Indians and education: A way forward

By Santhosh Gunaseelan,

The issue of Tamil schools often dominates Malaysian Indian political discussion. Both major coalitions have made promises to improve to standard of Tamil schools and both have been criticised for not doing enough for Tamil schools.

However, I believe the poor standard of Tamil schools in Malaysia is not the source of socio-economic backwardness in the Indian community but rather a symptom of a much larger problem.

There is widespread educational dysfunction among young Malaysian Indians in both Tamil schools and national schools and I believe this is why the majority of Indians continue to live in the shackles of generational poverty and all the ill effects it brings.

There are 523 Tamil schools in the country with a total enrolment of over 100,000. It is an open secret that Tamil school pupils perform much poorly than their national school and Chinese school counterparts.

There are some who believe the standard of Tamil schools can be remedied through increasing funding and improving school facilities.

However, I would like to question the very relevance of the Tamil school system in 21st century Malaysia.

Apart from having a standard that is lower than other schools, Tamil schools limit opportunities for Indian students from Tamil-speaking households to be highly proficient in English or BM.

I believe if a child is raised in a household that only speaks Tamil, it is in the best interest of the child to attend a school where the medium of instruction is BM or English, so that they can effectively master all three languages or at least two of them.

Tamil school alumni struggle in secondary schools partly because of their poor grasp of BM. It is no surprise that 80 percent of Tamil school pupils do not pursue post-secondary education.

Tamil schools cannot be seen as equivalent to Chinese schools. Pupils from Chinese primary schools also generally have trouble with proficiency in BM.

However, most Chinese primary schools pupils who proceed to national secondary schools do well because Chinese primary schools have a rigorous science and mathematics curricula that is highest in standard among all types of schools.

The Chinese students who do struggle in national secondary schools due to low proficiency in BM and English, still manage to be financially successful due to the far-reaching influence of Mandarin in the business world.

In contrast, an Indian in Malaysia with limited knowledge of BM and English will find his or her economic opportunities severely restricted. That is the sad reality faced by hundreds of thousands of Indian youths today.

So does this mean Indian children will be guaranteed of a better future if they enrol in national primary schools? The answer is no. Let me share my own experience of being an Indian kid in a national primary school. I was raised in an English-speaking middle class family.

My parents took my education very seriously and sent me to tuition. 

I was able to do very well in school. Unfortunately, many working-class Indian pupils in my national school struggled with their studies.

They did not have access to the sophisticated education material I had, they did not speak English at home and they did not have the kind of parental support I had.

They could not master BM to a satisfactory level despite being in a national primary school because they did not speak the language at home, they had no connection to the Malay mass media and they could not afford private tuition.

However, their BM was generally better than that of Tamil school pupils.

Many of these underperforming Indian pupils were relegated to the so-called ''last class'' as early as Standard Two and they did not improve over the years as the expectations placed on them were low. Some of them followed me to the same secondary school.

They were still reading and writing at Standard Three level despite being in Form Five. They were functionally illiterate and could not even read the textbooks properly. 

However the proportion of Indian students in this predicament was much lower among national primary school leavers than Tamil school leavers.

Many of these ''last class'' boys were involved with disciplinary problems and had gang connections. They were perfect candidates for recruitment into gangs. 

The gangs provided them with a sense of power and control in a world in which they felt powerless and out of control.

As the country progressed, young working-class Indians felt like they were living under a glass ceiling. They could see wealth and success all around them but could not be part of it.

It is easy to judge these people by saying they had the tools to succeed but did not use it. But I feel they did not really have the right tools in the first place.

While I do not condone their bad choices, I believe they were enrolled in a 'one size fits all' education system that simply could not address their unique needs and weaknesses. 

They were left behind.

Older generations of Indians managed to leave the misery of estate poverty for greener pastures because English-medium education opened doors for them.

They may have had parents who never spoke English but because of the far-reaching influence of the English media (books, magazines etc.), they managed to pick up the language very well. 

It opened opportunities for them in higher education and employment.

With the current education system, the working-class Indian's chances of social mobility have become somewhat foggy.

They have become trapped in a system that does not address the unique challenges they face and they are distracted by a destructive gang culture that evolved out of the insecurity of urban poverty.

Therefore, I believe asking or begging for more funding and land for Tamil schools would not necessarily give Indians a brighter future. 

The politics of Tamil schools is a mere distraction from the larger problem which is the prevalence of functional illiteracy and learning difficulties among working-class Indians.

Children from poor Indian families and all other disadvantaged groups in Malaysia need access to special programmes to enable them to read and write in English and BM at a level appropriate for their age.

We have an education system that favours the strong and ignores the needs of the weak. I would propose the following solutions:

• A programme based on the ''Teach for America'' model where university graduates from various fields spend two years as temporary teachers in an underperforming school. The graduates could receive training while they are still in university through a ''Teach for Malaysia'' club.

• The government should fund an after-school programme that would help students of all races who are left behind in the education system through creative learning methods.

• More Indian men should join the teaching force to serve as role models to Indian boys who are at the highest risk of being involved in crime of all demographic groups in the country.

• More Indian men should be encouraged to join the police force to counter the influence of criminal gangs in the Indian community.

• Empower ignorant Indian families by educating them on how they can help their children perform well in school and stay clear of criminal activities.

The Indian NGOs need to stop raising up the begging bowl to the government and should instead work to translate their activism into concrete social justice programmes that would improve the socio-economic status of the Indian community.

They should leave the politics to the political parties and focus their efforts into helping Indian students who are left behind in the education system who lack much-needed counsel and guidance.

At the same time, all Malaysians need to empathise with the bleakness faced by Indian youths rather than dismissing it as an ''Indian problem''.

Eli Wiesel said ''the opposite of hate is not love but indifference''. A crime-ridden and marginalised Indian community that is left alone to disintegrate will only be a burden for the entire country.