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Tamil school, anyone?




My humble opinion on the existence of Malaysian Tamil schools is that they should not exist. Period. The presence of these schools in this country is defeating the purpose of disseminating quality education to the masses but gives a false sense of satiety and security to the community. It makes its students 'jaguh kampung' (local champions) with no secure standing in facing the real world. The real world is competing with people of many expertise and background while able to blend and understand each others' whims and fancies. In that aspect, the Tamil schools have failed miserably as it only attracts pupils of a particular community and to top it all, just from particular strata of the society.

Let me give you an example. When I was in primary school, I was invariably in the first five top students' of the form without fail without really putting much effort. All these changed when I was placed in PFS, one of the premier schools in Penang. Suddenly, excelling in studies was no more a stroll in the park but a Herculean task needing much effort and willpower. The drive to compete and other external factors have placed me where I am today. Language is an essential tool helped me in this endeavour. Pupils from Tamil school, far in between, are handicapped in this aspect, no matter when the educators may say and justify their positions by statistics and number.

There is no continuity in Tamil school education. Learning mostly in their mother tongue, venturing into a different language in the secondary school is not easy. This scenario is, however not the case in Chinese medium schools. Chinese school students can continue their seamless education to right to tertiary levels!

I am saying we should bundle the Tamil language into our museums and forget about it. On the contrary, we should strive to bring the language to a higher level by making it a lesson in the mainstream schooling system and offer it as the compulsory third language to the students (besides English and Bahasa Malaysia).

In the meantime, let Tamil medium schools thrive only in Tamil Nadu, India.
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Comments

  1. Anonymous22 June 2010 at 23:03

    your deepest thoughts are disturbing yet inspiring..keep up the good work!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Kelvin Mohd20 July 2011 at 14:45

    You do not know what you are talking about....shutting down is not the answer..its a straight jacket answer..go beyond that bro!

    ReplyDelete

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