Loot Ting Yee, a prominent Chinese educationist who is popularly known as Cikgu Loot, has done the most honourable thing that all public figures are expected to do when caught in scandal: he has resigned from the advisory posts in Jiao Zong (United Chinese School Teachers Association) and the Lim Lean Geok (LLG) Cultural Development Centre following the allegations of sexual harassment against him that were disseminated in blogosphere recently.

When contacted by Merdeka Review , the Chinese news website that first reported the incident, Loot did not attempt to defend himself, but apologised to those who felt their modesty had been violated. The octogenarian’s forthrightness is laudable, especially in comparison to our politicians who are so much tainted by their own dirty laundry.

Given the ‘sensitive’ nature of the education issue in Malaysia, Loot’s stepping down over sexual harassment was immediately seized upon by some ill-intentioned bloggers who had been dead set against vernacular schools. Ahirudin Attan’s mischievous ‘Dong Juan’ entry, for instance, attracted a few dozens of replies from his readers, with some hurling nasty comments at Chinese education and blaming the movement for producing a ‘flawed character’.

Most bizarrely, others linked the incident to the teaching of science and mathematics in Mandarin, as if a complete switch to English as medium of instruction would be a panacea for all social ills. So emotive is the issue that hardly anyone came up with an argument that was worth hearing.

I have not the slightest intention to defend Loot, but how on earth would one come under the delusion that the English language was a magical cure-all?

In 2001, Britain published the infamous Nolan Report, which called for the ‘great evil’ of child abuse to be rooted out in the public sphere. Prior to that, sexual abuse by Catholic priests against young boys had made headlines in both England and Wales.

Across the Atlantic in the United States, some Catholic dioceses paid out millions of dollars to settle law suits brought by former victims of child abuse. Other church leaders that were not personally involved in this despicable act but had kept quiet about the problem were also chastised for their complicity in creating an environment that was ‘safe’ for the sexual deviant behaviour to be continued.

Surely these ‘revered’ priests in Britain and the US had received education in English. Still, why did their impeccable command of the English language fail to prevent them from committing sexual offence against minors under their care?

It is a mass movement

At a personal level, I do not always agree with the emotive tone employed by Loot in safeguarding Chinese education, but I respect the man for his fortitude and courage in the face of the gigantic and oppressive state. This is not to explain away his misconducts, which of course should not be condoned but they have to be separated from the contribution that he has made to the movement.

After all, would it be fair for non-Muslims to hold the entire Islamic faith responsible for the heinous crimes committed by a handful of terrorists who claimed to do it in the name of religion?

Would it also be right for me to call for Muslims to turn their backs on Islam simply because Dr. Mahathir Mohammad’s administration had ruined our judiciary and fostered rampant corruption in Malaysia?

To those who are quick to cash in on the scandal and seek to cast aspersions on vernacular schools, it must be pointed out that Chinese education in Malaysia is a mass movement that goes beyond a few individuals, no matter how much idealised or even ‘deified’ they have been by the vernacular press.

Ironically, when the Barisan Nasional government defied public outcry and went ahead with implementing English as the medium of instruction for science and mathematics, most of the Malay education groups simply complied because revolting against Umno was not their tradition.

On the contrary, it was the resoluteness of the Chinese education bodies that forced the government to compromise on the issue and permitted both Mandarin and English to be used for the two important subjects in Chinese schools. Such determination has also inspired other language bodies, especially in the Tamil-speaking community, to press on with their fight to keep mother-tongue education.

The fall of a spiritual leader would no doubt deal a serious blow to the Chinese education movement, which is likely to hurt its image in the short run. However, so long as the will and the fighting spirit remain intact, there will be no immediate defeat or surrender in sight.

As far as Loot is concerned, the curtain has certainly fallen on his five decades of leadership in Chinese education, albeit ignominiously. There will be a lot of soul-searching to do, but a movement that began more than a century and a half ago, has survived political vicissitudes, and produced a great number of beneficiaries – including myself – will be here to stay, and may even thrive further in the future.