While the rest of the world is busy making overtures to China, taking crash courses in Mandarin, absorbing the Chinese culture and embracing the wisdom of 4,000 years of Chinese history has to offer, we have been doing all that long before we even gained independence.

What better way to know all these than to learn from the Chinese schools we already have in place? Why do we want to give up this advantage we have over others?

A unified education system does not necessarily inculcate unity among the different races if all other divisive public policies are allowed to stay in place.

Just look at Indonesia. Not only do the Chinese there not speak Chinese, they weren't even allowed to have Chinese names, until the present president who has Chinese ancestry molified somewhat. The Chinese there have practically assimilated themselves into their society. Judging from what has transpired there in the past three years, would anybody think they have achieved unity?

Chinese schools have been churning out excellent scholars and professionals that helped build this country of ours and other countries as well for many years. If a single-track education system fails to achieve its goal, as do so many of our government's 'brilliant' programmes, we will end up neither here nor there.

Of course Singapore senior minister Lee Kuan Yew likes to see our education system switch to a single-track system. It doesn't serve his interest to counsel us on good governance because we may end up successfully competing with Singapore.

He axed his diverse education system and installed an English-centric one. It is so successful, young people there prefer to reincarnate as American and Japanese. While their universities grant direct admissions to our graduates from Chinese independent schools in increasing numbers, but because of foolish pride, our own universities refuse to acknowledge and accept these students' achievements.

I do agree that there is not enough interaction and understanding between the different races, but abandoning our diverse education system would be like throwing away the baby with the bath water.