It takes a politician with guts to say that Malaysian kids ought to be able to meet, study, compete and succeed in a singular national educational system

And Thus Democracy Makes Cowards Of Us All by Farish A. Noor

ANAS ZUBEDY

 

Nowhere else in the world would a plural society be made all the more alienated from itself by allowing kids to study in the company of those who are more culturally and linguistically closer to them. We lament, as we often do, the declining levels of inter-ethnic contact in the country; and we bemoan that the so-called 'golden years' of Malaysia in the 1950s and 1960s are long gone. And yet we maintain this inane belief that by segregating children from an early age along linguistic-cultural lines we can still forge a Malaysian nation, together. How? And upon what basis would that shared sense of national belonging be found?