The public face of the National Service (NS) programme is that of eager beavers in their striped army-like uniforms grinning from ear-to-ear and jumping for joy.

Optimally the boys and girls posing for photographs should conform to the 6:3:1 Malay-Chinese-Indian ratio in camp. Thousands of pictures portraying that deliriously muhibbah mood have been splashed by the media since the inception of the programme.

Thus Defence Minister Najib Abdul Razak who chairs the NS cabinet committee claims that the first training stint was "a resounding success" (New Straits Times, May 1, 2004). The Yang Berhormat was certainly quick off the block with his appraisal.

But how will the programme be evaluated five or 10 years down the road?

Najib's cousin, Education Minister Hishammuddin Hussein was quoted in the NST the same day as assuring the general public: "We do not want isolated untoward incidents to cloud public perceptions about the real potential of the programme. Although they were only minor hiccups (emphasis added), a review of the programme is important to prevent them from recurring."

I sincerely share his hope that "untoward incidents" here I presume he's alluding to the two cases of drowning and another two of alleged rape, as well as the several incidents of brawling do not recur.

Incidentally, as Youth and Sports Minister earlier, Hishammuddin had presided over the Rakan Muda youth activities campaign - 19 months ago, he suggested this be started in schools. Nothing has come out of that proposal and the much-hyped Rakan Muda has all but fizzled out.

Projections vs outcome

For those with a short memory, here's a recap of how government buzz usually fails to match up to reality.

Flashback 1995: "I came in with a clear mandate from the Prime Minister to ensure that our delivery system, that is the education system in terms of human resources and development, will be attuned to the needs of Vision 2020," said Najib in an interview (The Star, Dec 17) a few months after he took office as Education Minister.

Fast forward 2002: The same newspaper reported in June that a whopping 44,000 local graduates were unemployed.

A retraining programme was started in 2001 under the aegis of the Human Resources Ministry where unemployed grads were given a monthly allowance of RM500 while taking up courses in English, Computer Science and ICT.

By May 2002, the Ministry had spent about RM53 million on the retraining of some 7,000 graduates. Last year, the Ministry spent another RM50 million to retrain 6,300 graduates. Under the Economic Stimulus Package 2003, another RM100 million was budgeted for the training of this seemingly endless train of unmarketable graduatess.

That's a helluva lot of tax money going towards fixing a defect in the education system - much like how the RM500 million is to be poured into the NS.

Pampered child, stepchild

The cabinet committee (plenty of those, yes?) established in April 2002 found, about five months after the unemployed graduate retraining scheme was launched, that 94% of those who applied were Malay graduates in Arts.

Why do I bring up the subject of race? Precisely because racial polarisation is the very problem the NS was hatched to address.

The seeds of this schism are sown in the education system from kindergarten upwards. When it is only the Malay who runs back to Big Brother because he can't find a job (despite going through the degree mill), you'd be led to infer that graduates roll off different assembly lines.

While that is a valid supposition, the heart of the matter is that bumiputera and non-bumiputera students have been schooled in different environments since young.

Bumiputeras go through primary school secure in the knowledge that if they show some academic potential, there are the elite residential or boarding schools waiting to receive them. The better-funded Mara Junior Science Colleges are also for bumiputeras alone.

The next step after secondary school is also cut and dried for bumiputeras, who are channelled to the more than 20 matriculation centres nationwide which prime them for local public university. Additionally, most who get the chance to study abroad are on government scholarships. The non-bumiputeras cannot avail themselves of these benefits.

As for fully-aided premier schools, the powers-that-be are generous to a fault. The Smart School in Putrajaya where the exceedingly small voter roll is 95% Malay had been endowed with 400 computers, according to a Star report (Nov 4, 2001).

Parents chart course

The dichotomy between the races is already pronounced from the early stages of education. The national primary school, where the medium of instruction is Malay, finds no takers among the Chinese. Instead an estimated 90% the community prefer to send their children to the national-type school with mother tongue medium of instruction.

