MULTICULTURALISM describes the coexistence of many cultures in a society, without any one culture dominating the region. It seeks to overcome any form of discrimination such as racism.

Both Malaysia and Singapore, being countries consisting of a wide range of cultures, have tried to inculcate multiculturalism through their education policies. Let us see whether their policies have been successful in promoting harmony in the country fostering cohesion between races.

Singapore The Trigger
As a result of the British educational legacy, which left each race to formulate separate education systems teaching communal loyalties, Singapore’s schools was established according to the four media of instruction English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil.

Aggravating this racial division, with the rise of communism in China, Singapore was regarded with suspicion by its neighbouring countries Malay and Indonesia due to its dominant Chinese majority.

Hence, from the 1950s, Singapore was characterized by deep ethnic and linguistic segmentation.

Demand for Equality
The Report of the All Party Committee of the Singapore Legislative Assembly on Chinese Education proposed “equality of treatment”, thereby making multiculturalism and multilingualism core assumptions for the management of ethnic diversity.

Equality meant not only the provision of resource inputs, but the extension of the Ministry of Education’s control over curriculum, educational structures, examinations, teacher qualifications and fitness to teacher, and conditions of service.

In the 1960s, the government also recommended a value system that linked bilingualism and “Asian” cultural values as the preferred socialization made.

Meritocracy

When Singapore was merged with Malaya, Singaporean political leaders protested against awarding special privileges to the Malays as part of their birthright as an “indigenous” people, arguing instead for the equality of all citizens in all areas including education, employment and politics.

This animosity caused Singapore to be expelled from Malaysia in 1965, becoming an independent state.

Now, Singapore bases its policies on meritocracy, a system based on rule by ability rather than by wealth, race or other determinants of social position.

Meritocracy acts as a principle of good governance in conjunction with the principle of fairness, for meritocracy advocates fairness in terms of access to higher education and employment.

This discourages preferential treatment of a certain race such that, as First President Yusof Ishak put it in his 1968 New Year Message, “[n]o man need to feel that to belong to a particular religion puts him at a disadvantage or gives him an advantage”.

Every race is awarded equal opportunities. Hence, social cohesion is fostered with the absence of social tension created between the otherwise “less-preferred” race and the “more-preferred” races.

An interesting point to note is that based on the Report on The Ministry of Education, Malays are persistent under-achievers in Singapore.

That means it would be unfair for Malays who perform badly to receive privileged treatment regarding entrance to higher education while depriving better students of other races of enrollment places.

Singapore was pragmatic in the sense that the government employed meritocracy because they were able to point out that affirmative action would not work with a Chinese majority and would not unjust.

Although this gives yet another reason to reject an affirmative action policy favouring the Malay minority, the use of meritocracy may lead to the under-representation of Malays in higher education and more highly-skilled or paid jobs.

This may in turn threaten the social fabric between the Malays and the non-Malays should the representation of Malays hit an all-time low.

Elitism

With meritocracy comes elitism, whereby students who are deemed more intellectual are offered better educational facilities and opportunities to further their studies.

Streaming and the Gifted Education Programme (GEP) are ways to separate students who are academically strong from those who are weaker. Students identified as less able are channeled into non-academic streams where educational resources, curriculum and credentials offered were generally inferior to those offered to mainstream students.

Most students that have been stigmatized as slow and academic failures start to lose the motivation to study hard and catch up with mainstream students. They are prone towards adopting a defeatist attitude as a defence mechanism to cope with their failure and frustration with the school system.

In the Singapore educational context, socially disadvantaged ethnic minorities like the Malays, and to a smaller extent the Indians, have been persistently overrepresented in the slower monolingual and normal streams. This, like meritocracy, could result in racial conflicts between the minority and the majority.

However, with meritocracy, the focus as been drawn academic achievements instead of racial inequalities.

It is said that since such policies intensify the hierarchical relationship between schools, it helps to divert attention from the social inequities of the educational system. Under this circumstance, less people will concentrate on the under-representation of the minority, rather, the stratification of schools according to the academic abilities of their students.

Linguistic Bias Towards Chinese

Due to globalisation, Singapore was increasingly exposed to Western values. The emphasis on Mandarin as a mother tongue since the late 1970s was largely due to PAP’s belief that the mother tongue effectively transmits positive Asian cultural values, which cushions Singaporeans against the influence of Western values.

