[1] I believe every contry needs affirmative action as a form of social safety net to help the under privilege gain social mobility.

[2] Affirmative action is especially important for the underprivilege child because the world model under the capitalist system thrive on competition which favours those are well equiped by good socialeconomic background.

[3] Such capitalistic system could be quite cruel to those who did not succeed in it. And in any competition, there will always be losers. And society as a whole is responsible ensure that those who lose out should not be punished. And also to ensure those children who grew up in such underprivilege families be given every opportunity to gain social mobility. It is in the interest of the society to ensure every child grow up to be useful member of the society. The best way to do that is enable equal access to education.

[4] Figuratively speaking, affirmative action should be about training and equipping people so that they are be able to scale a mountain. However, it is not about helping them by carry them up the mountain. It is also not about shaving the mountain so that it becomes easier to scale. In the Malaysia context, nep has done just that and those who benifited from affirmative action take it as if they are born into such privilege, it has become their birth right.

[5] Affirmative action is most applicable in the area of education. As educating a person will supposedly enable him to gain social mobility as well as conditioning of his mind so that he would not became a nuisance to the society. Hence every county in the world provide compulsory free education.

[6] In school everyone should be equal and school uniform is symbol of that equality. The rich, the poor, different ethnicity all sit on those same chair and table being taught by the same teacher, using the same curriculum. Quality of education is regulated so that all may receive the same without bias to any group. The school is also where students of different ethnic background come together to learn from each other, fostering understanding among its culturally diverse society. School is also about learning the respect of authority and discipline.

[7] In the Malaysian context, our education system is one of the most fragmented. We have malay school, chinese school, tamil school, national school and private school. We also also have mrsm that is not under the ministry of education. Can we foster social tolerance and give equal opportunity under such unequal access to education.

[8] It appear to me, our education standards has been watered down, perhaps to reduce the performance gap between of the rurals compare to the urbans. These leads to those who can afford private education(british curriculum) receiving a better education. Hence, education as a means of providing equal opportunity to the poor is no longer equal. The rich now has access to better quality education while the poor and middle class could not, and with that the rich would gain even better social mobility compare to the poor.

[9] Affirmative action in the form of providing equal education and thereby equal opportunity to all has fail miserably. These is endangering our country. It has kept the ethnicity of our nations apart. It has allowed the rich better access to education, which would eventually made the rich richer and the rest poorer. And one should not blame the rich because of the watering down in standards of our national curriculum. Please do compare our mathematics curriculum to that of singapore.

[10] Now recently, all 45 mrsm would implement british curriculum on top of our national curriculum. What is that suppose to means? Clearly it also meant that the british curriculum is superior to that of our national curriculum. As mrsm is accessible only by most bumiputra, it also mean only certain ethnic group has the privilege to access to better education. So the affirmative iniative set out by mara to help the rurals poor to access equal education has now become a privilege to access better education as british curriculum is not available to the rest of the nation.

11. Tun, I wrote this comment with a heavy heart. I personally feel that education is the very basic needs and right of every child and rakyat. It is the bedrock of our future. Each and every rakyat regardless of race, religion and socialeconomic back ground deserve equal access to high quality education. Those who succeed should also have equal opportunity to access higher education. It is most unfair in the name of nep to deny a poor smart rakyat access to higher education. For the poor, education is his on chance for social mobility.