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 iii
Reclaiming the English Language in Postcolonial Malaysia:
Ethnicity, Class, and the Nostalgia for Global Citizenship

Abstract

This dissertation investigates how English, allegedly a “global language,” mediates

ethnic and class divisions in colonial and postcolonial Malaysia. After its independence

from the British, Malaysian government implemented an aggressive linguistic

nationalization policy. The national promotion of English after the 1990s seems to signal

the end of the period when nation-building depended on the national language and the

beginning of the time when the survival of a nation in the world economy becomes

dependent on English. Contradicting the definition of the “global” and the “national” as

antithetical forces, my discussion highlights how the locally produced ideologies of

“globalization” and “global language” legitimize the elite imagination of nation while

suppressing other versions of imaginations among the masses. The ideologies reflect the

English-educated elite’s nostalgia for the colonial past and their sense of intellectual,

cultural, social and moral superiority to the masses.

The first part reviews the linguistic and educational policies during the colonial and

the post-independence periods. The institutional segregation between the English-

educated elite and the vernacular-educated masses during the colonial period partly

overlapped with the racial segregation between “immigrants” and “natives.” The post-

independence policies indicate the lasting importance of English as a marker of racial and

class differences and the ambiguous status of the national language as the foundation of

national unity.

Defining public schools as the institution where policy ideas are put into practice, the
 iv
second part focuses on my participant research from July 2004 to August 2005 in two

schools in Kuala Lumpur. Despite their equal status in the education system and the

similar ethnic make-ups of their students, one bears the characteristics of an inner-city

school and the other is considered an elite school. The different experiences of nation and

the national language among the members of the two schools influence their reactions to

the reintroduction of English. While the students of the inner-city school, regardless of

their ethnic background, experience English as the language of their social and cultural

“others,” the members of the elite school believe that they exclusively own the language,

thus possess the qualification for the leadership as globally competitive model citizens.
 v
Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

1
Introduction:
The Myth of “Global Language” and the New Model of Citizenship 1

2
Postcolonial Dichotomies and the Racialization of Modernity 41

3
Presence of the Past: English in the State Ideology of Globalization 81

4
SMK Jalan Limau:
Experience of “Nation” on the Margin of a Modernizing City 104

5
Normative Monolingualism and Incomplete Linguistic Nationalization 142

6
SMK Taman Raya:
Defining “Model Citizens” in an Urban Elite School 191

7
Normative Bilingualism:
Unity in the National Language, Distinction in English 251

8
Conclusion:
Race, Class, and the Imaginations of Nation in the Era of Globalization 292

Bibliography 303
 vi
Acknowledgements

The completion of this dissertation would not have been possible without the help of

many people. First of all, I would like to express my special thanks to the teachers I met

and interviewed during my fieldwork in Kuala Lumpur. They warmly welcomed me into

their schools and shared their thoughts and experiences with me. At the time of the abrupt

changes in linguistic and educational policies, many of them were deeply concerned

about their students’ future and trying their best to serve them. I owe greatly to the

secondary school students that I interviewed, especially the small groups of girls in SMK

Jalan Limau, who invited me to their talks with friends and did not hesitate to tell me

about their dreams, complaints and worries. Though I cannot acknowledge their

contribution by name, I will always appreciate their warm reception of me. Responsibility

for the interpretations of their experience presented here, including any errors, belongs

solely to the author.

Many people in Anthropology Department at University of Virginia have helped me

develop and complete this project. Professor Richard Handler, my advisor, stood by me

with patience while I was trying to develop my research ideas into a concrete project. His

support and trust, together with his productive comments on my earlier writings, gave me

the strength to come this far. I thank Professors Dan Lefkowitz and Fred Damon for their

invaluable advice as my committee members. Professors Hanan Sabea and Peter Metcalf

shared their great insights with me in the earlier stages of my work. I also appreciate the

comments of Professor Echeverri-Gent in Department of Politics who kindly agreed to

serve as the outside reader in my committee. I was fortunate to have great people in my
 vii
cohort - Yadira Perez, Mathew Myer, Abigail Holeman, Carrie Heitman, Neil Norman,

and Dennis Blanton. Jean Siler helped me improve my writing in English in the second

and the third year of my coursework.

I am indebted to Professors Myung-seok Oh and Kwang-Ok Kim at Seoul National

University and Professor Hyun-Mi Kim at Yonsei University. They guided me to develop

my interest in the region of Southeast Asia and the politics of nation, education, and

language. I appreciate the support from people at University Kebangsaan Malaysia,

especially Professor Shamsul A.B., Professor Wan Zawawi Ibrahim, and Sumit Mandal.

They shared their great insights into Malaysian society and made me further realize the

importance of my work. I am also indebted to Puan Noraini and her family who hosted

me when I was taking intensive Malay language program. I learned most about every

lives of people in the suburb during my daily commute with her. My friends in Malaysia

helped me maintain emotional strength while I was doing my research.

I am especially grateful to my family back in South Korea. My parents, Jong-Ryun

Choi and Hyun-Sook Jang, always gave unconditional support for me and my work. My

sister Seong-Yeun and my brother Seong-Soon willingly shared the role of their absent

elder sister since I moved to the United States for a doctoral degree. I also thank to my

husband’s parents who deeply understood my pursuit of an academic career. My husband,

Jaesok Kim, was the greatest source of my confidence in my life and my work. Finally, I

thank to my daughter Yoon-Jae who gave me the strongest motivation to complete this

dissertation.
 1
Chapter One

Introduction: The Myth of “Global Language” and the New Model of Citizenship

1. The Myth of “Global Language”

The ubiquitous presence of the English language nowadays is often identified with

the very process of globalization: the increased flow of ideas, commodities, information,

capital, and people across the boundaries of states. The status of English as a “global

language” seems to be a condition of the globalizing era in which people all over the

world are interconnected through new communicational technologies and the global

system of market economy. The utopian imagination of a “global community” where

people communicate in English shows how the “linguistics of community,” that

originally emphasizes the role of a national language for building solidarity within a

nation, is now applied to the imagination of solidarity across national boundaries

(Anderson 1983; Pratt 1986:49).

The history of nation-building in many countries, however, revealed the gap between

the idealist imaginations of national communities and the reality of divisions and

discriminations within nation-states based on ethnic, racial, and class differences (Balibar

1991:44). The promotion of a common language did not completely abolish the

differences among citizens. Instead, it allowed the governments to moralize those

differences by implementing linguistic norms that all citizens should follow – if some

people failed to follow the norm, the failure constituted a solid reason to deny their full

membership to the “national community.” Would the new “global community” that is

imagined in English be any less discriminating than the imagined communities of

nations?
 2
In this dissertation, I discuss the moralizing effect of defining English as a “global

language.” The definition enables some people to claim their leadership roles in the

emerging “global community,” while questioning the qualification of their linguistic

“others” for the membership in the community. To emphasize that the claims to power

operate both across and within the boundaries of nations, I compare the theories of global

language with the role of the colonial/global language in the nation-building of

postcolonial Malaysia.

According to the linguistic model of nation-state, the English language should have

disappeared from the programs of nation-building when Malaysia acquired independence

from the British. My historical and ethnographic research, however, demonstrates that

English continued to serve as the language of communication among Malaysian elite and

as the symbol of their social, cultural and moral superiorities to the rest of citizens. Being

able to speak English does not just indicate a person’s linguistic skill. It is often

interpreted as a marker of modern and open-minded citizens who are qualified for the

best opportunities in society and befit the new model of “globally competitive citizens.”

The emerging theories about the “global language” facilitate the elite’s rationalization of

the prejudice.

Despite the overflowing images of inclusion and participation that the idea of a

“global language” evokes, it is not difficult to see how people use English as a criterion

for dividing up the world. In 1999, commenting on the Asian economic crisis and its

implication for the world economy, Paul Krugman wrote:

A lot of effort has gone into figuring out what the world’s crisis countries have in
common – indeed, the search for “indicators of vulnerability” has become a
substantial industry. But what about indicators of invulnerability? What do the
countries that have managed to remain prosperous while the world suffers have in
 3
common? Well, the answer is plain to the naked eye – or make that the naked ear. Yes,
the common denominator of the countries that have done best in this age of dashed
expectations is that they are the countries where English is spoken. (Fortune, April
26, 1999, “Want Growth? Speak English THAT CERTAIN JE NE SAIS QUOI OF
LES ANGLOPHONES”)

In the article, Krugman provides his speculations about the reasons behind the “common

destiny” of the “English-speaking economies (countries).” In addition to mentioning the

importance of English in the global economy and on Internet, he introduces two theories:

One of them suggests that the English-speaking economies prosper because they are run

by excellent government officers with professional knowledge about the most advanced

studies of economy, while other economies are controlled by the whim of bureaucrats

with little expertise; The other theory attributes the common destiny of English-speaking

economies to their successful neoliberal turns after the 1980s, a tide that other economies

failed to join perhaps because of their limited access to Milton Friedman’s original

publications in English. Krugman, however, instead of furthering his speculations,

concludes the article by introducing the idea of zeitgeist: “[O]ne thing is clear: Something

about the zeitgeist – sorry, I mean the spirit of the time – favors those of us who speak

English. Let’s enjoy it while it lasts.”

In the same year, a British daily newspaper, The Independent, published an article

titled “Why Anglo-Saxon nations have the fastest-growing economies” (September 3,

1999). The author of the article, a British financial journalist Hamish McRae, asks the

readers to think of a global economy in terms of “language and culture” instead of

“physical proximity.” Imagined this way, he argues, about half of the world economy in

the “English language zone” is doing well, while “the rest” of the world is “still

struggling to escape recession.” After providing three possible explanations for the
 4
tendency, MaRae ends the article reminding the readers that “the fastest growing

countries during the Internet Age of the past five years have been English-speaking

ones.”

In less than ten years since the two articles were written, the landscape of the global

economy has changed dramatically and the triumphalism in the articles rings hollow. The

world is experiencing an economic recession that originates from the largest “English-

speaking economy” on the globe. Does the changed economic situation, however, make

any dent to the belief that the English is functionally superior to other languages in

coping with the technological and economic changes of the globalizing era? Does any

analyst argue that the current economic crisis in “English-speaking countries” has

something to do with their “language and culture”? 1

The linguistic and cultural ethnocentrism, disguised as the scientific observation of

the facts, is not the only problem common to the two articles. According to them, the

units that make up “the English-speaking zone” of the world and “the rest” are not

individuals or corporations but “countries” such as the United States, the UK, Canada,

Australia, Japan and Thailand. Similarly, the entities that speak or do not speak English

are not people but “economies.” The two articles fail to shed the old habit of assuming

countries (or states) as linguistic, cultural, and economic units. 2 In each state, however,

1
A news article commenting on the common tasks ahead of Prime Minister Gordon Brown and President
Obama participating in G20 summit meeting was originally titled “English-Speaking Capitalism on Trial”
(New York Times, March 29, 2009). However, nowhere did the article indicate that the common language of
the two countries has any connection to the ongoing economic crisis. In later editions, the title was changed
into “Anglo-American Capitalism on Trial.”
2
The assumption reflects the principle of nation-state that the boundaries of a nation should correspond to
those of a state. McRae’s use of the term “Anglo-Saxon nations” implies that there are non-linguistic
dimensions to the concept of nation-state – the dimensions of race and ethnicity. The idea that “English-
speaking countries” are at the same time “Anglo-Saxon nations” contradicts the assumption of
inclusiveness in the linguistically-oriented model of nation and its application to the imagination of “global
community.” At the level of a state, the idea promotes an exclusive and discriminatory model of citizenship
 5
there are linguistic and cultural diversities as well as social and economic inequalities. It

is not a state or a nation that speaks a language or has an economic status, but people

who have followed diverse social and historical trajectories of lives. What is it like to live

and work as non-English-speaking immigrants in a so-called “English-speaking

economy” such as the United States? Do they share the same economic destiny with all

others living in the same country? How about the English-speaking people in the “non-

English-speaking economies”? Do they share the same culture with their fellow citizens?

In this dissertation, I emphasize that English often symbolizes economic inequalities

and linguistic and cultural differences within an “economy” or a country, whether it is an

“English-speaking” or a “non-English-speaking” one. Malaysia was one of Asian

countries affected by the financial crisis of 1997. The country has recovered from the

crisis in a relatively short period without an intervention of the International Monetary

Fund (IMF). It is hard to know if the unmistakable presence of the English language in

Malaysia, which owes greatly to the past of British colonization, helped the country to

overcome the crisis. What is well known to the world is that, during the time of crisis,

Mahathir Mohamad, then Prime Minister of Malaysia, strongly criticized the greed of

currency traders from prosperous countries in the West. While some western analysts

were pointing the finger at the corruption and moral hazard in the economic system as the

major cause of the crisis in Asian countries, Mahathir blamed currency traders and hedge

fund companies, especially George Soros and his company, for causing the financial

turmoil in Southeast Asian countries. The western analysts highlighted the internal causes

of the financial crisis, the cultural and linguistic problems that might have negatively

that English-speaking and Anglo-Saxon population represents the so-called “English-speaking countries.”
 6
affected the economic performance of the crisis-struck Asian countries. In contrast,

Mahathir emphasized the external causes such as currency speculation by hedge fund

companies.

Malaysian Prime Minister’s accusation of the western capitalist demonstrates a

typical rendition of dependency theory that attributes the poverty of “developing

countries” in the South to the economic imperialism of the “developed countries” in the

North. Mahathir argued that for “a group of ultra-rich people,” including currency traders,

“wealth must come from impoverishing others” and “from taking what others have in

order to enrich themselves” (New York Times, Sept. 22, 1997). He also claimed that the

alleged economic deprivation of the Asian developing countries originated from the

desires of people from developed countries to continue their exclusive power in the

global economy. According to Mahathir, the people “in control of the big money seem to

want to see these Southeast Asian countries and in particular Malaysia stop trying to

catch up with their superiors and to know their place” (International Herald Tribune,

Sept. 22, 1997). 3

Mahathir depicted himself as an aggressive fighter against “financial imperialism”

and a guardian of Malaysia’s national economy. His version of “economic nationalism”

may seem to provide an antithesis to the linguistic and cultural ethnocentrism in the two

articles that I introduced earlier. But what were the “language and culture” that he

believed would help Malaysia to catch up with the developed countries?

