An Utusan columnist said Malaysia’s vernacular schools served as a catalyst for some within the Chinese community to refuse to accept the dominant Malay culture. — File pic

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 26 — Proponents for the continued existence of vernacular schools are using the current system to ensure that they do not have to accept or adapt to Malaysia’s Malay-driven national culture, Utusan Malaysia has claimed.

Utusan columnist Ku Seman Ku Hussein said that vernacular schools served as a catalyst for some within the Chinese community to refuse to accept the dominant Malay culture, and that maintaining such a system did not make “any sense.”

“I have read about Ru Xiang Sui Su, a Chinese philosophy which says that outsiders should adapt to the social culture of their new place, and that this was the belief held by Chinese migrants who moved to the United States and Europe.

“But unfortunately some Chinese in this country no longer hold to that philosophy, perhaps they feel that this would take away their ‘Chinese-ness’,” Ku Seman said in his column published in Mingguan Malaysia, Utusan’s Sunday edition.

“SJKC has become a fortress so that the Chinese do not have to adapt to social milieu which are different from where they came from,” the Utusan columnist added.

Ku Seman claimed that the vernacular would only result in a further divide within the country’s different ethnic communities, arguing that the only solution was to create a single-stream education system.

The arguments for maintaining vernacular schools have nothing to do with nation-building but more towards promoting “political interests”, he added.

“Even Chinese political parties of different ideologies can sit down together to defend the SJKC (vernacular schools). Can’t policy makers read and understand this message?” Ku Seman asked.

Umno politicians are now seeking to revive the controversial vernancular school issue for debate at the party’s annual general meeting next month.

The controversial issue had threatened to fray ties between the powerful Malay-based party Umno and its Chinese-based partner MCA in the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition ― where the former holds the lion’s share of parliamentary seats and important Cabinet posts.

Previously, MCA had cited Article 152 of the Federal Constitution as protecting the local ethnic Chinese and Indians’ right to learn their mother tongue.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, however, later announced during his 2015 Budget speech that Chinese and Tamil vernacular schools have been allocated RM50 million each, a move that is seen to ensure that the schools are here to stay.

On October 12, Najib also told MCA members at its 61st AGM that his government will continue to uphold the right to mother tongue education, saying that the Chinese vernacular schools or SJK (C) are “already enshrined in the Constitution and the law” and is part of the National Education Blueprint 2013-2025.