With the latest announcement of university allocations, the brou-ha-ha has begun, mainly about the inequity in the difficulty of the STPM and matriculation papers. While I would not debate on the toughness of each of the paper (however I'm apt to believe that STPM is tougher), I certainly am irked again at the divisive nature of the government's educaitonal policies. And once again the divide seem to be based on race.
This division line seem to have encrossed every single educational path which one takes in Malaysia. It goes back to even primary schooling, and to a certain extent is perpetuated by the opposition as well. While I concur with the DAP, that people should have access to mother tongue education or a religious education, I think more should be done to streamlined those fringe schools with national schools. And that's the worse part of it all, chinese schools are not really fringe schools in terms of student enrollment. How did government policies manage to disillusion such a large proportion of the chinese population with national type schools?
Are chinese parents sending that children to chinese schools because they believe that their learning should be based solely on their mother tongue, or is it to achieve fluency in the language? If its the former, arguably, then nothing much can be done, however, I do believe, that it is more for the latter reason that parents are doing so. Thus, with DAP's Malaysian Malaysia ideal, shouldn't they seek to address this by ensuring that students who would like to learn their mother tongues have proper access to it within a national school framework, instead of perpetuating the racial divison which they say they are firmly against.