Teacher Chan Boon Heng fell to his death because of a termite infested floor. The News Straits Times described it as a 'freak accident', but I beg to differ.

It takes the death of a teacher to jolt the government to approve a special grant for repairing old vernacular schools, and this exposed again the discrimination of the national education system differentiating between full-grant and partial-grant schools.

Why the discrimination? Aren't we all Malaysians studying under the same school curricula? Why differentiate between national and national-type schools. This is not fair!

Education should not be politicised, but it is undeniable that education in Malaysia is politicised, with nationalists echoing single-medium schools, while other ethnic groups clinging on the right to vernacular education.

Why the insistence to unite Malaysians under one language through education? It is an ideology that is not even proven to be effective locally. Why must some quarters try to exert superiority and sideline the rights of others? Aren't we all Malaysians?

If we are all Malaysians, how many more deaths will it take to make the system more egalitarian to all?