What these Chinese pupils will experience, besides too much homework, are overcrowded classrooms and having to often ask their parents for donations and help in fund raising. Despite being 'oversubscribed' in terms of enrolment, the Education Ministry has not built any new Chinese schools to augment the existing 1,250-plus ones.

Opposition leader Lim Kit Siang revealed that for the one national-type school (he may be referring to the controversial Damansara school) built by the government between 2000 and 2003, 171 national schools were constructed, despite the increase in enrolment in the former being close to one-fifth of the latter.

For Malay parents, the national-type school has little appeal despite the stricter discipline, better teaching of Science and Maths, and opportunity to acquire a third language. These advantages are outweighed by the alien culture and lack of Islamic emphasis in Chinese schools. Malays therefore flock to the national primary schools and make up about 90% of the pupils.

One outcome of the parental preferences indicated here is that for children growing up, there is a lack of mixed classrooms which might conceivably promote social cohesion.

Ironically, it may prove to be the almighty ringgit which can succeed in closing the racial divide where policy tinkering (e.g. the Vision School concept of placing national and national-type schools within the same premises) fails.

Acceptance into these expensive private schools is constrained by class, not race, and it should be most interesting to find out the who's who among parents showing a marked lack of confidence in the national education system.

Islam in schools

Just as in the area of public administration where civil servants are overwhelmingly Malay, so too in the national schools there is a preponderance of Malay teachers. A more disturbing development of late is the fault line drawn along religious, in addition to racial, polities.

Where the Malay parent puts his faith in national schools having the right environment to nurture his child in Islam, conversely this same factor deters non-bumiputera parents from enrolling his child there as Islam is the only religion allowed to be taught during Agama class. School children of other races take moral lesson.

However, the Islamic influence has permeated beyond the three to five periods a week allocated on the timetable. Ever since ex-deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim popularised the masyarakat madani (Muslim civil society), entrenching Islam as addin (way of life) has found favour within the mainstream.

Hence, it's become more common to see children wear their parents' Islamic credentials on their sleeve. The modest baju kurung which covers the aurat has replaced the pinafore as the school garb of choice (admittedly among the non-Muslim girls too), and nowadays you should not be surprised to see children as young as six wearing a tudung (headscarf).

Malay pre-schoolers are also being sent to Tadika Islam, thus minimising further any chances of interaction with their non-Muslim peers.

This Islamicisation process has not been stalled by the setback of Anwar languishing in prison. The present regime has, on the contrary, appropriated the Islamic agenda by presenting its own Islam Hadhari (Islamic management) and hijacking the impetus created in the Anwar years.

The result of Islamicisation-cum-nationalisation can be seen in the former mission schools, now turned into national schools, losing their Christian identity in all but name. Sometimes even the Anglo-sounding names have been dispensed with, as I found out when I returned to my old neighbourhood to vote in the recent general elections and could not locate the school polling centre. That school was still there but now sported a new Malay name.

Excluded by system

The segregation of the races is further exacerbated by the influx of non-bumiputeras into the private higher education sector. This arises as a result of being sidelined from the local public universities.(See Part 1)

Sedaya International College CEO Peter Ng estimated that between 80,000 and 100,000 students were "qualified but excluded" from local public universities (without though specifying the number of cohorts that make up the numbers he cited in The Star, June 30, 2002). No official figures have been released although it is the general perception that the 550-or-so private colleges harbour a predominantly Chinese student population.

Given the quota mentality entrenched in Cronesia, it was hardly unexpected that Umno Youth leader Hishammuddin Hussein (also Education Minister), had in June 2002, demanded an admission quota for bumiputeras to private colleges! He was informed that anyone willing to pay the fees was welcome to study and unlike in the subsided public sector, that barriers had never been erected and therefore quotas were unnecessary.