With the same assertiveness in which he criticized the greed of international

3
In response to Mahathir’s accusation of him, Soros argued that their feud represents the “ideological
differences” between the “vision of an open society” and “Asian values.” Soros developed his defense of
the free flow of capital into a promotion of democracy, claiming that the emphasis on Asian values had
“served as a convenient pretext for resisting democratic aspirations” (International Herald Tribune,
September 22, 1997).
 7
speculators from the West, Mahathir blamed his own people for lacking some

indispensable qualities for development: the proficiency in English and the first-class

mindset. In fact, in the early 1990s, years before the financial crisis, English emerged as

one of the key elements in the new model of citizenship for Malaysia’s future

development. The model promoted “global competitiveness” as the primary virtue of the

model citizens who would lead the future of the country. In 2003, forty-six years after

independence, Malaysian government reintroduced English as a medium of instruction in

public primary and secondary schools. The new policy was expected to help the country

acquire the status of a fully “developed country” by the year 2020.

Does the connection between English and economic development, made both by the

political leaders of Malaysia and the western analysts from English-speaking countries,

merely reflect the undeniable condition of the globalizing era? Just as the western

analysts interpret English as an indicator of successful and unsuccessful economies,

Mahathir and other English-speaking elites in Malaysia adopt English as a marker of

distinctions among its citizens. In the following chapters, I discuss how English operates

as a symbol of elite’s intellectual, cultural, and moral superiorities to the rest of people in

society.

The most important element in ethnocentrism is not ethnic difference between those

who judge others and those who are judged by them. When a small number of elites

resort to their parochial experience and values to make judgment about their fellow

citizens, their elitist logic can become just as ethnocentric as the arguments of western

analysts. In the history of Malaysia’s colonization and postcolonial nation-building,

languages (or sets of linguistic repertoire) served as the symbol of racial, ethnic and class
 8
differences. The logics of distinction became obvious when Mahathir and the supporters

of his pro-English agenda linked English to the value of national unity and social

progress, while describing local languages, including the Malay-based national language,

as the site of traditionalism, parochialism and ethnic divisions.

The language-oriented model of modern nationhood does not seem to help us

understand the situation where the national language is considered divisive rather than

unifying while a former colonial language is taken as the language of national unity.

Some might argue that the process of globalization transformed the nationalist order that

we are familiar with. However, in Malaysia, English not only provides a language to the

imagination of the country’s future as a politically united and economically prosperous

nation, but provokes nostalgic recollections of the country’s colonial past. Does the

merger between the country’s past and future via English indicate the uninterrupted

continuation of colonial legacy? My ethnographic research shows that, despite the

undeniable traces of the colonial presence, the nation-building projects have significantly

changed the way languages mediate social differences.

The concept of “globalization” and the idea of English as a “global language” do not

necessarily reflect a new order of the world, but provide new vocabulary to express old

beliefs. The ideology of globalization helps the English-speaking elite to legitimize their

nationalist imaginations in the name of making the country “global competitive” while

denouncing the imaginations of others. However sincere government elites are when they

claim to work for the collective interest of the “people,” their imaginations for the future

of the nation are limited by their own experiences and cultural values. My ethnographic

studies of an urban elite school and an inner-city school show where the government
 9
elites locate the globalist models of citizenship and nationhood between the two schools

with different social, economic and historical backgrounds.

Would the reclamation of English by the government bring development and unity to

the country, or merely strengthen the existing inequalities along the lines of ethnic and

class divisions? I argue that the elites’ belief in the functional superiority of English

provides a foundation of their authoritative claims to power within the state. By

emphasizing the link between English and globalization, the English-educated colonial

elite and their successors claim to own the exclusive qualification for leadership roles.

The claim often turns into the disapproval of social, cultural, and economic changes in

the country during the period of post-independence nation-building.

Ironically, the English-educated colonial elites and their successors, as other citizens

of the country, were not free from nation-building projects. Rather, they managed to

reproduce their status by transforming themselves from the colonial to the national elites.

Therefore, when the English-speaking elite claim their exclusive qualification for

national leadership roles in the era of globalization, the claims easily turn into nostalgia

for the linguistic and cultural practice within the exclusive community of the colonial

elite. In other words, the elite’s imaginations for the nation’s future in the globalizing era

tent to be retrospective. The tendency also means that, despite the elite sense of

superiority to the masses, the new model of globally competitive citizens evoke the elite

the sense of inferiority to both their predecessors of the colonial period and the people in

“English-speaking” countries.

2. The Agents of Myth-Making

 10
The idea of English as the “spirit of the time” or the language required by the era of

global capitalism is a “myth” that has a powerful moralizing effect. By arguing that the

use of English is a commonsense of the globalizing era, the proponents of the global

language render their own cultural beliefs into an undisputable truth. The argument also

involves the disapproval and denunciation of those who do not seem to follow the

commonsense. Who are the people that produce the myth of the global language? What

motivates them to propagate the idea? How does the myth influence everyday lives of

people including the proponent of the global language? My discussion focuses on the

agents of myth-making and the social and political effects of their practice.

The “theories” I introduce below provide different explanations about the agents who

produce and reproduce the idea of a “global language” and the social and political effects

of their practice. For the convenience of discussion, I label them as (1) the theory of

linguistic imperialism, (2) the theory of voluntarism, and (3) the globalization theory.

Despite significant differences among the three approaches, they have a common

problem. They assume that the dominance of English is a given fact, therefore, tend to

become rationalizations after the fact. The problem primarily comes from the assumption

that “economy” ultimately determines people’s cultural beliefs about languages. The

assumption leads the three theories to a common conclusion: As far as “globalization”

dominates the economic condition of the world, the belief in the functional superiority of

English also prospers. There is nothing surprising about the similarity among Krugman,

McRae and Mahathir in their opinions about the role of English in the economic

development of a country. They are just responding to the requirement of the global

economic system. The belief in the superiority of English is detached from the
 11
relationship between people with different life trajectories, linguistic repertoires, and

cultural values, and then attributed to the time of global capitalism.

Finding the Agents in the West: the Critique of “Linguistic Imperialism”

The theory of linguistic imperialism, developed from the discussions about the

condition of African languages, locates the myth of “global English” in Western

(neo)imperialist institutions. According to the theory, if the myth was first produced by

the imperialists of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, it is now reproduced by

neo-imperialists in the former imperialist states.

Alamin Mazrui examines the involvement of the World Bank in the language and

education policies of African countries and its contribution to the idea of English’s

superiority to African languages. He asks what was the “hidden agenda” behind the

World Bank-IMF structural adjustment programme, when it recommended Tanzanian

government to adopt English as the language of education from the primary level.

According to Mazrui, the recommendation reveals the “linguistic Eurocentrism” of the

World Bank which assumes that “fluency in the imperialist languages may help promote

political stability and build national unity as well as serve economic purposes.” The

World Bank study which concludes that the educational system of Tanzania is less

effective than that of Kenya and the inferiority is “attributable, in part, to the exclusive

emphasis on Kiswahili as a medium of instruction at the primary level” also testifies its

Eurocentrism (1997: 37- 43).

Robert Phillipson (2000) discusses the new forms of “linguistic imperialism” in the

contemporary world, focusing on “professional imperialism” in the field of English

 12
language teaching (ELT) in general and the British Council in particular. According to

him, the idea of English as a “world language” contributes to the structure of inequality

(especially between center and periphery as defined in dependency theory) by ignoring

the “linguistic human rights” of other language speakers. Phillipson argues that the

institutions in the profession of ELT are marketing English as the “language of

international communication and understanding, economic development, national unity

and similar positive ascriptions” in the “entire post-colonial world,” which reflects their

“Anglocentrism” disguised in the form of professionalism.

The labels that the two analysts apply to the belief in the superiority of English –

Eurocentrism and Anglocentrism – show that they locate the ideology within

geographical and racial boundaries. Their discussions commonly imply that institutions in

the imperialist countries in the West have exclusive ownership of the idea that English is

the best language for bringing political stability, national unity, and economic

development in the politically volatile and economically stagnant non-western states. If

the same idea is found in the policies of non-western countries, it should be the result of

ideological imposition by the (neo)imperialist institutions.

Phillipson and Mazrui emphasize the characteristics of the World Bank and the

British Council as quasi-imperialist institutions. However, do they have the political

power to impose certain policies to the people in other countries as the imperialist states

did in the nineteenth and the early twentieth century? If not, how could the government

leaders of the independent states let the international institutions influence their national

policies?

Phillipson and Mazrui do not ignore the role of the state and the state elites. The
 13
theory of linguistic imperialism, however, excludes the possibility that the leaders

themselves are the bearers of Eurocentrism or Anglocentrism. According to them, if the

leaders of “non-European” and “non-Anglo” countries incorporate English into the

government projects for economic development and political unity, they are pursuing

their exclusive “self-interest.”

Both argue that the dominance of English is maintained within the African countries

by individuals and groups consciously seeking their interest in reproducing class

inequalities. According to Phillipson, “[T]he use of English serves the interest of some

much better than others” and “includes some and excludes others” (2000:89). The

reproduction of inequality occurs through governments’ false promises about the benefits

of using English. Phillipson claims that “the promise of what might be achieved in and

through English” is “a hollow sham” and that, “in most post-colonial states,” English is

the “hallmark of corrupt self-serving governments which are in league with transnational

corporations” (ibid.:93). Similarly, Mazrui argues that English caters to an economy

“dominated primarily by foreign economic interests and, secondarily, by a small aspiring

African bourgeoisie” (1997:44). Both assume that the masses in African countries are

passive victims of the ideological manipulation by the “self-interested” local bourgeoisie

who are in alliance with “ethnocentric” westerners.

The dual framework of “ethnocentrism/ self-interest” leaves out an important

question: How could a government claim its political legitimacy while seeking the

exclusive self-interest of elites? Even during the imperialist period, English was

promoted in the name of enlightenment, development and progress rather than that of

oppression and exploitation. If the postcolonial elites are the product of the western-style
 14
education, why shouldn’t they be the true believers in what they have learned in colonial

schools? If they could live better by acquiring English, why shouldn’t they believe that it

would be also the case with other people? If, for them, the colonial education in English

was an experience of “inclusion,” how could they fully understand that English was a

language of “exclusion” for other people?

I argue that the elites express their versions of “ethnocentrism” when they use their

own particularistic experience as the criteria for determining how other people should

live for their progress and development. The myth of global language gains its moralizing

power when the leaders “claim to expertise in optimizing in the lives of others” by

promoting the use of English (Li 2007:5). The claims, however, are produced based on

the elites’ partial understanding of their societies and may not always guarantee their self-

interest. As I discuss later, even for the small number of elites and “aspiring bourgeoisie”

in Malaysia, the benefit of English is at best ambiguous (Chapter 7).

Free Individuals as the Agent: Voluntarism

Voluntarism, as the critique of linguistic imperialism does, assumes that postcolonial

elites behave according to their interest. But the two approaches have important

differences. The critique of linguistic imperialism emphasizes the influence of

(neo)imperialists in the West on the postcolonial elite’s definition of their exclusive

interest. To the contrary, voluntarism assumes that individuals in the post-independence

states are free to choose their own languages and the benefit of English can be shared by

anyone, thus “democratized.” While the theory of linguistic imperialism defines English

as a “neo-imperial language,” voluntarism considers English as a “post-imperial

 15
language” – a language that has shed its identification with imperialism once the former

colonies gained their independence. The analysts of voluntarism argue that, in the

absence of forceful imposition by the colonial power, individuals learn English on their

own volition because English is functionally and socially more desirable than other

languages.

Criticizing the idea of “linguistic imperialism,” Joshua Fishman asks “whether that

continued spread [of English] is in any way directly orchestrated by, fostered by, or

exploitatively beneficial to the English mother-tongue world.” Fishman argues that the

continued spread of English in “non-English mother-tongue countries” is energized by

“forces or processes that transcend the English mother-tongue world itself” (1996:3).

According to him, one of the elements that define the “forces and processes” is the idea

of mutual benefits. The mutuality exists not only between the “English mother-tongue

world” and “non-English mother-tongue countries” but also between the elite and the

masses of the post-independence states. Therefore, for Fishman, the spread of English in

the new states means the “democratization of a formerly elitist resource” (ibid.:7). He

suggests that the continued presence of English in “substantially autonomous societies,

all of who are essentially following their own ‘commonsense needs and desires’” only

proves the benefits of acquiring English to both the elite and the masses in the “non-

English mother-tongue countries”(ibid.:639).

Braj Kachru discusses the meaning of English for the elites in British and American

colonies, focusing especially on the cases from British India. According to Kachru,

although it was the colonialists who promoted English as the tool of cultural

enlightenment and technological progress, there were people in the colonies predisposed
 16
to accept the ideas of enlightenment and progress. Kachru argues that in colonies “There

already existed an ambitious (albeit small) group who wanted to acquire English,”

therefore “The word ‘imposed’ is tricky here, for what was attitudinally prestigious and

pragmatically desirable and rewarding did not need imposition: Power seems to have a

way of creating its linguistic base.” As the result of the elites’ voluntary incorporation of

English, “the local languages slowly lost the battle for prestige and power” (1986:7). For

Kachru, though English may be a tool of power, it is not a tool of oppression, because any

pragmatically-minded people would freely seek to learn English and the elite

membership is open to those newcomers.

