There are people who know about our education system in the country well better than me, but they are not posting any comments here. So I post what I know to give you a clearer picture why this “approval” of new schools are “significant” to MCA.

Our country has few type of schools. I touch only Secondary schools (no primary).

1. Government schools – about 10,000 of them in the country. All with the name “SMK”. The Vision school is one of it. The government is using all our tax payers money to build these schools, provide tables, chairs, electricity, curriculum, teachers and so on. Basically, it is completely run by government.

2. Chinese school under PIBG – this is called “SMJK” schools and only 78 of them (see http://www.smjk.edu.my/).

The land to build the school belonged to the Chinese community who settled here long time ago. A lot of individuals donate the land to this community. These ancestors have long passed away. But their contributions to the society is very much appreciated. The PIBG is a team consist of mostly volunteered businessmen and businesswomen, mostly quite well to do, and always wanted to do something for the Chinese community. They fought hard to collect money to support school’s expenses. Some even use their own money to throw into the school. When they passed away, their children always have funeral event to donate thousands of money to the schools. They frequently has the “walk” to collect money from the public as donation. So PIBG is a team to manage the public fund collected to cover school’s infrastructure (tables, chairs, building maintenance – all the “physical” part of the schools).

But our government want to control them. Their “control” come in “courseware” and “teachers” (human resources). This is so that, all children come from SMJK schools are taught the same national education that is set forward by our government.

These SMJK schools are MCA’s school. They are “only” allowed to have authority (you can said “licenses”) to operate just 78 of them. Don’t even think about asking more! The BN government won’t approval it. Yes, this 78 is the “quota”.

It had been a long fight for MCA to get more school approved by BN government, but it had never succeed. Today, yes, may be they finally got it. So it is a BIG deal to them, right? Well, think about this… only 78 of them… while government school is 10,000 of them! What a ratio?

3. Chinese Independent schools. These schools are called ST schools. I don’t know their number, but I think just 60 (from the http://www.djz.edu.my” web site).

The early Chinese settlers were the first to setup these schools. They used their own money to build the school, create courseware, employ teachers and basically everything under their control. Their courseware is chinese based.

I am not sure when (may be during Merdeka), the government need to have a single Education system for the country. The DJZ wants the government to adopt their already successful chinese education system and continue to improve on it. But the BN government wanted their own. The result? Chinese education was split between ST, who insist to use their own courseware but with a consequence of NOT getting any funding from the government; whereas under MCA, they formed the 78 SMJK schools with the funding from government to cover courseware and human resources. It was reported somewhere in the Internet, some of these Chinese who agreed to setup SMJK schools were bribed.

It was politic and it was dirty. And the result is sacrificing our educational system for the sake of some people’s pocket money.

Which one is doing well? ST or SMJK?

ST was not doing well. They basically lack of fund. They have strong leadership at the beginning, but not so after that. After all, money is important even though we always put it as secondary to the Education. Without money, you can hold back good leader.

They did a lot in the past 20 to 40 years to collect fund from public to continue their school’s operation. Those were heroes. They also have to consider the poor who could not afford the school fees. Today’s DJZ still not getting any support from the government. The MCA people can really ignore them – like let them die naturally… (remember they are all Chinese).

Today, DJZ is revamping. Although Chinese language is still the primary language, but they do not refuse English to be used in teaching. The world is changing. While it is good to teach and maintain Chinese culture in ST schools, we should not forget the demand of the world outside. After all, this is Education. We must give the best to the younger generation and nurture them well so that they can excel us one day.

What happen to SMJK today? Some are doing well. Some aren’t. Most of them have the same mentality like the SMK – hoping the government to continue feeding them and just follow the formula given to them to teach the students. No wonder our new generation today are so spoon feed! Not creative at all! It is only if you are lucky to graduate from some of the good SMJK schools, you are different.

But I guess at the end of the day, as long as we work with BN government, we will ALWAYS suffering for unfair treatment.

Come one, think about this: 10,000 : 78 : 60. What is this power sharing formula about?

I haven’t talked about Primary schools. I don’t even know about Tamil schools!

Do you know that, when any of the Chinese school is not doing well, they cannot close down! If they close down, they will not get any more approval to open a new one. This 78 is a “quota”. They have to think of creative way to workaround the quota limit. Such creative idea is “migration” or “moving”. That’s what you see in the newspaper. The BN government is making it looks “nice” see.

Why our Chinese end up like rats running along the street and must cover ourselves from being beating up?! Aren’t we the same Malaysian? Isn’t it more important we must throw away the “race base politics”? Bangsa Malaysia is the way to go. We are all equal. We must see beyond races.

I hope thing will change after this 2008 General Election. Please vote not for yourself, but for the interests of all Malaysian who wants a better place for current and young generations.

Thanks.

Correction to earlier post: Without money, you can’t keep good leaders.