“HOW often do you go to the temple, Uncle?” A neighbour’s young son who attends a Chinese School posed this question to yours truly recently.
A most polite and lovely question indeed, but it would have been much sweeter if he had mentioned “mosque” or “masjid” instead of temple.
Earlier in November, a concert was organised by a kindergarten with Malay, Indian and Chinese students where the two cute little masters of ceremonies spoke English and Mandarin.
Though some of the families in the audience were Malays, there was no Bahasa version of the announcement. Again, it would have been sweeter if this had been provided.
But looking at how well the children conducted themselves at the concert without regard to colour of skin or sound of language, this type of oversight on the part of the principal and teachers was effortlessly forgiven.
The moral of these two events is simply this. Firstly, it would be marvellous if we Malaysians of different religions and ethnic groups understood one another better.
If possible, we should be knowledgeable with regard to our colleagues’ religious practices, cultural norms and even dietary restrictions.
Secondly the various Malaysian ethnic groups, I believe, do to a large extent tolerate the occasional lapses of memory or idiosyncrasies of their brethren in matters that do not involve life and death.
Indeed, tolerance has been one of our strongest characteristics. We are quite happy living alongside each other. Most housing areas boast of multi-cultural communities.
However, understandably, with the positive standing of Malaysian society in the eyes of the world, there are those who have urged that our multi- cultural society move beyond tolerance.
Obviously this can only be achieved through a more sincere, meaningful and sustained interaction of members of the different religious and cultural groups.
And without doubt it is best to start this interaction at the youngest age possible. The pre-schoolers and the primary school students should be the principal target.
We often see how easy it is for children from different races and cultural backgrounds to enjoy other’s company at the community playgrounds. Their instant affinity towards one another is sometimes unbelievable.
But psychologists explain that this is only natural, as very young children do not have any preconceived ideas of their peers. Neither do they have any personal interest or hidden agenda in their effort at making friends.
Watching these children play should surely convince us that in a natural state, there is no dividing line whatsoever between members of different ethnic groups.
Actually this line begins to be drawn for them as they grow up, most often coloured by the racist, and sometimes sexist, stereotyping of prejudiced parents and partisan elders.
From then onwards, racially biased opinions start to form in the minds of the young people.
Unless they are given the opportunity to learn about their cultural similarities and differences from others during the growing up years, they shall forever be trapped with this negative frame of mind.
In the past few years there has been much discussion on the role of schooling in perpetuating social polarisation, especially in terms of race and culture.
Thus the opposition by certain quarters to the effort at fostering student integration at the school level may be counter-productive to the task of nation building that we are currently undertaking.
However, such anxiety is not totally unexpected. Neither is it unique to the multi-racial society of Malaysia. Elsewhere in the world there have indeed been other somewhat similar precedents.
If there is any consolation then it must be that even some developed nations had to grapple with the problem of the racialisation of schools right through the second half of the 20th century. And they are still trying to perfect it.
For example, in the United States of America schools delineated along racial lines were only abolished in 1954 when the Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were unconstitutional.
Across the Atlantic in the United Kingdom since the early 1960s at least two dominant “racial form of education” have been identified, namely mono- cultural and multi-cultural.
The first envisaged a process of assimilation where all races should learn to conform to the dominant culture of the whites. George Partiger, former Member of the British Parliament for Southall, was reported to have said in 1964:
“I feel that Sikh parents should encourage their children to give up their turbans, their religion and their dietary laws. If they refuse to assimilate then we must be tough toward them.”
In 1989, during the height of the controversy over Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, George Gale wrote in the Daily Mail, “Newcomers here are welcome, but only if they become genuine Britishers and don’t stuff their alien cultures down our throats.”
These assimilationist ideas were at the heart of the development of mono-cultural education.
This type of education was widely adopted and then promoted by the various local education authorities in the UK. Clearly it centred on the suppression and denunciation of ethnic, linguistic and cultural diversity.
It also appeared to sanction the policy of dispersal of black people as a response to empirically unfounded and racist concerns that too many black students in a single school would have a deleterious effect on the academic progress of white pupils.
However, faith in the assimilation principle began to taper off in the late 1960s.
Then, in 1966, the concept of integration rather than assimilation as an educational goal was put forth, with the aim of celebrating cultural diversity in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance.
By the mid 1970s multi-cultural education rose like a phoenix out of the ashes of mono-cultural education. What are the assumptions underpinning this new concept?
Multi-cultural education allows one to learn about other cultures and reduce children’s and adults’ prejudices, and discrimination towards those from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds.
It is also based on the belief that what goes on during a pupil’s school career has the potential to counteract the divisive influences and disruptive prejudices which he or she may confront outside the school gates.
Thus multi-cultural education does appear to be relevant to Malaysian society. It may well be the impetus to mould the 2020 generation of a developed Malaysia.
As for the doubting Alis, Muthus and Ah Chongs, perhaps at this juncture it is apt to sincerely ask ourselves whose interest are we trying to protect, our children’s or our own?