Truth hurts. I am writing this to say out the pain in my neck about our education system which is drawing a bleak future to the Malay race more than other races of Malaysia who have not got the fair share of those special privileges administered by the JPT (Jabatan Pengajian Tinggi).

No matter what the government is doing about the education system and for many years it has put across a system starting with quota and then matriculation and now meritocracy, to me it meant just another dead end that has polarised the Malays as outnumbering other races in the value good only in quantity than in quality. The result is unemployment amongst the Malays in big numbers.

We have a situation that the government we choose is fulfilling their promises by providing the Malays with the Privilege Regimes, but not the future. The point is while you provide the platform for the Malays to take off and fly high, there is no place for the Malays to land, so we have to search for a landing ground and crash-land anywhere we can and hope for the best.

We have a situation now where our politicians are quick to use this as the bullets to shoot back at the Malays for failing to make use of the advantages. Just where are the advantages the Malays have if only few of us did really make the grade to become peers amongst other races who have not the privileges but have proven themselves at far greater pace?

We have a situation where IPTAs are mushrooming and at the same time IPTSs are catching up not to match IPTAs but to surpass them in learning excellence that they are drawing the rich parents the majority which are not Malays. And we know those IPTSs are using English as the medium and we have not heard IPTSs graduates having problem like the IPTAs' that at the end of their study the IPTAs' graduate have to master English for further studies or for job employment.

I don't believe that Malays are less intelligent than other races but I know in education Bahasa Melayu is a much lesser Language of Knowledge and can never be used to improve the Malays in the much needed professional fields. If the professional Malays are good in their command of English, the Malays too may one day be employed out of Malaysia and that is a real advantage to say the least.

I have a vision that if our learning medium is English, we can have a true Malaysian legacy of education system without class or strata where the future generation of Malays and other races of Malaysia no longer talk about issue of privileges but working together to generate world class citizens by using and mastering that single language of education.

I abhor the present ideals of patriotism and nationalism in the guise of schools segregated as Sekolah Kebangsaan and Sekolah Jenis Kebangsaan which to me are reinforcing the failure of our education system.

We have to sacrifice our ideals for the sake of our future Malaysian school going generations. We cannot afford to keep quarelling on privileges that the Malays have actually not reaped the fruits instead have been reduced to a lesser race by the non-Malays and even by international communities with many writings by them in describing the Malays with a very specific peculiarity.

The Malay race is not racing with other races of Malaysians to live in Malaysia. We should build a Malaysian race to race with other nations of the world to achieve the vision 2020 of one developed nation. If only the Malay race is Gemilang, Cemerlang and Terbilang and only in Malaysia then the Malays are just a frog living in a coconut shell. Rebbit!

Posted by Wan Mohd Fahimi @ 2:51 AM