COMMENT | Ever since the National Language Act 1967 made Bahasa Malaysia the main medium of instruction in national schools instead of English, we have seen the never-ending flip-flopping of language medium policy in our schools.

This has included the teaching of Maths and Science in English and now, we are told that the independent survey shows that many Johoreans and even the Johor sultan favours the return of English-medium schools. At the same time, we see the announcement of a new token of Chinese and Tamil schools being built as vote-catchers for the coming general election.

Despite the persistent infatuation with English-medium schools, especially by the Malaysian middle class, we cannot ignore the mother tongue lobby made up of Malay, Chinese and Tamil schools, which have existed in our country since colonial times.

There will always be Malaysians who speak their mother tongue in their homes, who prefer to have their children educated first in their mother tongue.

However, with the encouragement of trilingualism, there is also a growing trend of non-Chinese parents sending their children (100,000 at the last count) to Chinese-medium schools.

Let’s face it. As long as there is no new consensus based on a “happy medium” that all communities can accept in a new education policy, our country will continue to ramble along like a tumbleweed carried whichever way the political winds blow. A tumbleweed gathers no moss that is needed to build our Brave New Malaysia.

What we need is a great big melting pot

The lesson to be learnt from the acrimonious controversies of the last 55 years is that any attempt to assimilate these mother tongue schools is bound to fail because the Chinese and Tamil communities will defend their schools tooth and nail.

So, spare the nation the biggest crisis it will experience and send us all reeling backwards if the government tries to take away mother tongue schools from the Chinese and Indian communities.

Thankfully, the government has, time and again, pledged to preserve our mother tongue schools even if, up to now, they have not assisted their normal expansion.

The arguments against the existence of Chinese and Tamil schools are always the same - namely that they do not promote national integration. This is sheer hypocrisy as we do not hear the same strident condemnation of the ‘Bumis Only’ policy at UiTM and other Mara institutions, even though these education institutions are paid for by all Malaysian taxpayers.

So when we consider there are 100,000 non-Chinese in Chinese-medium schools and there are 100 percent ‘bumiputeras’ at UiTM, which of these are the “great big melting pot” that the “national integrationists” talking about?...