The proposition reflects what Pierre Bourdieu calls “the illusion of linguistic

communism” in linguistic theory, the assumption that language acquisition is “a sort of

mystical participation, universally and uniformly accessible and therefore excluding any

form of dispossession” (1991:43). The history of the British “indirect rule” in colonies

shows that the vast majority of the colonized people had no opportunity to learn English

even when they aspired to do so. The British colonial administration carefully controlled

the supply of English education to maintain linguistic and cultural differences between

the colonizer and the colonized as well as between the “enlightened” natives and their

others. The linguistically and culturally defined colonial social order denied elite

membership to most of the colonized people. The denial, however, was done not in the

name of “exclusion” but the “protection” of linguistic and cultural traditions among the

colonized. The comments on linguistic difference between the elite and the non-elite,

therefore, often adopted other evaluative terms: the English-speaking elite who are

“enlightened” and “modern” and the non-English-speaking masses that remain in the
 17
realm of “tradition.” I discuss how the evaluative terms persist in the post-independence

state and combine with the distinction between “civic” and “ethnic” nationalisms.

The independence, with no doubt, brought some changes to the monopoly of English

by the colonizers and the elite among the colonized. But did it also change the conditions

of social and economic inequalities? Did it abolish the moralizing frameworks that

rationalize the inequalities? English became “democratized” when the mass education

system in the newly-independent countries assigned class hours to the instruction of

English. The mass education system, which rapidly expanded with the scare resource in

the new states, failed to meet the standards set by the colonial elite schools. English-

educated political leaders and intellectuals often complained that the democratization of

English negatively affected the quality of English spoken in their countries and the

quality of education in general.

The colonial elite believed that English was “attitudinally prestigious” and

“pragmatically desirable and rewarding,” thus should be further promoted in the post-

independence state. In contrast, others fundamentally doubted whether English could ever

become “democratized” or serve as a language of democracy. They argued that its link to

the exclusive elite privilege during the colonial period would prevent most of non-elite

people from participating in the politics of the independent state. Indeed, the emergence

of linguistic nationalisms challenged the political power of the colonial elite and the

authority of the language linked to the power. Kachru, who is known for his positive

acknowledgement of indigenized forms of English or “Englishes,” strongly disapproves

linguistic nationalisms:

In India, as elsewhere, politicians of different hues exploit the language issues and
invariably paralyze the educational and administrative systems. However, the more
 18
pragmatic among them see to it that their own children, and other loved ones, are
able to get an English education. (Kachru 1986:14-5, emphasis added)

For him, it is impossible for pragmatically-minded people to criticize the dominance of

English instead of seeking social advancement through the language. However, does

everybody see the same pragmatic values in English as the English-educated elites do?

The notorious concept of “economic man” haunts Kachru’s argument when he assumes

that, only given the chances, every rational individual will make the same linguistic

choice to maximize their interest and the language of their choice is always English.

In reality, people make different choices. The difference does not necessarily mean

that one choice is always more practical and desirable than others. The definitions of

commonsense practicality depend on the social context of the definitions (Willis 1977;

Bourdieu 1991). In an inner-city school in Kuala Lumpur, teachers found it hard to make

students feel the need to study English. In contrast, most of students and teachers in an

elite school could not even imagine any social accomplishment without English. The

different senses of linguistic practicality come from the different life experiences and

social trajectories of people. The question is who has the power to set the norm against

which the diverse senses of practicality are judged.

Fishman and Kachru do not acknowledge that there may be multiple definitions of

commonsense practicality. Instead, they identify one definition with “reason” and

“political neutrality” and others with “political ideologies.” Fishman claims that “If the

cold war has, indeed, receded into history … then it is high time that our thinking on the

spread of English also become more de-ideologized” (ibid.:9). By taking English as the

only pragmatic choice for all people and criticizing those arguing otherwise as the victim
 19
of ideologies, their advocacy of linguistic pragmatism gains moralistic overtones.

Furthermore, for Fishman and Kachru, English is not just the language of practicality and

rationality. It is also the language of national unity in the now independent former British

and American colonies, whose political integrity is constantly challenged by tribal, ethnic,

religious divisions and the languages that promote those divisions.

In short, they explain the relationship between English and other languages in post-

independent states in terms of pragmatic reason vs. nationalistic passion, political

neutrality vs. political ideology, and national unity vs. ethnic (tribal) division. As I

discuss in the following chapters, the moralizing dichotomies emerge as important

themes in national politics in former British colonies. My ethnographic chapters will

show how the moralizing frameworks play out in the everyday politics of language and

culture in Malaysian schools.

The arguments by Fishman and Kachru, despite many problems, seem to be right

about one thing: English is promoted not only by the (neo)imperialist from the West but

also by the colonial elite and their successors who are predisposed to see the benefit of

English. The ethnocentric and imperialist westerners are not the only people who adopt

the dichotomies to judge their linguistic, cultural and social “others.” Introducing the

concept of “reason,” the two analysts advocate those who are predisposed to see the

benefit of English while denouncing the others. They suggest that colonial social

divisions through English become completely irrelevant from the moment when colonies

acquired political independence. The moralizing frameworks that they introduce to

rationalize the dominance of English, however, prove that the colonial social divisions

persist in the post-independence state. Their arguments show that the divisions are now
 20
expressed in the elite’s prejudice against the linguistic and cultural practice of the masses.

Globalization as the Agent: English as the Language “Required” by Globalization

The two approaches that I have discussed so far provide different explanations for the

forces behind the spread of English in “non-English-speaking countries.” The critique of

linguistic imperialism emphasizes the role of external forces produced mainly in the

developed countries of the West. Voluntarism highlights internal forces such as the elites’

motivation to learn English and the benefit of learning English. Ultimately, however, both

approaches claim that it is not the people who create the value of English, but the system

of global capitalism which operates mainly in English.

The market motive of the World Bank’s Euro-linguistic bias, on the other hand, has
more to do with the role of the English language as a medium of global capitalism. …
If international capitalism helped the fortunes of English … the consolidation of that
capitalism on a global scale has now, to a certain extent, become dependent on the
language. (Mazrui 1997:44)

From this perspective, the cultural faith that some people have in the functional

superiority of English merely mirrors the expansion of global capitalism. Once English

became a dominant language with the help of international capitalism, in turn, the

ideology of “global English” helps consolidating that capitalism. When institutions such

as the British Council valorize the usefulness of English for “international

communication and understanding, economic development, national unity and similar

positive ascriptions,” they do not just impose their cultural belief on their linguistic others

but also obscure the “reality of globalization” that “the majority of the world’s population

is being impoverished” (Phillipson 2000:99). But how could the state elite incorporate

values that would ultimately facilitate the impoverishment of their fellow citizens without
 21
endangering their own political authorities?

Fishman seems to provide an answer to the question when he claims that the time

when English was considered the tool of impoverishment or oppression has receded into

the past with the political independence of colonies. While the critics of linguistic

imperialism argue that global capitalism enriches some privileged people at the expense

of impoverishing others, the supporters of voluntarism suggest that the global capitalist

system promises increased wealth for all. According to Fishman(1996:639),

Economically unifying and homogenizing corporate and multinational forces are

increasingly creating a single market into which all societies – former colonial and
non-colonial states alike – can be and, indeed, for their own self-interests’ sake,
usually seek to be integrated. The language of these forces is now most frequently
English, although this need not be the case forever and a day.

Thus, it is not the ethnocentric (neo)imperialists in the West but the “forces or processes

that transcend the English mother-tongue world itself” that make English the language of

rational choice (ibid.:3). English has become “post-imperial” and “may now be

facilitating the economic development of the formerly colonized regions, particularly by

facilitating their participation in the world capitalist system” (ibid.:8). Because the “free”

and “independent” states make their decisions based on the universal reason within the

global capitalist system, English should be beneficial to all people, not just to a small

group of elites. If some people fail to see what they need to do in the “post-imperial” era

of globalization, they themselves, not the people from “English-speaking countries” or

the elite in “non-English mother-tongue countries,” should take responsibility for their

marginalization in the global capitalist system.

In addition, voluntarism implies that the dominance of English reflects the reality of

present and future, just as the universal reason belongs to the “post-imperial” era of
 22
globalization and its dominant economic system. In contrast, linguistic nationalism, once

considered indispensable part of national identities, becomes the ideology of the past.

David Laitin, a political scientist who has worked extensively on language issues,

provides a good example of how the temporal framework is introduced to judge different

linguistic values.

The brouhaha in France over the issue of English as the medium of scientific
exchange in the journal of the Louis Pasteur Institute seems arcane today. National
culture, nearly all elites in France now agree, must give way to the realities of
globalization. … Nationalism vs. globalization – these counter-pressures are seen most
starkly in issues concerning language. The status of English in western Europe,
Russian in the former Soviet Union, and English and French in the states that have
received independence since 1945, raise sensitive political issues. One the one hand,
globalization makes these languages tools for international communication. People
want to keep their mother tongues alive, even if those languages are left behind in the
world of technology and interdependence. (Laitin 1993:228, emphases added)

According to him, people’s attachment to the national language and mother tongues

belongs to the realm of “culture” from the past. In contrast, English is the language

required by the “reality” of globalization characterized by its technological innovation

and economic interdependence. The argument suggests that it is not the people but the

force of globalization that makes history. Politics no more belongs to the people with

different experiences and values, but occurs between “counter-pressures” of “nationalism

vs. globalization” or the culture of the past vs. the reality of the present.

The tendency to attribute history to the time itself also exists in the studies of

nationalism. The time of globalization reveals its distinctive characters against the

temporal interpretation of nationalism. For example, Benedict Anderson discusses how

the “European language-of-state” model spread around the world and produced modular

ways of imagining nationhood. For him, language is not only the central content of the
 23
imagination, as it is in the European model of linguistically homogeneous nation-state,

but capable of “generating imagined communities” and “solidarities” (1991:133). He

emphasizes the role of bilingual colonial elite (using both the language of colonizers and

the colonial lingua franca of the region) in the transformation of colonies into

independent states. Their historical roles, however, are predetermined by the European

model of nation-state and print capitalism. They connect the “European language-of-

state” model to the “imagined community” that is “already made possible” by mass

publication in the colonial lingual franca (print capitalism) (ibid.:116). The ultimate force

behind the diffusion of the nation-state model and its institutionalization into the state

system all over the world is the print capitalism that began to flourish in the early

twentieth century, not political struggles of people with different imaginations for

nationhood. In Anderson’s discussion, it is the conditions of the time that determines the

elites’ imagination of the independent nationhood and their roles in the establishment of

state institutions. As Partha Chatterjee points out, Anderson treats language-centered

nationalism as the “anthropological fact” in the era of print capitalism and gives little

attention to the “twists and turns, the suppressed possibilities, the contradictions still

unresolved” (1986:22, also cf. Pratt 1987; Silverstein 2000).

The absence of politics in Anderson’s “linguistics of community” is also obvious

when he explains the decreased role of the national language in terms of a temporal

transition from the time of “linguistic nationalism” to that of “non-linguistic

nationalism.” What can the governments of “non-English-speaking countries” do, if the

“reality” of globalization requires them to incorporate English? Can the political leaders

now imagine nations without their distinctive languages? Anderson suggests that national
 24
languages were once indispensable for the imaginations of national solidarity, but that

may not be the case anymore.

It is not clear yet whether thirty years from now there will be a generation of
Mozambiquians who speak only Mozambique-Portuguese. But, in this late twentieth
century, it is not necessarily the case that the emergence of such a generation is a sine
qua non for Mozambiquian national solidarity. In the first place, advances in
communication technology, especially radio and television, give print allies
unavailable a century ago. Multilingual broadcasting can conjure up the imagined
community to illiterates and population with different mother-tongues. … In the
second place, twentieth-century nationalisms have … a profoundly modular character.
They can, and do, draw on more than a century and a half of human experience and
three earlier models of nationalism. Nationalist leaders are thus in a position
consciously to deploy civil and military educational systems modeled on official
nationalism’s; elections, party organizations, and cultural celebrations modeled on the
popular nationalisms of nineteenth-century Europe; and the citizen-republican idea
brought into the world by the Americas. (Anderson 1991:134-5)

The question of political legitimacy does not arise in Anderson’s discussion. The

invention of new communication technologies and the evolution of nationalism allow the

national leaders the freedom to deploy the linguistic and non-linguistic methods of their

choice to produce state-level solidarity. For Anderson, nationalism is the cultural model

of governing the population and, in the era that comes after the period of language-

centered nationalism, the model is freed from its bind to national languages.

Globalization theory assumes that it is the time itself (and the economic system and

the technological innovations that belong to the time) that creates the global importance

of English and decreases the importance of national languages. By assuming that the

trend is unavoidable and the direction of change is irreversible, the theory a-historicize

and a-politicize the dominance of English over the national languages. Furthermore, the

endorsement of the theory by the elites, whether they are from “English-speaking” or

“non-English-speaking” countries, produces a strong moralizing effect. It allows them to

 25
forget about the parochial ground of their arguments and claim that their promotion of

English simply reflects the requirement by the time of globalization.

English in Malaysia, however, belongs to the past as much as it belongs to the present

and the future. The “global language” and the membership in the global community that

the acquisition of the language promises, thus, become the subjects of nostalgia. The

retrospective overtone in the promotion of the “global language” in Malaysia provides an

optimal example to criticize the temporal framework in which the global dominance of

English is rationalized.