Promotion of Mandarin as a mother tongue placed a high premium on mother tongue proficiency in order to get a good grade in major examinations. A pass in the mother tongue was crucial for enrollment into junior colleges and local universities. Mandarin was even made mandatory for all Chinese students to ensure that they did not take up Malay as a second language

In 1986, even though Malay and Indian students were offered to study their mother tongue as a first language, they had to travel to the MOE Language Centre after school hours while their Chinese counterparts can study Mandarin in school.

Besides, the “Speak Mandarin Campaign” was initiated. Having successfully attained its goal of getting more Singaporean Chinese to speak more Mandarin, from 1991, the new theme “If you’re Chinese, make a statement in Mandarin” was launched. This shows a more ambitious aim of the government to promote Mandarin as a primary language of communication between all Chinese.

The Special Assistance Plan (SAP) was also introduced in 1979, which included schools like Nanyang Girls’ High and Hwa Chong Institution. This represented a divide of language and cultural policy making in Singapore. This scheme was established to preserve the Chinese stream schools from dwindling student enrolments and eventual extinction, and suggests preferential treatment to Mandarin and such schools. This led to the demise of Malay and Tamil stream schools while Chinese stream schools were revived.

Furthermore, of the 250 PAP neighbourhood kindergartens in Singapore, only a few offer Malay and Tamil even though Mandarin is offered in all these place. Many Malay and Indian children enrolled in kindergartens not offering their mother tongue have no choice but to study Mandarin. Most of them stop studying Mandarin and take up their mother tongue in primary school.

As SINDA’s Chief Executive said, “We feel that children who don’t have the exposure to the language when they are in pre-school are at a relative disadvantage once they start primary school.

Having been deprived of a linguistic head start, many non-Chinese students have had to spend more time catching up on their mother tongue and thus pay less attention to other subjects. This, as cited by SINDA, was a major contributor to the under-achievement of non-Chinese students.

Although having a linguistic bias towards the Chinese will unite 77 percent of the population, with the emphasis placed only on Chinese values, it appeared that Malay and Indian cultural values were less crucial than Asian values for the development of the nation.

This weakens the multiracial social fabric of society, embodying unequal treatment to the ethnic minorities and contravening the principle of equal treatment for all four official languages.

It also undermines the principle of fairness and meritocracy, which Singapore has tried to employ over affirmative action.

Malaysia The Trigger
The British colony left an educational legacy behind them. They only had two kinds of schools English and Vernacular.

English schools were missionary schools with an entirely British curriculum while vernacular schools consists of Malay and Chinese schools, with curriculum based on Malay and Chinese respectively.

In the end, vernacular schools were left to their own devices and developed divergent paths as each race learned more about their own culture more than the Malay culture.

Thus, Malaysia’s first Minister of Education, Tun Razak, ordered the establishment of national schools, a fully integrated system with a common curriculum and language (Malay).

Besides, the British put into practice preferential treatment in the selection and training of Malays in the elite administrative service.

In 1948, an article in the Federation of Malaya Agreement stipulated the Malay Ruler to “safeguard the special position of the Malays and to ensure the reservation for Malays of such proportion as he may deem reasonable of positions in and scholarships and other similar educational or training privileges”.

This article later became part of Article 153 of the Malaysian Constitution.

Affirmative Action

In 1971, the article was modified to become a comprehensive ethnic preferential policy to benefit the Malay community.

This was part of the affirmative action, which refers to the introduction of measure to raise participation of members of an economically disadvantaged group in the areas of education, where they had been historically underrepresented, through preferential treatment of the Malays.

Rewarded by the Constitution, the government provides 11 years of free but non-compulsory schooling to the indigenous Malays apart from miscellaneous fees, whereas non-Malays have to pay school fees on top of miscellaneous fees.

Special schools catered exclusively for the Bumiputras were also established. Examples include the Tunku Kurshiah College (TKC) and the Malay College Kuala Kangsar (MCKK). These schools helped to substantially increase the number of Malay undergraduates. Because of their success, the government has even planned to expand and build more of such schools.

Besides, quotas exist for higher education and scholarships. In 1971, it was made compulsory for all local public universities to reserve 55 percent of their places for Malay students.

Ethnic enclaves were also evident through the alleged practice of ethnic segregation through race streaming in national primary schools out of the 2.2 million students enrolled in national primary schools in 2002, only 2.1 percent were Chinese and 4.3 percent were Indians.

Another instance is the Public Service Department (JPA) scholarships, which are full scholarships offered to students to studying in worldwide leading universities. These scholarships are given on the basis of Sijil Tingi Pelajaran Malaysia (STPM - the equivalent of O-Levels) results, race and quotas.

Affirmative action has indeed helped to redress the under-representation of Malay participation in the economy, especially in the economic sector and in tertiary education. It has also narrowed considerably the inequality gap between the non-Malays and the Malays, and has created a growing Malay professional middle class.

