Different perspective on Chinese education

I came across this interesting story in SinChew (星洲日报)yesterday and I thought that it offers an alternative perspective on Chinese medium education in Malaysia. It all starts with Sabriah(?)(莎比娜) who wanted to study and learn Chinese.

She lives in a Malay area that is next to the Subang New Village and when she was young, she had many Chinese friends and wanted to study in a Chinese medium primary school. But because of family reasons, she was not able to do so. Instead, she put her hopes on her daughter who was, in fact, quite willing to fulfil her mom's wishes by enrolling in a Chinese medium primary school in Subang (SRJK(C)Subang). Sabriah's daughter didn't have any problems fitting into the Chinese speaking environment as she has always had Chinese friends from a very young age.

Sabriah was particularly pleased when her daughter obtained an A for Math for her UPSR exams, an area, she frankly admitted, where many bumiputra students (巫裔学生)are weak in. Her daughter also obtained As in Malay (comprehension and writing) showing that studying in a Chinese medium primary school was not detrimental to her Malay language ability. Overall, she obtained 4As, 1B and 2Cs (for Chinese comprehension and writing). A commendable effort on her part given that she's from a non-Chinese speaking background.

But her primary reason for going to Sin Chew was because she had failed in her many attempts to get her daughter enrolled in a Chinese independent secondary school! While there a small minority of non-Chinese students in Chinese medium primary schools (more than 20,000 if I remember the latest numbers correctly), there number and % of non-Chinese students in Chinese independent secondary schools is much smaller. Sabriah wanted her daughter (Nur Fairuz) to continue her Chinese language studies and be exposed to Chinese cultural activities, which her daughter likes, hence the decision to enroll her in a Chinese independent secondary school. When she went to such a school in Klang, her daughter's application was rejected because all the spaces had been filled. After many futile attempts, she felt discouraged and hopeless and visiting Sin Chew to highlight her situation was something akin to a last desparate resort. Currently, her daughter is attending a national secondary school, where she feels that there is insufficient Chinese cultural activities even though there are many Chinese students there.

Her story has many interesting discussion points. Firstly, what are the entry requirements into Chinese independent secondary schools? There are not that many of them in the country (numbering less than 100) and the demand is usually quite high. My sister went to one of them in KL - Kuen Cheng (坤成女中)- and from what I hear, it's a very popular school among many Chinese parents. But was it a case of an insufficient number of places or was it because of Sabriah's daughter's race? From what little I know of Chinese independent secondary schools, there's a huge one in Klang with about 3000 students. The newspaper report didn't say which school in Klang she went to but if it's a school of 3000 students, I'm sure that one more can't hurt especially when it increases the diversity in the school and the mother of that child has tried so hard to buck the convention by wanting to send her Malay daughter to a Chinese independent secondary school.

Secondly, it is interesting to note that she noticed a discernible improvement in her daughter's Mathematical skills after she started going to the Chinese primrary schools. In the article, Sabriah commented that her daughter would do Math in her head and come up with the answer quickly (mental abacus). The fact that she could compare her daughter's results with her son's, who goes to a national primary school, probably boosted her confidence in the Chinese medium primary school, especially in Math.

While I have not seen any studies which show this statistically, I'm convinced that the Chinese medium primary school environment somehow is more conducive to learning Mathematics compared to a national school environment. Sabriah had her daughter and son to compare. A more natural 'experiment' would have been to separate twins, sending one to a national school and the other to a Chinese medium school. From my own experience, I found that among the ASEAN　scholars in my batch, those from Chinese speaking schools (Chung Ling in Penang, Chung Hwa in KL), on average, was better than those from non-Chinese speaking schools (such as myself). Since most ASEAN scholars in my batch were Chinese, this gives us reason to doubt the myth that somehow Chinese people are more genetically disposed to Math.

What exactly this 'environment' in Chinese medium schools provides that is more conducive to learning Math is still a mystery to me. I can hazard some guesses but they would not have any scientific basis. It could be something to do with the learning of the Chinese language - you have to learn to count the strokes, write them in a logical order, use spatial thinking to recognize and remember words. It could be something to do with the nature of the Chinese language that makes Math problems more intuitive to solve - 二二四，四四十六 (two times two equal 4, 4 times 4 equal 16). It would be interesting to investigate if Math results are worse in Chinese medium primary schools after the introduction of teaching some Math classes in English. My suspicion is that the difference would not be significant, since it does not fundamentally alter the 'Chinese' character of the Chinese primary school. And if my speculation about the link between learning the language (strokes, logic, cognition) and Math has any basis, then the difference is likely to be insignificant.

The point here is that people do recognize the quality of education in schools. While parents do not have the luxury of using their children as test cases - you can't send your kid to one type of school for two years and then transfer him or her to another type of school to see if his or her results improve - there is a small minority of non-Chinese parents who do recognize the quality of education in Chinese primary schools and have thus sent their children to these schools, including PPP President M. Kayveas. If even non-Chinese parents recognize this, then why can't the government recognize this as well and build more Chinese primary schools? Of course, I'm simplifying a complicated issue but the point is not lost on many parents, including non-Chinese parents such as Sabriah, who at the end of the newspaper article, expressed her hope that the government would buld more Chinese primary schools.

Sabriah in unique in wanting to send her non-Chinese daughter to a Chinese independent secondary school. However, she's not unique in sending her non-Chinese daughter to a Chinese medium primary school. Many other non-Chinese parents are doing the same as they recognize the quality of education and discipline in Chinese medium primary schools, the increasing importance of knowing Chinese and the steady drop in standards in our national schools.

My hope is that Sabriah's wish to have her daughter study in a Chinese independent secondary school is fulfilled. I suspect that now that her plight has been made public, it would not be difficult to find her daughter a place in a Chinese independent school in Klang. If only the larger issue that her situation highlights can be addressed as easily.

P.S. I'm just starting to formally learn how to write and read Chinese so if I've made any errors in translating the contents of the SinChew article, please let me know.