3. Nostalgia for Global Citizenship: Moralizing Linguistic Diversity among Citizens

James Ferguson (2006) argues that anthropologists’ assumption of anti-colonial

nationalism may jeopardize their studies of cultural politics in postcolonial states. Social

anthropologists with “an explicitly anti-imperialist and nationalist political position”

expect to see how the people of postcolonial states seek to recover their sense of human

dignity, especially by affirming indigenous cultures that had been despised by the racist

colonizers. Therefore, when the assumption of anti-colonial nationalism is challenged by

the “cultural others” who nostalgically recollect the colonial days and find solutions to

their current problems in the success of their colonizers, anthropologists get

“embarrassed.” Ferguson suggests that while anthropologists take the colonized native’s

aspiration for cultural authenticity for granted, some of the natives may claim that the

matter of cultural authenticity is secondary to the acquisition of membership in the

modern global society.

Ferguson’s discussion focuses on western anthropologists’ reactions to the presence

 26
of the “westernized” urban Africans and African counter-reactions to western

anthropologists. Before affirming the westernized natives’ aspiration for membership in a

new “world society,” however, I think it is necessary to study the relationship between the

westernized natives and their “others” (the non-westernized natives). The two groups of

people became fellow citizens of a postcolonial state, but as the word “westernized”

indicates, there were significant cultural and linguistic differences between them.

According to the utopian model of nationalism, the differences should have vanished in

the course of nationalization and the citizens should have unified in a national language

that is not the language of their former colonizers.

Even during the heyday of nationalism, however, the consensus about the role of the

national language was an ideal rather than a reality (Pratt 1987; Silverstein 2000:129;

Chatterjee 1986, 2004). In many of former British colonies, the strongest political

competitors of linguistic nationalists were the elites educated in English-medium schools.

The tension between the pursuit of cultural authenticity and the aspiration for global

citizenship is part of the story behind the political rivalry, but the social and economic

gaps between the two groups should not be overlooked. In some postcolonial states,

different opinions about the language of the new nationhood precipitated political turmoil

that sometimes involved bloody clashes. Among them were the riots in 1969 that

occurred in major cities of Malaysia, which signaled the beginning of Malay-centered

linguistic, cultural, social and economic policies. The incident indicates that, contrary to

what the three theories of global language suggest, the political victory was not always on

the side of the pro-English elite. However, unlike the assumption in the utopian model of

nationalism, the replacement of the colonial language (English) with a national language
 27
happened only in some of the former British colonies. The nostalgia for global citizenship

should be interpreted in the context of the linguistic, cultural, political, and economic

heterogeneities within postcolonial states.

In the following chapters, I will discuss how the elite identification of English with

practicality, rationality, national unity, and the economic development of the country

returns to the central ground of Malaysian politics after two decades of linguistic

nationalization. When adopted by the policy makers, the identification of English with a

series of positive values provides a framework to make moral judgment about linguistic,

cultural, social and economic diversities among citizens. For now, I want to emphasize

the parochial foundation of the universalizing moral claims by questioning the

identification of English with national unity (and national languages with ethnic or tribal

divisions).

Benedict Anderson highlights the importance of colonial elites’ educational

pilgrimage for the formation of “civic” national consciousness: “In his journey he [a

colonial elite man] understood rather quickly that his point of origin –conceived either

ethnically, linguistically, or geographically – was of small significance … [o]ut of this

pattern came that subtle, half-concealed transformation, step by step, of the colonial-state

into the national-state” (1991:114-5). The emerging civic national consciousness among

the colonial elite had a serious limitation: only a small number of the colonized could join

the pilgrimage and the cultural and linguistic contents of the consciousness were based on

their parochial experience. Contrary to what Anderson suggests, the print capitalism did

not automatically resolve the limitation of the small number. The educational pilgrimage

signaled the emergence of a colonial elite class distinguished from the rest of the
 28
colonized by their cosmopolitanism and common language. Furthermore, in most British

colonies, the language of that pilgrimage was not a lingua franca of the region (such as

the emergent form of Bahasa Indonesia in Dutch Batavia) but English. Not surprisingly,

the colonial elite often dreamed of independent states in which English maintains its

status as the language of administration and education.

In Malaysia, the small number of participants in the pilgrimage prevented the colonial

elite from realizing their imagination of nationhood in the independent state. The

educational pilgrimage, however, provided its participants a moral framework to judge

people with different imaginations of nationhood. For them, English symbolized civic

unity and the blindness to ethnic differences in the independent state. Attachment to one’s

“point of origin” (or the pursuit of cultural authenticity in Ferguson’s terms) was

something to be left behind as it might be threatening to civic solidarity as imagined by

the elite. In other words, the seemingly inclusive imagination of civic solidarity contains

a moralistic distinction between those who are ready to forget their points of origin

(mostly colonial elite educated in English-medium schools) and those who are not

(mostly non-elites with little access to educational pilgrimage in English). The

imagination contrasts the “cosmopolitan civic nationalism” among the “elite with

modernist orientation” to the “parochial ethnic nationalisms” among the “masses with

traditionalist orientation.”

After the riots in 1969, the systematic government project of linguistic nationalization

gradually solidified the status of Bahasa Malaysia – a standardized version of the Malay

language – as the national language. The language transition has partly achieved its goals:

producing an alternative imagination of civic unity and opening up the doors of schools
 29
and administrative offices to the masses. The status of the national language, however,

was constantly haunted by the shadow of English and the elite version of nationalist

imagination connected to the language. Furthermore, despite the efforts to make it an

inclusive language in both ethnic and socioeconomic terms, the national language

continued to be identified with “Malays” and their exclusive interests.

Does the tendency prove the limitation of Bahasa Malaysia as a language of national

unity? Or, does it indicate that the colonial elite remained resistant to linguistic

nationalization? In fact, the English-educated colonial elite managed to survive the tide of

linguistic nationalization, transforming themselves into the national elite who speak both

English and Bahasa Malaysia. At home, they continued to teach English to their offspring

(often with the assistance of private educational institutions). In schools, the younger

generation, who inherited good access to educational resources from their parents,

quickly acquired the national language. Still, the English-educated elite believed that the

incorporation of former elite schools into the public school system in Bahasa Malaysia

watered down the “culture of excellence” and “cosmopolitanism” in the colonial schools

as well as their qualifications for global citizenship. The identification of English with

progress, development and truly civic national consciousness did not disappear, despite

the significant economic growth of the country during the period of linguistic

nationalization and the significant degree of national unity achieved in the national

language.

Now the bilingual elite who speak both English and Bahasa Malaysia send their

children to the best of public schools that operate as de facto bilingual schools. At the

same time, they nostalgically recollect the glorious past of the colonial schools. As
 30
Ferguson points out, the nostalgia for civic unity, academic excellence, and global

citizenship might seem “scandalous” and “embarrassing” to anthropologists with anti-

colonialist and nationalist agenda. The embarrassment should lead to the awareness of

cultural and social diversities among the people in a postcolonial state, which is often

neglected in postcolonial studies with nationalist orientation. The current promotion of

English by the “westernized” Malaysians, therefore, should not be rationalized as a

collective aspiration for membership in the global society. The aspiration for the

membership may be shared by most citizens, but the linguistic and cultural contents of

the aspiration are not collectively decided.

The new government models of citizenship, modernization and progress for the

“globalizing era” reflect the experience and beliefs of the people who produce them. The

rationalization of the models, however, depend on universalizing arguments about what

“globalization” demands people to do and how the government can help them to answer

for the demand. Similarly, the ultimate responsibility for the promotion of English is

attributed to the process of globalization, not to the people who produce and implement

pro-English policies. Would the future of the country, depicted in the new models, be

really inclusive? My discussion in the following chapters indicates that it is not. The

exclusiveness in the new model of “globally competitive citizens,” in turn, contributes to

the vulnerability of the elite’s political power. The case of Malaysia shows that the

national promotion of English eroded the government-owning parties’ political influence

among the masses.

4. How is the Myth Lived? Open-ended Stories

 31
Despite the buzz about the declining power of the governments to control their people

and territory in the era of globalization, they still reserve an exclusive authority to

produce rules and regulations that directly affect everyday lives of their citizens. State

institutions, especially schools, provide a vantage point to see how the authority works. In

the following, I discuss how the elites’ cultural beliefs about English are disposed in

schools in the form of educational policies, producing concrete political, social and

cultural impact on the lives of people from diverse backgrounds.

In chapter two and three, I examine the changing cultural and social meanings of the

English in Malaysia’s colonial and postcolonial history and politics. Chapter two focuses

on the evolution of language politics from the colonial period to the completion of the

government’s linguistic nationalization (around the end of the 1980s). In chapter three, I

explore the reemerging support for the English language among some government leaders

and intellectuals after the early years of linguistic nationalization and the logics behind

their promotion of English. Throughout the chapters, I emphasize the competing

definitions of “nation” that exist within the state, asking how the diversity of definitions

leads to different evaluations of colonialist and nationalist education policies and to

controversies over the new policies. The a-historicizing and a-politicizing arguments

about “globalization” and the “global language” have the effect of suppressing the

diversity of imaginations about the country’s future.

In the four chapters that follow the historical survey, I compare the experience and

practice of “nation” and the authority of the national language in two public schools in

Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, and how the reintroduction of English is changing

people’s everyday lives in school and their perceptions of their places in society. I
 32
conducted my field research from July 2004 to August 2005. In 2005, which was the third

year of implementing the new policy, I spent four months in each of the two schools

interviewing teachers and students, observing classes, and participating in school events.

The Malaysian school system is based on the British one. Students spend six years in

primary schools (Standard or Tahun 1 to 6) and six years in secondary schools (Form or

Tingkatan 1 to 6). The two schools of my research were public secondary schools

(Sekolah Menengah Kebangsan: SMK). Although the two schools officially have equal

status in the education system, most people recognize them as different types of schools.

One of them, SMK Jalan Limau, is located in an inner-city area on the margin of

Kuala Lumpur. Established in the mid-1990s, the school caters to the children of urban

low-income families from various ethnic backgrounds. The vast majority of the students

depend on the languages of their ethnic backgrounds for their daily socialization. Among

them are the students from Mandarin-medium primary schools (Sekolah Jenis

Kebangsaan Cina: SJKC) or Tamil-medium primary schools (Sekolah Jenis Kebangsaan

Tamil: SJKT) who are mostly “non-Malays (Chinese and Indians)” and the students from

Malay-medium primary schools (Sekolah Kebangsaan: SK) most of whom are “Malays.”

The other school, SMK Taman Raya, was established during the colonial period by

missionaries with humanitarian intentions, but under the control of the British colonial

administration, it soon turned into an elite school providing secular education in English.

After independence, the school was incorporated into the public education system instead

of going private. After the late 1960s, the school went through linguistic nationalization

and, in 1982, completed its linguistic conversion into a Malay-medium school. In fact,

however, SMK Taman Raya operates as a Malay/English bilingual school. Until the
 33
introduction of the new policy in 2003, students learned all subjects, except English, in

Bahasa Malaysia. But, even during that period, a great part of school events were

conducted in English, which was only possible because the school catered primarily to

the children of urban professionals who were exposed to English-speaking environment

since their early childhood. The ethnic make-up of SMK Taman Raya’s student

population was similar to that of the first school, but unlike the students in the inner-city

school, most of Taman Raya students, regardless of their ethnic backgrounds, came from

a few Malay-medium primary schools (SK) that were in fact run as Malay/English

bilingual schools.

When I first decided to visit the two schools for my ethnographic research, I expected

that the similar ethnic make-ups of students would allow me to treat “ethnicity” almost as

a fixed variable and focus on the “class” implications of implementing the new

language/education policies. By doing so, I thought I would be able to criticize the

“ethnicization” or “racialization” of almost every issues in Malaysia (i.e. things are

explained in terms of competition among different ethnic groups or “races”), which draw

a disproportionately huge part of attention in scholarly works on Malaysian society.

Once I started my participant research, however, I began to notice the connection

between people’s socio-economic status and the way they experience and practice their

ethnicity, and how linguistic difference mediates the connection. For example, English

symbolizes not only the socio-economic status of the people who use it but also the

culture of English-speakers in Malaysian society (such as their dress, posture, social

etiquette, and religious practice). The culture of English-speakers is characterized by its

“de-racializing” tendency, which the pro-English elite promotes as the essence of

 34
cosmopolitanism that the country needs for civic unity. The new model of citizenship

presents the linguistic and cultural practices in rural and inner-city schools as the proof of

problems in public schools, while valorizing those in elite schools as the example to

emulate. The realization influenced the way I organized the ethnographic part of this

dissertation.

My ethnographic discussion about each school is made up of two parts. In chapter

four, I analyze how ethnic difference is interpreted and practiced in an inner-city school

(SMK Jalan Limau). The dressing pattern, social interaction, and religious practice of

students in the school make ethnic divisions among them conspicuously visible. The new

policy discourse blames the “backward’ and “parochial” mindset of individuals whose

social interactions are marked by their ethnicity. My discussion, in contrast, shows how

the government’s different recognition of citizens according to ethnicity, race, class, and

language reproduces colonial forms of racial and institutional segregations in public

schools that are supposed to be the institution of cultural and linguistic homogenization.

Chapter five focuses on the difference of linguistic repertoires among the students of

SMK Jalan Limau and the social and cultural meanings attached to the difference. As a

public school, SMK Jalan Limau expects all its members to use the national language.

The normative monolingualism, however, is constantly challenged by non-Malay

students’ dependence on their “ethnic dialects” for communication and socialization.

Instead of blaming their strong ethnic identities for the lack of linguistic homogeneity in

the inner-city school, I discuss the social context that makes schooling in the national

language more meaningful to some students and less to others. I suggest that the authority

of the national language is not wielded through linguistic homogenization, but through
 35
the moral judgment of those who fail to meet the linguistic requirement for citizenship.

The recent introduction of English further complicates the linguistic scene of the

inner-city school where speaking English stands for arrogance, presumptuousness, and

the denial of one’s ethnic identity. For most of its members, English has been the

language of their social “others” – both the British colonialist and the rich and highly-

educated people in the independent state. Adapting to the language shift in class means

that students and teachers have to play by the rule of their “others.” Instead of opening

doors to the sea of advanced knowledge, the introduction of English further limit the

inner-city students’ ability to learn and its Malay-educated teachers’ ability to teach.

