M'sia: Emulate S'pore school system

M'sia: Emulate S'pore school system
By Teo Cheng Wee, Regional Correspondent

KUALA LUMPUR - MALAYSIA should emulate Singapore's single stream school system so as to produce a population that 'no longer spoke and acted on racial sentiments', the country's former information minister said in a news report published on Monday.

In an interview with mass-selling Malay daily Utusan, Datuk Seri Zainuddin Maidin noted that Singaporeans do not act along racial lines despite the country's multiracial make-up.

He credited it to Singapore's education system, singling out former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew for having the 'courage to exercise political will'.

Mr Zainuddin said Mr Lee closed down national-type schools - Nanyang University and Ngee Ann College - for the sake of producing a singular Singapore nation, despite strong opposition from the communists, as well as from the Chinese and Malay chauvinists. Singapore's success is clear to those who view the country rationally, he said.

'Just as Singapore uses the English language to break the crisis posed by the rise of Chinese chauvinism and communism in the early 1960s, Bahasa Malaysia can play a similar role in our country, even though it is somewhat late,' he said.

He said the use of Malay for a single stream school system should not be seen as racist as it has been accepted as the country's official language.

Source: http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking...ry_449698.html