schools is dampening the potential of students in Tamil-medium schools. While religious schools are subsidised by state governments, and Chinese schools through private donors from small businesses, the Tamil-medium schools have to find their way around with less and find victories from their initiatives.
South Indians should factor the low viability for most Tamil-medium schools to powerplay as an invitation to alter the game to benefit the players and not just the game.
Pulling home the support
Another friend felt my olive branch to Tamil language proponents — to have strong vernacular programmes in national schools — was a compromise of my single public school systems ethos.
I said, that while ideals are great starting points for mind-blowing policies, buy-ins are critical at the beginning.
To win political support the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) — turned 70 years old this year and hardly the wiser — relies on the emotive appeal of the argument and overlooks the overall complexity, direct causality and long-term losses for the community. They want their emotional argument to outlast practical ones.
The counter narrative has to be these new schools are absolutely committed to other people’s language instruction.
What use to have hundreds of thousands of Indian kids proficient in Tamil but unable to articulate progressive ideas in the language?
Mindful also, advocates of a single system must speak for those vulnerable in the system in transition, for a rise in Indian students as minorities in schools across the country will invite callous behaviour from some quarters and it has to be more than Indians feeling disgusted by any parties —teachers, students or administrators — who choose to compromise the secular flavour of our schools.
Monuments or monumental personalities?
Tamil language’s prominence may end up to be artificial if only the working class speak it. Tamil needs Tamils to speak it for sure, but if there are no Tamils rising in prominence, filling up a fair-representation of economic and governmental roles then Tamil's relevance in everyday Malaysia would have eroded anyhow.
Which would raise the question, are we interested first in the language or the people known to speak it?
If it is the latter, then it is about improving their stock while retaining their mother tongue in their arsenal. A Tamil-medium school ensures the mother tongue but unlikely in the majority an enhancement of capacity. On their own, Tamil schools in Malaysia can’t hit the loftiness they deserve. Which is why integration into a national system protective of the Tamil language as much as any proud Tamil will be the answer.
To those only stuck on emotion and not on content, how do you feel that in 2016 many Malaysians still joke that if an Indian looking fellow drives a luxury car, he’s probably the chauffeur?
Education is the silver bullet, in whichever language you spell it, let’s keep the eye on the game and not the kit.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