Furthermore, the new linguistic norm attributes the failure of the urban poor to their

traditionalism and parochialism while ignoring the historical and social contexts that have

made English a language of exclusion.

In chapter six, I examine the cultural contents of the cosmopolitanism in SMK Taman

Raya, which is considered by the people from this elite school as the essence of their

qualification for national leadership. The carefully calculated avoidance of dress rules,

socializing patterns, and religious practices that might highlight ethnic differences among

its students and teachers shows the etiquette that uniquely belongs to a small number of

public schools that used to be English-medium elite schools. The mixture of cultural

norms with colonial and national characteristics demonstrates the school’s successful

transformation from a colonial to a national school and a version of “national culture”

that the school has produced in the process. In the new model of citizenship, the elite

version of “national culture” is used as the standard to judge the practice of nation in non-

elite schools.
 36
In chapter seven, my discussion focuses on Taman Raya students and teachers’ ready

access to English, their successful adoption of the national language, and their relative

neglect of their ethnic “mother tongues.” The reintroduction of English brought them the

expectations that the school would maintain its superiority to other schools and fully

recuperate the academic excellence and cosmopolitan culture from its past as an English-

medium elite school. I suggest that the expectations tend to underestimates the linguistic

and cultural changes that happened during the period of nationalization. Despite the

strengthened sense of superiority and confidence, the students and teachers of SMK

Taman Raya found that the use of English negatively affected students’ performance in

science and mathematics subjects. The success of linguistic nationalization meant that,

even for the bilingual students from urban professional families, Bahasa Malaysia

became the medium of knowledge acquisition. At the same time, the increased emphasis

on English had the effect of highlighting the linguistic and cultural differences between

the old and new members of the school instead of strengthening their unity.

Based on my comparison of the situations in the two schools after the reintroduction

of English, I conclude that the model of citizenship that emphasize “global

competitiveness” and the promotion of English based on the model have direct impact on

the everyday lives of people when implemented as government policies. The myth of

English as a “global language” enables moral judgments about linguistic diversity among

the citizens and the cultural diversity connected to different linguistic repertoire. The

outcomes of the policy implementation, however, show some important distance from

what the policies are supposed to achieve. I argue that the distance demonstrates the

policy-making elites’ parochial experience and partial understanding of linguistic, ethnic,

 37
social and economic diversities in the society. It also shows that the particularistic and

elitist imagination of the country’s future cannot easily be reconciled with their

universalizing arguments about the demands of globalization and the collective interest of

the people.

Before moving on, I want to clarify some of key concepts in my discussion. In

Malaysia, “race” does not necessarily mean the difference between the “white” and the

“non-white” as it usually does in the United States. When people describe Malaysia as a

“multiracial” country made up primarily of the Malay, Chinese, and Indian races, the

concept of “race” comes close to “ethnic group” in the United States. The influence of

British English provides one possible explanation for the predominance of the word

“race” over “ethnicity” in Malaysia. In fact, with the increasing influence of American

English in recent years, the usage of the word “ethnic” seems to be gaining ground. The

term “race” as it is used in Malaysia denotes the major categories of recognizing ethnic

diversity among citizens, such as Malays/Chinese/Indians/Others, Malays/non-Malays,

natives/immigrants, and bumiputras/ non-bumiputras. In this dissertation, I use the term

“race” when I discuss those widely used categorizations and “ethnic” (or “ethnicity”)

when I discuss diversities beyond those categorizations.

Although one person can belong to only one category in each set, the boundaries

between categories are flexible, as they are determined by language and religion as well

as descent. According to the widespread assumptions about racial difference, Malays are

Malay-speakers and practice Islam, Chinese are Chinese-speakers and Buddhists, and

Indians speak Tamil and practice Hinduism. The assumptions do not always correspond

to the ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversities in the country. Inter-ethnic marriages and
 38
religious conversions further complicate the ethnic categorization. The four categories of

“Malays/ Chinese/ Indians/ Others” are often collapsed into binary distinctions between

natives and immigrants, bumiputra (sons of the soil) and non-bumiputra, or Malays and

non-Malay. The category of “natives” or “bumiputra” includes non-Malay people who

are aborigine to remote areas in Malaysia, but in the national politics dominated by

Malays, the distinction of natives/immigrants is often replaced by that of Malays/non-

Malays. 4

The racialization of class inequalities in Malaysia makes it difficult to study class

issues. In the social restructuring projects after independence, the term “race” often

replaced the concept of “class.” In other words, the projects assumed that “non-Malays”

(especially Chinese) were the “privileged” who should yield some of their share to the

“underprivileged.” The “underprivileged,” in turn, was identified with “Malays,” thus

government projects focused on providing protective measures to raise the social and

economic status of “Malays.” The current promotion of English also tends to identify

“failing” schools with “Malay” schools or the schools adopting Bahasa Malaysia and

attended mostly by Malays. It is not uncommon that the difference between “proficiency”

and “deficiency” in English is discussed in terms of the division between English-

speaking “non-Malays” and Malay-speaking “Malays.”

The racialization provides a grossly misleading picture of the class division in

Malaysian society. It ignores the majority of non-Malays who are neither privileged nor

English-speaking, as well as the small number of affluent Malays who speak fluent

4
Malaysian citizens comprise of Bumiputra 66% (Malays 54% and Non-Malay Bumiputra 12%), Chinese
25%, Indians 7.5%, and Others 1.5%. There is some inconsistency among documents whether they adopt
the category of Bumiputra or Malays to recognize the largest population group.
 39
English. In fact, the difference between the two schools has little to do with the racial

make-ups of students. Instead, the two schools show significant differences in the

household income of students’ families and the distribution of their parents’ jobs. The

class relation, however, means much more than the measurable indices of social and

economic status. I discuss the linguistic and cultural distinctions that mark class

difference among the members of the two schools. Evaluations about differences in codes

of dress, carriage of body, patterns of socialization, styles of religious practice, and

practices of ethnicity often combine with the judgmental comment on differences in

linguistic repertoire and language etiquette.

The distinction between the proficiency and deficiency in English does not merely

reflect the actual distribution of the language among the people. English mediates the

most mundane ways of expressing ethnic, racial, and class differences in the postcolonial

society of Malaysia. When the government promotes the importance of English, however,

it rationalizes pro-English policies in terms of economic development, social progress

and national unity. The English-speaking elite in the “non-English-speaking” country

claim that English serves the collective interest of the people in the country, regardless of

their ethnic, racial, and class backgrounds.

The themes in the theories of the “global language,” especially the temporal

explanation for linguistic changes, help the elite legitimize their imaginations for the

country’s future and moralize the linguistic and cultural difference among citizens. But

would the globalist new programs of nation-building guarantee the exclusive interest of

the English-speaking elite? My discussion will show that the elite, just as the masses they

want to “enlighten,” are the victims of their own parochialism. The myth of the “global
 40
language” as propagated by the elite may not be successfully shared by the masses.

English is yet to secure its dominance in most parts of the world. The myth of English as

a “global language” reflects people’s claims to leadership roles in a country and in the

world. Despite the moralizing effect of the myth, the claims may not guarantee the

dominance of those people, whether they belong to “English-speaking economies” or

“non-English-speaking economies.”
 41
Chapter Two

Postcolonial Dichotomies and the Racialization of Modernity

1. New Regime of the English Language

On May 6, 2002, then Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad proposed a plan that would

shake up the country’s language policy and the educational system of the last thirty years:

a plan to open public schools that teach in English. After his keynote speech in the 35th

international general meeting of the Pacific Basin Economic Council, Mahathir admitted

that he was willing to introduce English-medium schools “if the people want it” (New

Strait Times, May 7, 2002). Despite the unanimity of opinion assumed in Mahathir’s

language, the several months following his proposal showed how far the “people”

differed from one another in their interpretations about a suitable place of English in

public schools. Prospects of the bright future that English might promise for young

students existed side by side with a gloomy outlook predicting the demise of the national

language in the upheaval of linguistic neo-imperialism. Despite the huge spectrum of

reactions that seemed almost irreconcilable, it took only eight months from the initial

proposal until January 2003 when students entering public primary and secondary

schools started learning two subjects – science and mathematics – in English.

Why did the government decide to introduce English to the teaching of science and

mathematics, not to history or religious education classes? Government officers, as well

as some scholars of language policies, provide utilitarian and pragmatic explanations,

arguing that the knowledge in the field of science and technology is mostly produced in

English, thus English is the best language to access the knowledge. 5 Despite the

5
After referring to Quirk’s argument (1972:2) that English is the “primary medium for twentieth-century
 42
explanation’s appeal to commonsense, the topic has been repeatedly subject to debates at

different historical moments in different locations, defying any commonsensical

resolution. One good example is the British colonialist debates on the language of

education in British India (Macaulay’s minute of 1835 on Indian education was a part of

the debates). 6 The debates continued even after the independence of colonies, and each

time they came back to the central stage, they revealed tremendous difference of opinion

among administrators, political leaders and educationists.

In Chapter 2 and 3, I pursue the cultural and social meanings of English and their

changes in Malaysia’s colonial and post-colonial history. Public policies are “discourses”

in which administrators articulate their interpretation about the desirable direction of

changes in society. For example, language policies turn language ideologies into

authoritative and moral claims about the language used by “model citizens.” At the same

time, policies are “practices” that directly and indirectly transform the social environment

that people live in. Even when changes in policies seem to originate from a few leaders’

flips of minds, once they are implemented, the ideas and assumptions become concrete

rules and conditions that people have to leave with. They not only change the curricula

and the medium language of instruction in schools, but the way people evaluate

themselves in the education system: how qualified they are linguistically, academically

and culturally to join the mainstream of ongoing social and economic changes? When

answering the question, individuals are not free from the value judgments integral to the

science and technology,” Kachru notes: “English also provided an earthy bonus as a medium for
understanding technology and scientific development. … The Industrial Revolution’s technological impact
and the cultural dimensions of the Renaissance clearly brought before non-Western intellectuals the
accomplishments of the West. The ambitious among the colonized viewed English as their main tool with
which to emulate such accomplishments” (1986:6).
6
For details of the Anglicist-Orientalist controversy on the language of native education, see Loh Fook
Seng 1970, Viswanathan 1989:101-104 and Pennycook 1994:75-80.
 43
policy initiative and its modes of rationalization.

My discussion highlights two questions: how implementations of education policies,

a crucial part of Malaysia’s nation-building and modernization projects, reformulated the

colonial concepts of linguistic and cultural differences among “races” in the new context

of independent state; and how various approaches to linguistic and cultural diversities

came to bear complicated “class” implications. The two schools of my research, though

both are currently under the national school system, join the history of

education/language policies from almost opposite directions.

2. Colonial Period (1874 – 1957)

British influence over the area of the Malay Archipelago first began with the

establishment of the East India Company in three port cities of Penang, Malacca and

Singapore, which later became the Straits Settlement. In the area, located on the historical

maritime trade route between China and India and with lucrative tin mines and rubber

plantations, the British focused on extracting economic profits. Their political

involvement began in 1874 with the signing of the Pankor Treaty between the Colonial

Office and the Sultan of Perak. However, it was only after the formation of the Federated

Malay States (FMS) in 1896 that the British began their active engagement in

establishing administrative and educational systems in the colony.

The most important characteristic of colonial education policies was the strict

division between English schools and “vernacular” schools. Vernacular-medium schools,

or schools teaching in people’s own “mother tongues,” were allowed for “natives” and
 44
7
“immigrants” of humble backgrounds. The colonial policies for vernacular education

were premised on the belief that there is a natural and inherent connection between

people, language and culture. Colonial administrators maintained that the connection

should remain uninterrupted despite economic and social changes in the colony.

Meanwhile, English education was predicated on a completely different premise. At the

beginning, English schools were primary for Europeans and Eurasians. After the

formation of the FMS, the demand for locally-trained junior administrators rapidly

increased. The goal of English education was to “detach” selected few locals from their

surroundings and familiarize them with British-style administrative settings. The supply

of English-medium education was strictly bound by economic and political

considerations of colonial administration, even to overrule the growing demand for its

expansion among both “natives” and “immigrants.”

Protecting the Natives

British approach to the treatment of the natives adopted protectionism and

paternalism (Stevenson 1975:8). Since the signing of the Pangkor Treaty, the British

consistently maintained that the tradition of the natives should be “protected” from

“undesirable changes” that might be incurred by their economic enterprise in the colony.

The British indirect rule, in cooperation with some Malay sultanates, influenced their

definition of the native primary as “Malays.” Accordingly, the Malay language, ways of

7
The long history of immigration made their boundaries especially hazy in the region. The massive influx
of people from China and India in the mid nineteenth century was preceded by the early history of
immigration by merchants from neighboring regions as well as India and China. Important thing to note is
that while some old immigrants were still identified as “non-Malays,” some new immigrants could pass as
“Malays” and became incorporated into the category of the “native.” For example, Malay-speaking Muslim
immigrants from Indonesia could immerse into the category of Malays with relative ease.
 45
life, and social order were included in the list of “traditions” in need of “protection.”

Colonial administrators, however, voiced multiple ideas regarding “how to protect”

the tradition of natives. For example, Wilkinson, the federal inspector of schools between

1903 and 1906, maintained that education should help Malays to preserve and revive

their “glorious” cultural heritage in the modern age. Among the plans he proposed were

the standardization of Malay spelling and the translation of Malay classics from Jawi

(Arabic-based Malay script) into Rumi (Romanized Malay script). The translated Malay

classics and the standardized Malay language would be taught to students in Malay

schools (Andaya 2001:237).

