The independent investigative committee to probe into the problem of racial segregation in schools has started on a right footing, with a good composition of its membership - headed by former Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) deputy vice chancellor Emeritus Prof. Datuk K.J. Ratnam as chairman, with the rest of the committee comprising former deputy director-general of education Datuk Omar Md. Hashim; former Universiti Malaya (UM) economics lecturer Prof Murugesu Pathmanathan; clinical sociologist with the Ministry of National Unity and Community Development Datuk Dr Wan Hashim Othman; UM’s professor of social psychology Prof Chiam Heng Keng; former director of schools division Datuk Jumaat Mohd Noor and retired state education director Datuk Saw Chee Leng.
Musa said that the Ratnam Committee, which has been given eight weeks to complete its investigations, would be given the freedom to conduct its investigations into allegations of racial segregration in schools according to its own methods and will be given the necessary assistance by the ministry, and that it was up to the committee to decide whether it wants to visit all the 197 schools publicly listed by the National Union of Teaching Profession (NUTP) as practising racial segregation of students.
Musa should stop talking about “allegations” of racial segregation in schools, when this has already been admitted by top Education Ministry officials - and it would be a disservice to the credibility of the Ratnam Committee if Malaysians are made to believe that it might be tasked with an exercise to deny the existence of such pernicious practices rather than to probe into the magnitude of the problem, why it had persisted for so long and to make recommendations as to how to overcome the problem of racial segregation and polarisation in schools.
The Ratnam Committee should be thorough and comprehensive in its investigations, probing not only into the 197 schools publicly listed by NUTP but also another 700 schools whose names had been publicly withheld by the NUTP, according to NUTP secretary-general Datuk N. Siva Subramaniam, “to avoid finger-pointing among school heads and teachers who might not be at fault”.
The first thing the Ratnam committee should do is to invite input from teachers, parents and the public to get to the bottom of the scandal of the long-standing pernicious practices of some 900 schools segregating students according to race.
As Siva said that the NUTP had raised the issue of racial segregation in schools in a report to the Education Ministry as far back as 10 years ago, the Ratnam Committee should also probe as to why there had been no action from the Education Ministry authorities.
In its investigations and findings, the Ratnam committee will have to deal with the larger issue of the success or failure of the school system in creating national unity, giving an assessment as to whether after 44 years of the national education policy, the diverse races and their children are being more united into one distinct Malaysian people or more polarised - and if so, why.
It is important, however, that the Ratnam committee should avoid the simplistic and facile conclusion that racial polarisation in schools is caused by having different streams of national and national-type schools, as had been voiced by some quarters during the controversy over the racial segregation of students - which is not only unscientific as not based on proper studies but untrue as well.
During the parliamentary debate in June 1980 when introducing my motion on the Mahathir Cabinet Committee Report on the Implementation of the National Education Policy, I had referred to a 1968 survey of 34 secondary schools in the country which found, contrary to accepted belief, that students in racially-mixed schools were far more alienated and more distrustful of other ethnic groups than those in racially homogenous schools.
If the Ratnam Committee wants to pass judgement as to whether the proposed Vision School concept or only one language-medium schools is the most unifying factor in a plural society like Malaysia, it should first commission studies to determine whether in 2002, students in racially-mixed schools are still more alienated and distrustful of other ethnic groups than those in racially homogeneous schools as was found in the late sixties, and if so, to ascertain the reasons.
(3/1/2002)