In a way, it renders the representation of Malays and the non-Malays to be more equal in terms of higher education, thereby fostering a certain unity due to the same educational standing.

However, more so, affirmative action creates a clear-cut division between the Malays and the non-Malays. Although all of them end up with the same education backgrounds, the Malays are given higher education more easily than the non-Malays due to the preferential treatment.

There is a lack of fairness and meritocracy in this system, especially since the use of affirmative action in the Malaysian context is in itself flawed. While the beneficiaries of affirmative action are groups, which are politically subordinate, in Malaysia, this policy is introduced to the politically dominant group to raise its economic status as against that of an economically more advanced minority.

The Chinese and Indian ethnic minorities are the ones who would feel most victimized by the policies and hence, develop a hatred for the Malays. This will result in tensions between the non-Malays and the Malays, tearing the already thinning social fabric that links all Malaysians together.

Meritocracy

In 2003, Mahathir began stressing that Malays need to stop depending on preferential treatment to gain entrance in higher education. Badawi also warned that “a continuing reliance on crutches will further enfeeble [the nation], and we may eventually end up in wheelchairs”. Hence, Malaysia implemented a policy of meritocracy.

This policy streams Bumiputras into matriculation as a prelude to university admission, whereby students take a course and later sit for a test set by the instructor. The non-Bumiputras generally sit for the STPM to enter university.

However, although it is possible for non-Bumiputras to enter matriculation and Bumiputras to take the STPM, in practice, it is still difficult for non-Bumiputras to gain entry into the matriculation stream.

It is definitely commendable for the Malaysian government to make a huge shift to meritocracy so that everyone gets equal opportunities to access higher education and employment.

Yet, fairness is not in place in the system. The fact that non-Bumiputras would encounter more difficulty to gain entry into the matriculation system proves that the Malays and the non-Malays are still fighting for educational opportunities on different grounds, with the Malays receiving privileged treatment. Thus, the country’s ability to foster racial cohesion may diminish.

Similarities and Differences
For both Singapore and Malaysia, the aftermath of the British legacy had left a lasting impact on the segregation of communities in society. That was the trigger of racial discord.

However, while Singapore decided from its independence to employ meritocracy through elitism, Malaysia went ahead with affirmative action.

The principle of meritocracy and affirmative action are inherently different. The former usually embodies fairness and equality of all whereas the latter dismisses fairness and meritocracy for the preferential treatment of the Malay majority.

Both countries decided ultimately that meritocracy paved a better way for the development of the nation and the good leadership of the government to ease racial tensions.

Nonetheless, they both had their own flaws.

The linguistic bias towards Chinese showed that Singapore was not necessarily all that fair when it came to meritocracy. Even though only the cream of the crop are eligible to apply for SAP schools, the overarching criteria is that they must be Chinese. This system rules out the minorities and lacks fairness.

In Malaysia’s case, although they practice meritocracy for higher education via the introduction of a matriculation stream, they lacked fairness as they still had preferential treatment when it came to choosing people to enter the stream.

Besides, Singapore has shown pragmatism when the government turned down the use of affirmative action due to the presence of a Chinese majority. That effectively solved prevented unnecessary racial tension between the Malays and the non-Malays while providing everyone a good chance of higher education and employment.
Malaysia, on the other hand, has not shown much pragmatism through its adoption of affirmative action, and later, “meritocracy”.

Still, racial fault lines can be detected because in both cases, Malaysia has failed to show fairness giving equal opportunities in all aspects like education and employment, regardless of their race.

Conclusion
Even though Malaysia seems to fall behind in the aspect of good leadership by avidly exercising principles of good governance, we must note that they want the best of their country too.

If Malaysia had not exercised affirmative action, the British legacy might have led the English to overrule the country despite them being the minority.

Under that circumstance, the government probably felt highly pressured to save its own race and therefore used affirmative action instead of meritocracy especially since the British had already set a basis in the constitution. It was only gradually after that that the administration attempted to exercise meritocracy, a good principle of governance.

Similarly, in Singapore’s case, the authorities would not have adopted affirmative action because of the dominant Chinese race.

Pressed for another alternative to relieve racial tensions, the Singapore government probably saw it best to exercise meritocracy, which is also a good principle of governance.

A nation cannot enforce another nation’s policy just because it worked for that nation. One must always consider a nation’s make-up and suitability for policy implementation before actually putting it in practice. Each nation has different needs and there is no one policy that works for all. Ultimately, the goal of all nations is to better themselves.