In contrast, Winstedt, who was in charge of Malay education from 1916 to 1931,

emphasized the “close linking of the curriculum with the environment of the children”

(Cheeseman 1948:9). The education most needed by the natives, he thought, was to teach

modern techniques of manual works that they could apply to their subsistence. The

second view had strong and lasting influence on colonial education policies, which many

academics and intellectuals of the later periods evaluate to be an unfortunate development

(Roff 1967; Loh 1975:63; Rosnani 1996).

Although the colonialists emphasized their role as “protectors,” in fact, the British

brought several important changes to the way locals educated their children. They did not

consider education in religious schools such as pondok and madrasah as beneficial for

the native’s society and economy. First of all, they tried to abolish the “backward”

teaching method of rote memorization adopted by religious teachers, and introduce

standardized textbooks and modern teaching methods. Secondly, they considered Malay

students’ lack of basic literacy in their “mother tongue” as the greatest failure of the
 46
religious education, thus focused on teaching the natives how to read and write their own

language. Thirdly, the British administrators separated their “modern” schools from

religious education. Finally, they Anglicized the Malay language by changing the official

Malay script from Jawi to Rumi, arguing that this would make the learning of the

language easier for both the “natives” and the “immigrants.” The new focus on modern

teaching methods, utilitarian and secular values, and the basic literacy demonstrates that

under the name of “protection” the British were “disciplining” the natives to fit the

foreign ideas of education they brought into the colony.

The lukewarm reception of vernacular schools by the Malays frustrated colonial

administrators. They often blamed Malays and their lack of enthusiasm for education for

the failure of Malay vernacular schools. The major problem, however, was that the new

vernacular schools were irrelevant to the lives of the Malays in several ways. These

schools did not provide religious education that used to form the core of “being

educated.” The instruction of modern technical skills was clumsy and ineffective in the

local context. Most importantly, the Malay vernacular education did not promise a good

future that would compensate the time students spent in classrooms instead of working in

the fields (Loh 1975:53). While adopting the rationale of “protecting tradition,” the

colonial education policies fossilized and fixated the tradition of natives and contained

them in “their own world.” The only post-primary education allowed to native

“commoners” was to become school teachers only to return to their hometowns and serve

their own people. Only the Malay boys of “royal birth” were allowed to see beyond “their

own world” through a language other than their own (English) in a school modeled on

British elite schools.

 47

Respecting Racial Diversity

While the colonial administrators expressed their moral obligation to take care of the

Malay education, they left education of “immigrants” to themselves. Regarding the

education of Chinese and Indians, the British maintained the view that “it is not the

proper policy for the Government to undertake the education of the alien, temporary

population in their own languages” (W.H. Treacher 1901 quoted in Loh 1975:45). As a

result, the study of neither the English language nor the Malay language was encouraged

for the children of immigrants. Almost half a century later, Cheeseman, then the Director

of Education, defended the overall colonial policy toward vernacular education, arguing

that vernacular schools had to “postpone the incubus of a foreign tongue until a

vernacular foundation has been provided,” lest the student should “lose his inalienable

right to learn his own language” (1948:11).

The humanitarian language adopted by Cheeseman was at odds with the social

encapsulation of the immigrant people caused by colonial education policies. The lack of

knowledge in either of the two lingua franca in Malaya precluded immigrant workers

from communicating with people outside their own communities. The immigrants’

existence in Malaya was defined mainly by their economic roles in the system of racially

divided labor: Chinese workers in tin mines and Indian workers in plantation farms and

construction fields. Sir George Maxwell’s statement – that Tamil education was valuable

“not only as an incentive to recruiting labour for the rubber estates, but as a means of

keeping the Tamil labourer happy and contented” – clearly shows the hidden goal of

vernacular education (quoted in Furnivall 1948:395).

 48
The colonial government’s indirect encouragement of rudimentary education in the

languages of immigrants, however, was yet to be developed into the assumption of

correspondence between race and language. The variety of languages adopted by

vernacular schools included multiple of Chinese and Indian languages – such as Hokkien,

Cantonese, Malayalam and Bengali. The lack of the colonial government’s financial

assistance, monitoring or intervention not only left vernacular schools in poor conditions

but also allowed the influence from the immigrants’ home countries into those schools. In

the absence of locally-produced textbooks or locally-trained teachers, schools continued

importing textbooks and teachers from China and India. Especially, the influence of

Chinese nationalism and communist thoughts was evident among Chinese schools. The

Chinese nationalists stressed the unity of Chinese all over the world as a “nation.” As

Mandarin or Guoyu became the “national language” of Chinese, other languages

originating from China came to be called “dialects.” 8 These developments contributed to

the idea that Mandarin was the “mother tongue” of the Chinese race and Tamil was that

of the Indian race.

The compartmentalization and racialization of the immigrants did a great disservice

to those who made Malaya their permanent home. In the colonial system that made a

strict distinction between “natives” and “immigrants,” they belonged neither here

(Malaya) nor there (China or India). This situation led to a huge controversy after the end

of the Second World War when the British began to discuss citizenship in the

forthcoming independent state. The status of Chinese and Indian languages and the place

8
The term Guoyu (國語) literally translates as “national language.” Winstedt attempted to promote Chinese
schools in “dialects” to block the spread of communism through Mandarin, but the plan did not succeed
(Loh 1975:95).
 49
of non-Malay vernacular schools in the national education system were no less

controversial than the citizenship issue. Meanwhile, some immigrants made their way

into English schools, and together with the children from Malay royal families, formed

the class of the English-educated.

English for the Junior Administrators

In his famous Minute on the education of the colonial subject in India, Maucaulay

argued that the English language provided “ready access to all the vast intellectual wealth,

which all the wisest nations of the earth have created and hoarded” (1999[1835]:58).

Despite the popularity of this idea among British colonialists, some administrators were

cautious about expanding English education to their subjects, because they thought the

spread of the English language would be at best wasteful, at worst dangerous. They

considered their education policies in India as a “failure,” as the number of “shadow

elites” added up and the anti-British sentiments gained power among them, which

seemed to testify to their fear of “over-educating” the colonial subjects (Furnivall

1948:124). 9

The colonial administrators tried to apply the hard lessons from British India to

formulating education policies in Malaya (Loh 1975:63-4). The high cost of the

Cambridge system education and Winstedt’s utilitarian approach to education also

contributed to the policy of limiting the number of the English-educated. The supply of

English-medium education was forced to be bound by the estimated demand for

9
Loh Fook Seng points out that Winstedt’s reluctance to expand English education reflected a major trend
of British colonial policy of that time. For example, in 1920, commenting on educational development in
southern Nigeria, Sir Frederic Lugard wrote that “with some notable exceptions education seems to have
produced discontent, impatience of any control, and an unjustifiable assumption of self-importance in the
invidual” (1975:65).
 50
administrative personnel (Furnivall 1948:405, Andaya 2001:230). The “institutional

segregation” in education contributed to solving the “the color problem” (i.e. the conflict

between the demand for locally-educated junior officers and the need to maintain

boundaries between the white colonizers and the non-white colonized) without disrupting

“racial segregation” (Smuts 1929; Mamdani 1996:5).

The values that dominated the English-medium education were secularism and

utilitarianism. The English schools established by the government, such as Victoria

Institution and Malay College Kuala Kangsar (MCKK), focused on training junior

officers in the FMS. However, government schools took only small part of English-

medium education. Schools established by missionaries, especially those from Catholic

and Methodist churches, played a greater role. The colonial administration had control

over the missionary schools and advised them to focus on delivering modern knowledge

and the English language rather than proselytizing Christianity. Even though the students

in English-medium schools had better access to liberal education than those in

vernacular-medium schools, the education in English-medium schools were primarily

vocational. The most palpable benefit of English education was that it opened doors to

administrative jobs in the colony.

Only when the British knew that they were to leave Malaya soon, did the idea of

“spreading English as widely as possible” gain popularity. The English-medium mass

education as the “departing gift” would perpetuate the link between the independent

Malaya and Britain. However, even this well-stated plan to spread a lasting cultural

legacy of English widely did not materialize. The colonial government had little budget

and time to expand English schools. Moreover, the vehement opposition from the
 51
emerging “nationalist” groups made the implementation of the project almost impossible.

What was the social meaning of being educated in English? What cultural changes

did English education bring to its “beneficiaries”? Macaulay argued that it was the duty

of the colonial government to nurture “a class of person, Indians in blood and colour, but

English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect” (1999[1835]:61). The most

important characteristic of English-medium education was that language and knowledge

were largely irrelevant to local contexts. 10 Even some British colonial administrators

admitted in their reports that students in English-medium school often suffered from the

tremendous gap between what they learn in school and their life outside school. From the

viewpoint of teachers and administrators, the racial and linguistic diversity among

students was an obstacle to the success of English education (The Colonial Office 1902;

Wong and Gwee 1980). As the English-medium schools gradually established themselves

producing a culturally and linguistically distinct elite class, the social distance between

the English-educated and the vernacular-educated were growing farther.

Multiracialism and Cosmopolitanism: Two Forms of Multiculturalism

After the Second World War, both the colonial government and the colonized people

in Malaya were predicting the imminent emergence of an independent state out of the

“multicultural” society in the colony. The meanings of the term “multicultural” were

much dependent on the context of its application. The colonial education policies show

that colonial officers sometimes recognized cultural diversity as a target of their

protection while in other contexts as an obstacle to progress.

10
For example, the Rev. Romanis Lee was a persistent advocate of modifications in the Cambridge Local
examinations so as to make them more suitable for Malaya (Cheeseman 1948:3).
 52
Racial stereotypes provided a rationale for containing different “races” in their

vocational niches. The vernacular schools, designed only for the rudimentary education in

the “mother tongues” of the respective races, had produced a “plural society” and

contributed to the persisting “separatism” in the colonial Malay and later in the

independent Malaysia (Furnivall 1948; Loh 1975). In addition to the belief in the

inherited biological traits and the distinctive linguistic and cultural traditions of

respective races, their social separations strengthened the natural look of the racial

categories. In this sense, “multiracialism” was the naturalizing version of

multiculturalism that compartmentalized people into racial categories.

In contrast, English education often meant getting rid of “undesirable” racial

temperaments, weakening people’s alliance with their “traditions,” and disciplining

themselves to become “modern men and women.” For example, the British believed that

if Malays were “to be incorporated into the new government structure,” they first had to

go through a “fundamental change in their attitudes” (Andaya 2001:232). The mixed

racial composition in English schools made them relatively free from racial

compartmentalization, and English became the medium language of the English-educated

“cosmopolitans” and their cosmopolitanism. The connection between elite culture,

westernization, modernization, and the English language was surely a result of historical

contingency. However, the Malayan version of cosmopolitanism assumed, as the British

colonial discourse of enlightenment did, an inherent connection between English and the

values. Together with English proficiency, the culture of blurred racial boundaries among

the English-educated elites became the foundation for their confidence in moral and

cultural superiority. In this sense, “cosmopolitanism” served as an exceptional elite

 53
version of multiculturalism in Colonial Malaya.

3. Building a New Nation (1957 – 1969)

In August 1957, the Federation of Malaya proclaimed its independence from the

British. The blueprint for the independent state, however, did not include a fixed

definition of “nation.” The project of nation-building could adopt neither the European

notion of nation-state nor the notion of nation in a former settler colony like the United

States. First of all, there was the idea of Malaysia as a Malay-dominant nation-state

where the “indigenous” Malay people, making up less than a half of the entire population,

lived with the exceptionally large population of “immigrants.” 11 Secondly, there was a

definition of Malaysia as a multiracial state made up of “races” that were supposed to be

physically, linguistically, culturally, and socially recognizable. Finally, the model of

“westernized pro-British state” depicted Malaysia as a country where a small number of

English-educated elites ruled the rest of population. The three models converged at

certain times, but later it turned out that the models were not commensurable.

Defining Boundaries and Contents of the New Nation

For the first several years after independence, the new state had to face various

uncertainties regarding key issues in nation-building. First of all, the official name of the

country changed from the Federation of Malaya to Malaysia in 1963. The state also

experienced some adjustments to its territorial boundaries – the exclusion of Singapore

11
Bumiputera, or the “sons of the soil,” is the local term of the indigenous, which include non-Malay
aborigines as well as Malays. The word pendatang literally means “those who have come (datang)” and
translates as new-comers or immigrants.
 54
and the inclusion of Sabah and Sarawak in northern Borneo. The issues of political

leadership and its legitimacy were still under debates, even after the Malay political

leaders successfully fought back the British’s skepticism about maintaining the “Malay

special rights” in the independent state. The question of whether the “immigrants” and

their off-spring would be considered as equal citizens with the “natives” remained a

sensitive political issue.

Despite the English-educated people’s access to social and economic privileges and

their shared cosmopolitan experience, their potential for leading the project of national

unity was limited in many ways. First of all, the English-educated “did not have the

number to support their continued dominance in political affairs” (Wang 1970:45). Also,

the idea of the “rule by the indigenous” affected many new states’ independence process

around the world. The English-educated Malay elite made use of nationalist aspirations as

a political resource and became increasingly dependent on Malay language news media

and the radical Malay nationalists who had a wide grassroots support. However, the

English-educated Malay elite still tried to distinguish themselves from the radical Malay

nationalists by calling the latter “chauvinists,” “extremists,” and sometimes

“communists.” In contrast, the English-educated political leaders valorized their

“moderate” and “modernist” versions of nationalism. Cultural programs to unify the

citizens of the independent state were introduced when the issues still remained

unresolved.

From the “Malay” Language to the “National” Language

In his speech at the University of Singapore in December 1964, Tunku Abdul Rahman,
 55
the first Prime Minister of Malaysia, emphasized the importance of the national language

in a intensively emotional and expressive language: “It is only right that as a developing

nation, we want to have a language of our own. If the national language is not introduced,

our country will be devoid of a unified character and personality – as I would put it, a

nation without a soul and without a life” (quoted in Abdullah 2005:4, emphasis added).

