Why there are vernacular school in Malaysia? Why can't Malaysian Indian and Chinese abolish it?

QUESTION

ANSWER

Because they are the ones who demand it. The majority of the citizens want it to be abolished too but it has strong backups from the Chinese community who are well known to be the richest group in Malaysia even though they are part of the minority and as such have been misused by politicians to gain support from the Chinese community.

In the first place, the only reason they were created was to prepare the descendant of the Chinese immigrants back then, before the existence of Malaysia, to go back to their home country which is China.

But if you look at the answers here, most of them either are being forgetful on purpose or lack the knowledge of their own country. They FAILED to mention these little tidbits of history. They choose to fully blame other people instead. By the way, this is a common tactic adopted by many “Malaysian” Chinese/Indian when it comes to vernacular school or anything related to their own interests. They will not accept any blame but expertly deflect the blame to others.

The MAIN reason why they don’t want to go to the national school has nada to do with the quality of the school. The reasons are very racist in nature actually.

• The aboriginals of the country including the non-Malays have used Malay as their lingua franca since forever.
• And then the foreign invaders came.
• Under the last invader’s administration, the British, they used import Chinese and Indian immigrants from their respective country as workers.
• They also use the divide-and-conquer method to deal with the multi-ethnic society which is the main cause of extreme division in the wealth gap among them.
• As the Chinese are the ones who mostly live in main cities, have access to higher education, are the merchants, and so on, it is only natural that upon independence, they are the richest group in the nation even though they are the minority.
• The aboriginals where the Malays make up the majority are the poorest. Yes, the Sultan (king), and those of higher status might be rich but they are the very tiny minority. The rest are simply poor, lacking in education, lacking in opportunity. The middle-income group who used to be merchants, skilled workers, no longer exists thanks to the foreign invaders.
• Upon independence, due to the invader’s influence, English has become the lingua franca among the elites, which is to say, those with titles and those who are rich.
• Hence, upon independence, most of these Chinese/Indian immigrants and their descendants do not understand Malay and look down on Malay people (because most are poor) but they do understand English and look upon white people.
• However, in the end, Malay is still chosen to be the national language of Malaysia upon its existence as it is the language of the mass/majority/locals/aboriginals.
• As such, education in national schools is conducted in Malay.
• They do not like that.
• That’s why even now, many of them are still harping that the Malay language is useless, that they are ashamed of the lower quality of English among Malaysians (and no, they are not ashamed of the lower quality of THEIR Malay), that Mandarin is the language of the global, that Mandarin should replace Malay or at least made as one of the national languages of Malaysia, and so on.
• And yeah so, that’s the main reason why they want vernacular school. They don’t want Malay because they look down on it. They are proud of Mandarin and English because that’s apparently the language of the rich or the superior ones.
• Another reason is, of course, to preserve their Chinese culture even if it comes at the cost of national unity.

The excerpts below totally prove my answer

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First excerpt from a Quora answer:

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See, how this person blatantly disses the national language? In Malaysia, this is the most common and strongest opinion that filled the media especially ones that use the Chinese language as the medium. Not racist + being misunderstood? Ha, that’s a joke!

The Indians on the other hand, they were… uh… they’re like… hey, why is it only the Chinese have their own schools? We demand ours too! So. Yeah. That’s how and why the Indian vernacular schools came to existence and still exist to these days.

By the way…

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Another excerpt (I don’t remember whether it’s an answer or a comment):

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Last excerpt (again, not sure if it’s an answer or a comment):

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In Malaysia, aside from vernacular schools, there are national schools, national-Islamic schools, and Islamic schools. They are three different types of schools. Students of any religion go to national school, while I’m not aware of any non-Muslim students who choose to go to the latter two. There used to be missionary schools too but most if not all of them have been converted to national schools.

So I don’t know whether they are lying on purpose or honestly misunderstood the situation. Either way…

In Malaysia, it’s common among Muslims to either go to national school only, go to both national school and Islamic school, or go to national-Islamic school. No one goes to an Islamic school only unless they are very poor and can’t afford to go to the national school as some of them are totally free and double as orphanages. And no, we have no reason to abolish Islamic schools as they are complementary to national schools. No national schools provide lessons provided in Islamic schools as, you can guess it, Islamic schools teach about Islam in depth while national schools only cover the basics.

Non-Muslim students usually go to national school only, or vernacular school. In national schools, they do not join in for Islamic Study class. Instead, they go for the Moral/Civic class.

EXTRA DETAILS ON THE ANSWER

• Original location: Quora
• Published on Quora: 07 January 2020
• Last updated on Quora: 22 November 2020
• Date deleted by Quora: 30 December 2021

WRITER'S NOTE

Shut up about copyright etc. I AM the writer of this answer on Quora and Quora removed my answer citing hateful speech disregarding the other answers containing real hate speech, false information and incorrect facts. The joke is on them. So I'm putting this here and will transfer all my answers there to this blog.