In meeting the shortfall in local public university places, private education has flourished into a multi-billion dollar industry. At the steep end of the fee structure are probably the off-shore campuses like Monash University Malaysia, University of Nottingham in Malaysia, and Curtin University of Technology Sarawak.

Those who have dubbed Cronesia "the regional education hub" take pride that we have attracted these reputable foreign players to set up business on our shores. Personally, I feel only shame that this country so rich in natural resources has marginalised so many of her own young who deserve public varsity placement.

What is there to be proud of if the median-income family has to expend its life savings or mortgage the home for sons or daughters to obtain twinning or franchised foreign degrees?

Aside from the bigger and more established private colleges which have their own built-to-order campuses, the rest are operating from nothing more than shoplots, even if these are swanky ones. A commercial building cannot house the facilities or environment required of a proper campus.

Local public universities on the other hand for all the accusations of dismal academic standards levied against them at least have libraries, auditoriums and recreational amenities like an Olympic-size swimming pool, stadium and track, gym, football and hockey pitches, tennis and squash courts, etc.

These can be the venues for extra-curricular activities to bring together the different races. But when one particular half of the country's youngsters are receiving college instruction in 'shops', how are they all to mingle?

Improbable blank slates

An overused description is that Cronesia is suffering from a 'brain drain' of talent. I think not. It's closer to a haemorrhage. But don't blame arch competitor Singapore for poaching our best and brightest if she provides them varsity places and scholarships the Cronesian government will not.

The Chinese who have left for greener pastures over the years are reputed to number one million. According to the latest census figures, the current Chinese population is about 6 million out of 25, and fast declining in proportion to the bumiputera. It stands to reason that among the NS trainees, many have uncles, older siblings and neighbours who have emigrated and now owe allegiance to their adopted land.

Would the non-bumiputera trainees acquire 3-minute instant noodles patriotism (viewed to be lacking, hence the NS remedial programme) consequent to their training stint? Would sharing a tent for three months with 18-year-olds from other races significantly or substantially change their long-held worldview? It's possible, if they are highly impressionable blank slates.

But would they also because trainers who volunteer are Malay, compelling Najib to threaten enlisting non-bumiputeras as trainers by fiat under the National Service Act be subjected some more to the 'subordinate syndrome' already in evidence in other public domains?

This syndrome is, for example, manifested in the History and Malay literature syllabi for the PMR and SPM examinations, where the hero/protagonist is always bumiputera and the characters of other races invariably play supplementary roles. In fact, I've came across a plot that had the hero, naturally a Malay boy, help rescue a kidnapped Chinese tauke's son. Talk about stereotyping!

Cronesians are deluding themselves if they believe that a system which institutionalises the separation of races will have no repercussions on the way youths of the various ethnic groups interact with one another.

And now long-suffering taxpayers are being subjected to overly-expensive albeit well-intentioned campaigns carried out in the face of public objections. The Vision School and the NS programme, are intended as a panacea for repairing the fissure wrought by Cronesia's race-based politics.

They will remain at best only band-aid treatments for racial polarisation unless the 'system' from which this ill derives is completely overhauled.

Do you really see that miracle happening? In the meantime, it is the young generation who must carry the burden of their elders' shortsightedness and shortcomings.


Part one appeared yesterday.

Z SUNDAY is a Joe Public who reads the local print media for its unfunny and unintentional imitation of black and gallows humour. The truth may be out there but he doesn''''t expect to extract it from the Malaysia Boleh chaff in local newspapers.

1) He has used the term 'non-bumiputera' in this article because it is an inescapable fact of life in Cronesia, but he believes that to be classified a 'non' anything is an affront to a citizen's dignity. It's like calling a woman a 'non-man' or in the apartheid era, a black a 'non-white'. Alternatively, can a Malay-Muslim ever imagine himself to be categorised in all his official documents as a 'non-Chinese-cum-non-Hindu'?

2) For the sake of expediency and to streamline his arguments, he has neglected to mention the Indian and other smaller communities which are equally marginalised. He tenders his apologies for this omission.