And, the Constitution stipulated that “the national language shall be the Malay language.”

What did the term “national language” exactly mean? At the time of independence,

there was little agreement about what it should mean or do for the new state. The fact that

only the Malay language, among multiple languages, was given the status of the national

language reflects assumptions about the indigenous people, their language, and the

identity of the independent state. The national language was to be the common language

of all Malaysians regardless of their race, but, at the same time, it was defined to be the

language of the Malay race. In fact, the official name of the language, which was Bahasa

Melayu (Malay Language) at the time of independence, went through several changes

between Bahasa Melayu and Bahasa Malaysia (Malaysian Language). 12

Despite the emphasis on the importance of the national language for the identity of

the new state, however, it did not immediately become the language of all state

institutions including public schools. In 1956, in response to the Malay nationalists

asking for the immediate introduction of secondary schools in the Malay language,

Minister of Education Abdul Razak Hussein explained that the plan for Malay secondary

schools “cannot be implemented forthwith” because teachers had to be trained and the

language itself had to be developed (Federation of Malaya 1956; Tan 1997:178). The

12
The current official name of the national language is Bahasa Malaysia. In the following chapters, I will
further discuss about the name changes and people’s different preference between the two terms.
 56
official announcement of the Malay language as the national language would have little

meaning without a planned formulation of the national language out of the Malay

language.

The Malay language had to be “re-invented” as a standardized national language to fit

the modern state system including national education and bureaucracy (cf. Fishman

1968:7; Gellner 1983). Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP: Language and Literature

Council) was established in 1956 to undertake the Malay language planning. DBP

standardized spelling, pronunciation, and grammar of the Malay language. It also

produced textbooks and coined technical terms in the language. Through language

planning, the gap between colloquial Malay language and written Malay language

became institutionalized. The process also meant a further Anglicization of the Malay

language, because the language planners borrowed words from English and localized

their spellings, especially for words delivering scientific or technological concepts

developed in western countries. 13

The real challenge that could not be resolved by the corpus planning was changing

people’s attitudes towards languages. The job needed a deeper-level status planning to

stop Malay being treated as a stigmatized language and make it a prestige language. The

colloquial Malay was often called Bahasa Pasar (Bazaar Malay or “market language”). 14

Its limited scope of use restricted to minimal inter-ethnic contacts made some scholars

13
For example, a Malay word for “science” is sains and one for “technology” is teknologi.
14
The market metaphor was also used by Furnivall (1948:304) to describe the characteristics of inter-ethnic
social interactions in British and Dutch colonies in Southeast Asia. “[T]he medley of people – European,
Chinese, Indian and native. It is the strictest sense a medley, for they mix but do not combine. … As
individuals they meet, but only in the market-place, in buying and selling. There is a plural society, with
different sections of the community living side by side, but separately, within the same political unit.”
 57
15
lament the language’s “debasement” and “deterioration” during colonial period.

The question of whether the Malay language was “debased” from its pure form does

not seem as important as the widespread distrust, doubt, disrespect of the Malay language

of that time. Such attitudes were found even among the leaders of the new state when

they connected the Malay language to parochialism and rudimentary knowledge. For

example, Education Minister Khir Johari expressed his doubt whether Malay-medium

secondary schools would prove viable in the long term (Strait Times, June 20, 1958;

Funston 1980:50). Many of the English-educated elite, whether they were Malays or non-

Malays, doubted the capacity of the Malay language to meet the demands of a modern

society, especially in the field of science and technology (Asmah 1982:30; Funston

1980:156; Mauzy 1985:158). They expressed their fear for “lowering” the quality of

education and the standard of English among Malaysians elites. Many of the English-

educated supported bilingualism that would adopt English as a second official language.

The “National” Education System

What is the “national” education system? Various reports produced around the time of

independence had slightly different emphases, which reflect the flexibility of the term

“national” during the early years of nation-building. For example, the Barnes Report,

which first adopted the term of “national schools,” described them as “schools for

citizenship” and “nation building schools” (Barnes Report 1951; Tan 1997:58). The

Education Ordinance of 1957 used deliberate language that aimed at satisfying all:
15
For example, Fernando (1970:5) writes: “As for Malaysians, those of non-Malay origin with very few
exceptions were content simply to make do with a miserable vocabulary of about fifty Malay words or so….
The result was inevitable: the language lost its vitality temporarily, and a debased pidgin Malay became
universal, serving utilitarian ends … but despised equally by both Malays and non-Malays (emphasis
added).”
 58
[A] national system of education acceptable to the people as a whole which will
satisfy their needs and promote their cultural, social, economic and political
development as a nation, with the intention of making the Malay language the
national language of the country whilst preserving and sustaining the growth of the
language and culture of peoples other than Malays living in the country. (Federation
of Malaya 1960:5, emphasis added)

The Report of Education Review Committee in 1956 (The Razak Report) pointed out that

“the ultimate objective of educational policy in this country must be to bring together the

children of all races under a national education system in which the national language is

the main medium of instruction” (FM 1956:3). The Rahman Talib Report moved a step

further to emphasize the role of the Malay language in education and suggested that

promoting the use of the Malay language and making it the main medium of instruction

in all schools would be conducive to developing a “truly Malayan consciousness” (FM

1960:56). What kind of education policies could possibly achieve the multiple goals

outlined in various reports?

Among many convoluted situations that hindered immediate provision of concrete

programs, the most controversial issue was to decide the status of Chinese and Tamil

schools in the national education system. The schools had contributed to the education of

immigrants and the continuation of immigrant languages during the colonial period.

However, there were concerns whether non-Malay vernacular schools, originating from

the colonial policy of “divide and rule,” would promote “divided loyalty” among

immigrant citizens in the post-independence state. Several government reports in

preparation for independence commonly mentioned the need to control those schools for

a national-level linguistic homogenization. For example, the Barnes Report of 1951

proposed to abolish schools adopting languages other than English or Malay. The Report

of the Constitutional Commission confirmed the opinion by mentioning that promoting

 59
Chinese and Tamil schools would not be beneficial for unifying the country in the long

run (FM 1957a:74). However, the Razak Committee concluded that the plan of abolishing

Mandarin and Tamil-medium primary schools was “impracticable in existing conditions,”

as it would be detrimental to achieving another important goal of national education: the

goal of providing an education system that would accommodate all children of school age

(Tan 1997:171). After the “practical” consideration, the government decided to include

non-Malay vernacular primary schools in the national education system.

The decision, however, did not necessarily mean a full acceptance of multilingualism

or multiculturalism. There was an internal hierarchy among types of schools in the

education system. The education reports and legislations produced during the period

made consistent distinctions between Malay-medium “National Schools (Sekolah

Kebangsaan)” and English, Mandarin or Tamil-medium “National-type Schools (Sekolah

Jenis Kebangsaan).” Furthermore, the public examinations for entering secondary

schools were conducted only in the official languages - Malay and English. Regarding

non-Malay vernacular languages/schools, the government took neither inclusive nor

exclusive approach. They allowed non-Malay vernacular schools in the system, but made

a clear distinction between schools that were “truly national” and those only “partly

national.”

The English Language and Education: Anti-national or A-national?

Though the Independence Constitution officially proclaimed that the Malay language

shall be the national language, it had provisions that the English language may be used

for official purposes for ten years from the day of independence. After ten years, the
 60
Parliament would decide whether the English would stop being used as an official

language (FM 1957b:73). The Language Bill in 1967 also saved the place for English. If

“having one national language” was so crucial for building a new state, why did the

government decide to have another official language? If English was playing such an

important role in administration and education, what kept the second official language

from becoming just another national language? 16

The First Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman’s speech, which I quoted earlier,

shows that having a national language is a way of symbolically announcing the

independence of a state. Could English become a national language? He emphasized that

the national language should be a “language of our own,” otherwise the new country will

be “devoid of a unified character and personality.” English, which was not only a foreign

language but also the language of colonial administration, could not serve as a symbol of

the new state.

Secondly, English was a language of selected few people due to the strengthened

exclusivity of English-medium education in British Malaya – especially, in comparison

with the English education in British India. 17 As a result, political ideas and thoughts that

the English-educated had, when delivered in English, could not reach the majority of

their compatriots who never had the chance to learn the language (Wang 1970:44). In

addition to the incomprehensibility of the English language among the masses, the

16
Conrad (1996:16) points out that key concepts in the study of language policy, such as “national
language” and “official language,” are often used without consideration for their ambiguous meanings.
17
Moreover, a few isolated attempts to “democratize” English during the last years of the colonial rule
became thwarted by the high cost of teaching (in) the language and the British’s inability to bear the cost.
The expansion of English-medium education was first proposed after Emergency to block the spread of
communist thoughts in Chinese(Mandarin)-medium schools. The second proposal was made after the
Second World War by several British administrators who wanted to perpetuate colonial legacy though
education.
 61
westernized experience and knowledge shared among the English-educated set them

apart from the everyday lives of non-English speakers. The conditions made English a

language of the affluent and highly-educated “indigenous-aliens,” rather than allowing it

to become a language for “all citizens” in the independent state (Scott 1968:16). 18

The most active opposition to the English language came from the new generation of

Malay and Chinese nationalists, a majority among whom were vernacular-educated

school teachers and journalists. They argued that giving English an official status in

administration and education would ruin the foundation of vernacular-medium schools

that had provided education for the children of poor families. Their opposition to the

English language and their widespread influence at the grass-root level marked them

commonly as the new breed of nationalists. The nationalists emphasized the “anti-

national” aspect of the English language, because the majority of citizens had been

excluded from English-medium education and the privileges attached to it.

Despite their common experience of exclusion, however, the new breed of

nationalists had different agenda and audience according to the “race” they came from.

The Chinese nationalists resorted to the rhetoric of multiracialism that would secure

space for sustaining Chinese as a linguistically and culturally distinctive group.

Consequently, they not only opposed the hegemony of English but also the unequal status

between the Malay and the Chinese language. Meanwhile, the Malay nationalists

emphasized their exclusive right as the “indigenous” people and the right to use their

language as the only official language of the state. Just as they denied the place of
18
James Scott defines “indigenous-alien” as the indigenous people who internalized Western values in the
course of their Western education. After interviewing political elites of Malaysia in the 1960s, he finds “the
almost complete absence of anti-colonial or anti-British sentiment” among them. Though they “enjoyed
legitimacy in a nationalist world,” Scott argues, “a great gap separated them from the masses whom they
ruled” (1968:8, 16).
 62
English, they also denied the place of non-Malay vernacular languages in the new state.

They commonly opposed English, but their interpretations of the word “nation,” against

which the English language was positioned, were far from identical. For them, “nation”

often meant their respective race, especially the “mother-tongue” speakers among their

own race. 19

Although the status of national language was denied for English, not all people

considered it “anti-national.” For most of the English-educated, English was an “a-

national” language, in the sense that it did not belong to any specific “race” in Malaysia.

The usefulness of English as an official language, according to them, lay in its political

“neutrality” that would be conducive to “national unity” at the state level. An educationist

even argued that it was “chiefly in the English schools that there is any fusion of races

and any cultivation of a common Malayan outlook” (Thuraisingham 1951, quoted in Tan

1997:61). 20 According to the supporters of English, vernacular languages, including

Malay, represented parochial “ethnic nationalisms,” while English had a better potential

as the language of “civic nationalism” and national unity.

The usefulness of the English language, some people argued, came from its

connection to the advanced knowledge and the social systems of “modernized” states.

19
Etienne Balibar (1991:45) argues that the intrinsic ambiguity in the category of nationalism comes from
the antithetical nature of the historical situations that gave rise to nationalist movements. Similarly,
Mahmood Mamdani (1996:7) points out that anticolonial (nationalist) struggles usually entail “a series of
ethnic revolts against so many ethnically organized and centrally reinforced local powers,” thus, make the
struggles look like a “string of ethnic civil wars.” Both Balibar and Mamdani warn against the danger of
blaming “traditionalism” for the exclusivist positions emerging in the process of nationalist movement. The
attack on “traditionalism” and “ethnic parochialism,” often adopted by postcolonial state bourgeoisies and
western critics of post-independence state, turns people’s attention away from the lasting effect of racial
and institutional segregations during the colonial period. Instead, it blames the “mindset” of victims for the
failure to achieve national unity.
20
FM, Proceedings of the Federal legislative Council, fourth Session, September 20, 1951. For similar
argument about the national language issue in India at the time of independence, see Kachru 1986:7-9.
Sonntag’s (2003) discussion about the political development of the issue provides a useful historical
reference to criticize Kachru’s a-politicizing argument about the neutrality and inevitability of English.
 63
This kind of argument demonstrates the ideology of English as an instrument of

modernization and progress and as the language of science and technology (Scott 1968:

202-5; Fernando 1970:14). The Rahman Talib Report emphasized the pragmatic values of

the English language: “English holds a dominating position in international councils and

commerce, in the textbooks and literatures of the world. A command of it is one of our

national assets” (FM 1960:56). Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman also stressed the

“future importance of English, its preservation being seen as essential for ensuring high

educational standards and administrative efficiency” (Alliance 1966; Funston 1980:66).

According to them, English was one of “our national assets” or a valuable resource for

national development, rather than being an “anti-national” language.

The English-educated elite, therefore, feared the deterioration of the English in the

wake of both the increasing demand for its democratization and the growing influence of

linguistic nationalisms. For them, a high standard in English (especially of colonial elites

who had chance to pursue their education abroad) was something to be “preserved” and

“maintained.”

