I dream of schools where merit matters more than ethnicity. I would like to see good facilities, well paid and well-trained staff, regularly reviewed syllabi, and programmes that meet the needs of students. I want young men and women finishing high school who are well-spoken, healthy, and mature, bearing every sign of a thoughtful, well-rounded and well-executed education plan. Instead, we have the famous ‘standard’ Malaysian government school.

I went to SMK Taman SEA. When the headmistress in place in 2003 stepped down, every teacher knew the position would not be filled by one of their own, regardless of how many decades of teaching experience or how much of a genuine passion they had for our welfare. The decision criteria had nothing to do with the track records of these educators or how senior they were in terms of the managerial ladder at school. It had to do with race.

A Malay headmistress was transferred in, one with no prior experience with these students, to take the position that could easily be filled competently, yes, most ably, but a dedicated, long-proven educator. The only problem was that most senior staff were all non-Malay. I do not say the new headmistress was ‘bad’ because of her race. Instead I question the wisdom and impartiality of a government who goes through the effort of transferring when promoting was a perfect option.

The administration staff was frequently incompetent, under-trained, underpaid, overstretched, and unequal to the task of managing 2,000 odd students. I don’t think any of the students felt that the teaching staff, including the headmistress, had any real interest in us. I cannot think of one project the administration undertook that brought direct benefits to students. The standard of available literature in any language at the library was embarrassing, but a million ringgit, raised by students and teachers, built dysfunctional fountains and a hall that leaked on SPM and PMR students as we wrote our examinations.

The field was bald at best and eroded at worst, but monies were dedicated to repainting the adequate existing coat of paint on all the buildings or daubing at murals. Form 5 and 6 students frequently struggled with education or career path options, and many other with gang-beatings or extortions, learning disabilities, or sex, but the school counselor took no initiative to help any of us beyond founding a counseling society whose sole purpose was to fill a page in the yearbook with their committee photograph.

I graduated from seconday school ill-read from a non-existent literature programme, ill-informed about world history and politics from a syllabus that limited learning to inaccurate and insufficient Malaysian history. I was ill-advised about college options. I came to Canada to complete my undergraduate degree and was shamed to find children’s novels that taught me more about the world wars and other cultures than a decade of Malaysian public education.

In Malaysia, our physical education programme consisted, on sunny days, of football for the boys, netball for the girls, and little else. On rainy days, we were constricted to the classroom and underlining paragraphs from our textbook to be copied into our exercise books. Was there no better way of employing our time, bodies and minds than that?

Because streaming occurred based on minimum grades, there were discrimination between arts and science students. Higher grades were required for the science stream, and sharp distinctions were made between students who ‘made it’ and were ‘smart enough’ for the science steam. The ones who didn’t make it were shunted into what was implicitly labeled the ‘lower classes.’ The issue here is that in general, the less affordable families who could not afford to send their children to after-school private tuition classes were almost certain to see them fall behind in classes.

This speaks for the standard of public education - how much are students taught at school? How much, rather, is taught at tuition classes? The same teachers who lectured me in the morning at school for free coached me in the afternoons for RM80 a month. The teachers were able, they just had no incentive and no assistance at school; their wages are pittance.

The truly dedicated teachers who loved to teach and taught us faithfully were few and badly compensated. Thus the government is responsible for stratifying and solidifying this gruesome caste system of students. Less was expected of the arts classes, the cream of students were almost always in pure science. There was, and still is, a stigma attached to them. The school did nothing to prevent or alleviate this.

What about my younger sisters and brother, stuck in a system that will teach them to clean toilets, to copy textbook material into exercise books, and to produce reports complete with photographs of themselves posing with dustbin covers? This education will not enable them to speak a single grammatically correct English sentence or increase their awareness of any event, past or present, outside the cocoon of Malaysia, assuming they know with any accuracy what currently goes on within it.

In short, they will not be prepared to face the world, and when they grow up they will leave for other countries that will give them this education and more. And they will see that Malaysia does not behave in a way that encourages us to return, to her benefit or aid. And like thousands of other highly-qualified, bright, willing Malaysians, they might leave home for good.