Southern University College Academic Journal, Volume 2, August 2014

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Tan Yap Sua and R. Santhiram, Educational Issues in Multiethnic

Malaysia. Petaling Jaya, Selangor: Strategic Information and Research
Development Centre, 2014. 230 pp.
This work is an excellent sequel to their earlier book The Education of
Ethnic Minorities: the Case of the Malaysian Chinese (2010). In their two
books, Tan and Santhiram have provided a rigorous, comprehensive analysis
of some of the key debated and contested educational issues in Malaysia.
While the earlier book focuses on the education of an ethnic minority, the
Malaysian Chinese, the present volume extends that analysis to covering
educational issues in the national Malaysian context, specifically Peninsular
Malaysia. The books seven chapters are revised versions of papers presented
at various international conferences, some already published as journal
articles, and are linked thematically. Accordingly, the chapters are organized
in the book under three thematic parts, namely the education of ethnic
minorities, education and national integration, and educational language
policy.
In Malaysia, minority language rights have been passionately contested
even before the country achieved political independence in 1957. Chapter 1
briefly discusses the colonial history and politics that shaped the growth of the
transitional bilingual model in Malaysia. In Malaysia, there are also two
competing language claims: on the one side the Chinese and Indian minorities
insisted on the maintenance of their languages, and on the other the ethnic
majority, the Malays, demanded that their language be made the national
language and the common language to facilitate national integration.
Inter-ethnic bargaining led the ethnic majority and minorities to compromise
on a transitional bilingual model in Malaysia where minority languages are
maintained within the context of acquiring and switching to the majority
language. Chinese and Indian mother-tongue medium of instruction are
maintained at primary school level, with Malay taught as a course subject, but
from secondary school level onwards Malay became the medium of
instruction, with Chinese and Tamil taught as course subjects through the
Pupils Own Language (POL) policy in secondary schools.

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The Malaysian transitional bilingual model enables ethnic minorities to

maintain their languages and assists them to acquire the majority language,
but there are critical flaws and consequences. Three critical flaws identified
are; (i) ethnic minorities competence level in their mother tongue is sorely
weakened because of the way POL is implemented, (ii) the devaluation of
Chinese and Tamil in secondary schools and students lack of understanding
the instrumental value of learning their mother tongues, and (iii) problems in
switching to the national language because of the abrupt change in the
medium of instruction. The authors argue that mother tongue schools put too
much emphasis on maintaining minority languages at the expense of
acquiring the national language. As a result the onus in helping Chinese and
Indian students in switching to Malay medium fell unduly upon the Remove
Class system, which, for a number of reasons, the government has not execute
effectively. Partly because of their weak command of Malay (Bahasa
Malaysia), ethnic minorities learning in secondary schools is impaired which
contributed, unsurprising, to significant number of Chinese and Indian
students dropping out of school.
Tan and Santhiram argue that the problems facing the teaching of
minority languages in Malaysia are largely due to the prevailing Malay
perception that a common language is the basis of integrating the diverse
population and that minority language schools are politically divisive rather
than as an asset to the nation. An educational hierarchy has materialised
where minority language schools are circumscribed by a unitary education
school that valorises the national language as the identity marker and the
common language to facilitate national integration. Minority language schools
thus received less public funding than the national primary schools. Indeed,
because of the meagre public funding received, Chinese and Indian schools
became more dependent on financial donations from their respective ethnic
communities. Indian schools are usually financially the worse off precisely
because most of their support had come from the lower income segments of
the Indian community.
Ethnic segregation in the Malaysian educational system has worsened
especially since the implementation of the ethnic preferential policies in the
early 1970s. Ethnic segregation occurs at the primary school level with the

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majority of Malays enrolled in national schools, Chinese in Chinese schools

and Indians in Tamil schools, and at the secondary level with a large
percentage of the Chinese enrolled in National-Type Chinese Secondary
Schools and Independent Chinese Secondary Schools and the establishment of
exclusively Malay-Muslim MARA, residential and religious schools. Since
1990s, with the privatization of higher education ethnic segregation has also
permeated this level where a huge majority of students enrolled in private
higher education are Chinese while public higher education has become more
and more exclusively Malay. Indeed, enrolments in some higher education
institutions such as MARA University of Technology (UITM), which has
around 100,000 students, and Islamic higher education institutions are largely
Malay Muslims.
Arguably, the two most important push factors that have accentuated
ethnic segregation in the Malaysian educational system are the racial
preferential policies and the increasing Islamization of the public education
sector. Aware of the increasing ethnic segregation of education and its
deleterious effects on ethnic relations, attempts were made by the government
to facilitate ethnic integration especially at primary school level, but,
unfortunately, all attempts have thus failed. The authors argue that although
ethnic interaction in education is not a panacea for better ethnic integration, it
is, nevertheless, an important contributory factor and the state must look at
more into ways to facilitate this.
Chapter 6 examines the failed government policy to use English as the
medium of instruction to teach science and mathematics. This policy was
hastily implemented in stages from 2003 and then abruptly terminated in 2012.
The rationale for the implementation of teaching mathematics and science in
English was twofold, namely to improve students proficiency in English and
the mastering of such would enable access to knowledge in mathematics and
science. Politically, this policy was strongly objected to by Malay nationalists
who felt it would undermine the status of Malay as the national language and
by non-Malays, especially Chinese educationists, as it would diminish, they
feared, the status of Chinese as a medium of instruction and the Chinese
character of Chinese schools.

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For the authors, the implementation of the English policy failed to

address two major issues. Firstly, since English is the second language for
most Malaysians as the medium of instruction at the primary level, its
implementation went against established theory of education which asserts
that mother tongue is the most suitable medium of instruction to begin
primary education. A second issue was the lack of proficiency in English
among teachers and students which considerably hindered the effective
implementation of the policy. Tan and Santhiram noted that the Chinese
schools bilingual model adopted to facilitate the use of English as a medium
of instruction to teach mathematics and science was more in tandem with
theories of learning compared to the overly simplistic maximum exposure
model adopted by national primary schools. Nevertheless, the English for
mathematics and science policy was terminated not because of its weak
theoretical underpinnings but for political reasons.
Since the 1990s, globalization and the spread of English have impacted
the Malaysian education system. The economic and technological
opportunities afforded by English proficiency in globalization convinced the
Malaysian government to allow for the increasing use of English in its higher
education system especially in private higher education. While the
government was receptive of the economic and technological advantages
which proficiency in English would bring about, it was also concerned with
students succumbing to linguistic imperialism and hegemony and its
Western culture and values. Malay nationalists in particular were concerned
that it might devalue Malay language and consequently its role in facilitating
national integration. Eventually, the authors argue, the Malaysian state
adopted a pragmatic approach of glocalization which involved
strengthening both the local and global languages. It was hoped that the
glocalization strategy would produce a healthy balance of bilinguals and
multilinguals in society so as to cope with both localising and globalising
forces.
This book is certainly an important contribution to the study of
education in Malaysia and in multiethnic societies in general. The wide
ranging educational issues covered with rigor and depth by the authors
demonstrate the complexities of the politics and development of language and

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education in multiethnic societies in nation building and in an increasingly

globalized world. Students and scholars of Malaysian studies, and policy
makers, should find this book most handy.

Lee Hock Guan

Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore
hockguan@iseas.edu.sg

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