Cabinet should hold a special meeting to consider and adopt the six affirmations and 12 demands of the Dong Jiao Zong’s 1999 Declaration of Mother Tongue Education

---

Media Statement
by Lim Kit Siang  

---

Mahathir said Malay students are  not serious about their  studies and that teachers too are not dedicated to their profession, with some even carrying out a "hate campaign" against certain leaders and the government.

He observed that Malay  students are distracted easily from studies by matters such as "politics and demonstrations".

He said many of the calls to allow students to be involved in politics came from Malays whose performance at the universities was poor compared to that of their non-Malay peers.

Mahathir was clearly being unfair to Malay teachers and students in blaming the problems and defects  of the educational system on  "politics and demonstrations" which, if true, only  started about a year ago following  the outrageously unfair manner in which Anwar Ibrahim was sacked as Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister on Sept. 2 last year, his brutal assault in the very inner sanctum of the police high command in Bukit Aman on the night of his arrest on Sept. 20 last year and his persecution,  trial, conviction, sentence and imprisonment.

Mahathir said that  some Malays now preferred to send  their children to Chinese-medium schools instead not so that their  children could "pick up the Chinese language, but the  perception that students and teachers are more committed in Chinese schools".

Mahathir said realise that the 60,000 Malay students  presently enrolled in  the Chinese primary  schools did not come about only in the past one year, after Anwar’s sacking resulting in the involvement of Malay teachers and students in "politics and demonstrations", but it was a trend which had started for some ten years.

Mahathir should not find the easy way out by putting the blame for the weaknesses and faults of the national education system and the national schools on "politics and demonstrations" in the past one year, when these had existed in the past few decades.

The Barisan Nasional government, and in particular the Education Minister, Datuk Najib Tun Razak must bear responsibility for the sad plight of affairs in the national education system where Malay parents have no confidence in the quality of education provided at the national schools and prefer to send their children to Chinese primary schools although they do not have the facilities provided in national schools.

As Mahathir is now belatedly acknowledging the great contribution made by the Chinese primary schools not only in national education but also in national development, the time has come for the Barisan Nasional government to end its discriminatory policy towards Chinese and Tamil primary schools, and to treat them at par with  the national primary schools.

In this connection, I call on the Cabinet to hold a special meeting to consider  and adopt the six affirmations and twelve demands of the  Dong Jiao Zong’s 1999 Declaration on Mother Tongue Education,  particularly calling on  the Education Minister to:
 

• increase the number of Chinese and Tamil primary schools in areas densely-populated by Chinese or Indians, in order to ensure the right of the students to receiver mother-tongue education.
• resolve the imbalance between an oversupply of teachers (over 10,000 teachers) in national schools and the on-going shortage of teachers in Chinese and Tamil primary schools.
• Be fair to schools of different language streams with regard to fund allocation, teacher training, curricula design, teaching materials (including the development of computer software), basic amenities and hardware, and avoid discriminating against Chinese and Tamil schools.
• Stop appointing non-Chinese speaking teachers for high positions in Chinese primary schools and trespassing against the  autonomy of the Board of Governors in managing the schools.
• Assist Malaysian Independent Chinese Secondary Schools in financing, teacher training, curricula design, establishment, amenitieis, etc and to allow them to relocate, set up branches and put up new premises, recognize the Unified Examination Certificate of these schools as one of the academic qualifications for entry into national higher learning institutions, public service and teaching academies.
• Allow Chinese as one of the major media of teaching in local institutions of higher education like English.
• Arrange Pupil’s Own Language (POL) classes within normal school curriculum as long as there are five pupils of any ethnic community in any schools.