By C C Pung
Justice of Peace
It is recognised across the world from UK to Singapore, the US to New Zealand.
THE Unified Examination Certificate (UEC) is a pre-U level exam offered by independent Chinese secondary schools in Malaysia.
Students typically take the exam when they are in Senior 3 (equivalent to conventional year 12).
UEC certs are recognised for university enrolment across the world from UK to Singapore, the US to New Zealand.
Ironically it is doesn’t get the same recognition at home, not for govt-run universities or government jobs.
The issue whether the Malaysian government should recognise UEC has been raging.
The Sarawak state government recognises it.
The Sabah government too demonstrated its recognition by recently awarding state scholarships to UEC holders.
In Peninsula Malaysia, UEC is a hot potato tossed between political parties trying to corner the Chinese votes.
The government as a whole has at best been ambivalent and at worst been speaking woth forked tongues.
Rising racial sentiments have prompted much untra views from the defenders of the national education policy (which priories Malay as the medium of teaching) and those who point to constitutional provisions allowing education in non Malay languages.
It’s an emotional subject that touches also educational, nation-building philosophy and, of course, common sense.
How do we reconcile the belief that a national language builds and unites a nation with the reality that a single-minded push for a single ‘unity’ language divides a population of many languages and cultures, of which tongues are essential component?
As it is, the nationalists’ resistance towards recognising the UEC is a serious wedge between the Chinese and the Malays.
Both are not wrong. But I wonder if any side is right.
Malaysia opted for the integration of its multiracial people who’ve coexistence side by side a long time before the country was born in 1963.
Our neighbours, Thailand and Indinesia, chose assimilation. Thailand through gentle persuasion and Indonesia the hardliners and often bloody path.
Unlike Malaysia where things Chinese thrive, little if the same isn’t in Thailand and Indenisia where millions of decendants of Chinese immigrants still live and thrive.
My little reading on immigration tells me that to expect immigrants to be assimilated into their host society is an obsolete mindset.
The new attitude is to allow gradual integration where the newcomers are allowed to continue with the tradition, beliefs, diet, etc.
I took note of many scholarly warnings that the dynamics, and therefore outcome, can differ greatly from place to place.
When the colonialists first came to today’s America, they annihilated everything native and brought in an alien culture.
Immigrants to modern Europe are trying the same.
In Malaysia where the main communities today were once immigrants, the native tribes have become marginalised.
Its eerily similar to how south Asian and African immigrants are pushing aside Caucasian-dominated powers that be from London to New York.
Is that the fear of the Malaysian power centre?
Are they worried about what could germinate from the UEC seed? Is the UEC all good, all bad, or somewhere in between?
Malaysia is 62 years old.
The Chinese vernacular schools, which leads to the UEC, is almost as old.
I think we can find in ourselves the way to move forward.
Editor: The views expressed here are of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of the talantang.com