In this extension of the knowledge of English from the privileged few to all school
children we regard it as important that there shall be no lowering of standards in the
learning and teaching of English, as a second language, especially at secondary level.
Hitherto the minority of Malayan students have had no difficulty in pursuing courses
in Universities outside the country … as they have acquired a high standard of
English learnt in Malayan schools. This high standard must be maintained at the
same time as the knowledge of English is being extended throughout the entire
school population. (The Rahman Talib Report, FM 1960:56, emphasis added)

The statements assume no contradiction between their pro-English attitudes and their

loyalty to the independent state. Rather, they often presented the supporters of English as

the “patriots” who truly cared for the well-being of their country. The pride in the

“culture of excellence” among the English-educate, which they passed to the current
 64
members of the “premier school” such as my second school of fieldwork SMK Taman

Raya, demonstrates how class relationship operates through the issues of language and

education in post-independence Malaysia. The assumed political neutrality of the English

language reflects the particular social and economic positioning of the English-educated

and their confidence in their urban and cosmopolitan culture. Despite the exclusivity of

their linguistic and educational training as well as their social experiences, they regarded

themselves as “model Malaysian citizens” unbound by their ethnic and religious loyalties.

The English language symbolized their affinity to the citizens of modernized foreign

countries, especially to the British colonizers who nurtured them into a distinctive elite

class. Their beliefs in the neutrality and usefulness of English provided the solid

foundation for their shared feelings of moral, cultural, and intellectual superiority.

Functional Dualism: Malay for Identity, English for Modernization

Until 1969, the second idea – that English is a-national – was dominant among the

mostly English-educated ruling elite. However, it did not mean that they denied the role

of the Malay language in their state. They sought to deal with the dilemma by adopting

functional dualism, in which the English and the Malay language had different roles for

nation-building. The functional dualism in linguistic policies became clear when Abdul

Razak Hussein (who later served as Prime Minister from 1970 to 1976) expressed the

idea of a functional distinction between the two official languages. According to him,

English was necessary for developmental purposes but Malay was “the national language

of the Malays” (Federal Legislative Council 1951; Tan 1997:62). Similarly, the English

language/schools would serve the country’s modernization and progress, while Malay
 65
language/schools would work for national identity.

Functional dualism reflected elite opinions about what the two languages were

capable of achieving in the future. An education system based on functional dualism – the

Malay schools for the education of the masses and the English schools for departing

advanced knowledge – continued for more than a decade after independence. The

subsequent development, however, shows that the dilemma was far from being resolved

by the functional dualism.

The number of Malay-medium primary schools rapidly increased, but only a few

secondary schools in the Malay language were introduced. While the establishment of

secondary schools in the Malay language became delayed, Malay students who sought

post-primary education had to transfer to English schools. Chinese secondary schools

were ordered to change their medium language to either of the two official languages of

the time: English or Malay. Most of those schools chose to become English-medium

secondary schools, which led to a rapid increase of Chinese students in English schools.

For the eleven years after independence, student enrollment in Malay-medium schools

doubled, while that of English schools increased seven-fold (Abdullah Hassan 2005:7). 21

Functional dualism seemed to easily resolve the “language problems” in the newly

independent state (Fishman 1968). But, ironically, it actually accomplished the project

that the British left unfinished – the spread of English-medium education as their

“departing gift.” In contrast, the Malay-medium schools remained “poor men’s schools”

(Wong and Ee 1971:168).

21
The difference also reflects the small number of enrollment in English-medium schools before
independence due to the colonial policy, compared to that of Malay-medium primary schools that provided
rudimentary education for the Malay masses. Enrollment in English secondary schools rose from 48,235 in
1957 to 349,121 in 1967 (FM, Aziz Report 1968; Ozog 1990:309). Ozog notes that the government, led by
the Anglophile Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman, actively encouraged English.
 66
In the late 1950s and the 1960s, despite the active voicing of language nationalism by

Malay political leaders, the Malay language was in danger of becoming a “password” or

a “mere symbol” of the independent state (Asmah 1982:23; Silverstein 2000). The

nationalist principle of making the Malay language the center of social and cultural

changes brought little change to the hierarchy between English and Malay. Most

significantly, the Malay language could not guarantee individual students’ social and

economic advancement, because little post-primary education opportunity was provided

in the language until the 1969 when the bloody riots broke out.

Riots and Building a Malay Nation-state

On May 13 1969, violent confrontations and killings, mostly between Malays and

Chinese, occurred in Kuala Lumpur and other major cities. The most influential

interpretation characterizes the incidents as “ethnic clashes” or “racial riots.” After the

incident, the idea of conflicting interests between Malays and non-Malays, especially

between “disadvantaged Malays” and “affluent Chinese,” became the leitmotif in the

national politics and the discussions about educational, social, economic issues.

Many studies, however, also direct attention to the fact that participants on both sides

were mostly from the lower class (Wang 1970; Means 1991:7). 22 Despite the dominant

discourse of conflicting interests between Malays and non-Malays, the problem of

deteriorating social and economic conditions cut across the perceived ethnic boundaries.

Wang Gungwu (1970:37) points out two major lines of divisions: on the one hand, the

division between “predominantly Malay political power and clearly non-Malay economic

22
Wang (1970) calls the incident “riots,” instead of adopting the popular term “racial riots.”
 67
power,” and on the other hand, between “privileged English-educated elites and

underprivileged Malay and Chinese communities.” Bitterness was felt by both the Malay

and non-Malay poor and was expressed by their support for more radical ethnic

nationalisms. With the enhanced political influence of ethnic nationalisms, English-

educated elites became growingly dependent upon the ethnic communalism to secure

political supports (Wang 1970:46; Funston 1980: Hussin Mutalib 1990:51-5). Its

consequence was the dominant tendency of conflating class and ethnic causes, according

to which issues of social justice were discussed in ethnic terms. The post-1969 Malay

leadership in the government also based their argument for aggressive social changes on

ethnic and racial terms.

The riots of 1969 brought an end to the period of the open contestations between

different definitions of the “nation.” 23 Most importantly, the model of nationhood popular

among English-educated, revealing its political vulnerability, gave way to the Malay-

oriented model of nationhood. In the realm of Malay politics, the change was marked by

the replacement of the “older guards” of aristocratic and English-educated Malay elites,

who acknowledged linguistic, cultural, and religious diversities in the state, by the so-

called “Malay ultras” who asked for radical steps to make Malaysia a Malay nation-state.

Contrary to the syncretism in the previous attempts to “satisfy all,” toward the end of the

1960s, the values of pluralism and Malay nationalism came to be considered

irreconcilable. After the riots, the new generation of Malay leaders initiated revolutionary

23
During this period, multiple definitions were still “contesting” in the sense that open challenges to other
definitions were often made. Political parties like the Democratic Action Party (DAP) pursued a
“Malaysian Malaysia” against UMNO’s model of “Malay Malaysia” (Hussin 1990:52; Means 1991:4). The
first model contained the idea that the essence of Malaysian identity should be its ethnic and cultural
diversities. The latter maintained that the core of Malaysian identity should be the Malay people and their
traditional culture.
 68
language and education reforms based on the model of Malaysia as a Malay nation-state.

4. The New Destiny of the Malay Race (1969 – 1986)

“Malays” as the Victim of Environment and History

The linguistic and educational policies of the first twelve years reflected the privilege

of the English-educated and their attempts to perpetuate colonial legacy in the

“Anglicized Malay state” (Wang 1970:44). The dissolving political power of the cross-

ethnic elite coalition, however, did not lead to an anti-colonial social reform serving the

underprivileged people. The combination of institutional and racial segregations during

the colonial period – that non-Malay immigrants were the majority among the English-

educated colonial elites in urban areas – gave a racial twist to the post-riots political

development. The new generation of Malay nationalists emphasized inter-racial

inequalities (between Malays and non-Malays), while evading the problem of economic

and social inequalities that affected Malaysians of all races.

The pro-Malay policies after the riots aimed at establishing a positive Malay identity.

However, the idioms of legitimization were far from valorization of Malay primordial

past. Instead, the claims of nation-building fed on the “stigmatization” of the Malay past.

The stigmatization involved the idea of Malay as an “inferior” race, not only to

Europeans but also to non-Malay (especially Chinese) immigrants in Malaysia.

According to Mahathir Mohamad, who then represented the new generation of

“Malay ultras” in the dominant Malay political party (UMNO: United Malays National

Organization) and later served as Prime Minister for more than twenty years (1981 -2003),

the cause of “retard(ed) development of the Malays” lied not in the history of social and
 69
economic segregations under the colonial regime, but in the “hereditary and

environmental factors” that had formed cultural traits of the Malay race (Mahathir

1970:1). Mahathir resorted to the ideas social evolutionists to explain why Malays were

destined to lose in their competition with Chinese immigrants (16-25). According to him,

the solution to the problem of “retarded development” among Malays, therefore, was to

take “extreme” measures to modernize the mindset of the Malay race that was still caught

up with feudalism and pre-capitalist thoughts. Until the Malays are fully ready with a

modern mindset, the government would provide “privilege” and “protection” for Malays.

The privilege and protection, however, would ultimately be abolished when Malays are

ready to stand up on their own in the modern society (76).

It was a huge irony that the discourse of Malay social advancement depended on the

idea of Malay as an “inferior race” to Chinese immigrants. The rationale of “protection”

resembled the paternalism of the colonial administration, but this time the goal was not to

contain Malays in traditional ways of life in rural areas but to modernize them and help

them join the urban realm of life. It was a program of “selective modernization,” based

on the assumption that only Malays had fallen behind modernization while other races in

the country were already active in modern fields. 24 The colonial racial distinction

between the “indigenous” and the “immigrants” – in which the “indigenous” became the

target of “protection,” whereas the “immigrants” became the partners of colonial

economic enterprises – finds its new form in the framework of “Malay/non-Malay

competition” that defines the post-independence project of modernization.

24
Other than the racialization in Mahathir’s theory of selective modernization, his argument resembles the
modernization theory that was popular among social theories in the 1950s and 1960s. Alex Inkeles’ works
(1974a, 1974b) are among the examples. Charles Keyes (1991:1) provides a good summary of the approach.
 70

New National Programs for Malays (and their non-engagement with non-Malays)

The economic and social policies of the 1970s and 1980s emphasized various forms

of inter-racial inequalities. The racially defined category of the “Malays” often replaced

the category of the economically and socially disadvantaged, leaving the poor and

uneducated “non-Malays” outside policy purview. Assuming “Malay common interest,”

the policies focused on propping up a Malay middle-class who could challenge the

economic predominance of non-Malays in the country and ultimately make “Malays” the

leading race of the emergent Malay nation-state. The economy, language, education, and

culture policies were designed to focus on the goal of correcting inter-racial inequalities

by “selectively modernizing” Malays. Though policy statements sometimes mentioned

the colonial origin of inequalities, as the definition of the “nation” built on the concept of

the “Malay race” and its common interests, the “non-Malay races” in the country (rather

than the colonialists) became the antithesis of the “nation.”

After the riots in 1969, the name of the national language was changed from Bahasa

Melayu to Bahasa Malaysia. Allegedly, it was a measure to seek a cultural unity through

the national language and “to emphasize that the National Language is not the language

of only one section of the nation but of all” (Wong and Ee 1975:111). Some scholars

analyzed the move as an attempt toward “cultural homogenization” through “cultural

conversion” of non-Malays (Means 1991:133). However, despite the proclaimed goal of

national unity, a question remained – whether a full cultural conversion of “non-Malays”

was actually encouraged or even possible. Did “linguistic nationalization” mean an

inclusive process that allowed acculturation of non-Malays into the Malay society? Or
 71
was it an exclusive one that acknowledges an intrinsic connection between the Malay

race and the Malay language? The conflict between inclusive and exclusive definitions of

“nation” in the language policy led a scholar to ask “how will the Malays view the non-

Malay citizens who have become proficient in their language and use it in every aspect of

their lives” (Watson 1983 quoted in Abdullah 2005:9).

In many ways, linguistic nationalization was about making a distinction between

Malays and non-Malays as much as it was for linguistic and cultural homogenization. For

example, when the national language was renamed, surprisingly, dissent was voiced by

some sections of Malays as well as non-Malays. They insisted that the official name of

the national language should be Bahasa Melayu (the language of Malays) instead of

Bahasa Malaysia (the language of Malaysians) (Asmah 1982:22; Abdullah 2005:9).

According to them, doing otherwise would amount to denying the Malay ownership of

Malaysia and its national language. 25

Mahathir’s version of Malay nationalism was based not on an affirmation of the

Malay “traditional culture” but its stigmatization. Then, what was the goal of promoting

the Malay language? Mahathir’s almost exclusive emphasis on the economic

development of Malays was not always well accepted by other Malay nationalists

(especially those emphasizing the natural connection between the Malay language,

culture, and identity). However, they found a common concern – what could the Malay

language do for the Malay race, compared to what the English language had done for

non-Malay races? The role of the English and the Malay language became defined in the

framework of Malay/ non-Malay competition.

25
The opinion still seems not uncommon among school teachers and scholars who emphasize their loyalty
to their Malay identity and their “mother tongue” (Dewan Bahasa 2003, also cf. Chapter 7).
 72
The argument that English has a great role for national development and

modernization, which had strong hold during the early years after independence, became

no more sustainable, because the language, at least for the time being, did not seem to

help the development of the “nation” i.e. the “Malay race” (Mahathir 1970:86; Chai Hon-

Chan 1971:61; Ozog 1990:309). The promotion of the Malay language, in which Malays

were supposed to have “natural” proficiency, would provide Malays the protection of

“mother tongue” in their competition with non-Malays.

The announcement of the New Education Policy in 1971 led to revisions of textbooks

and provision of the newly standardized public exams in Bahasa Malaysia. The gradual

conversion of English-medium schools into Malay-medium schools made the formerly

English-educated Malays and non-Malays acquire the national language as a medium of

inter-racial communication. The project allowed the national language to take over parts

of the roles that English previously played. However, the racially defined limitation of

linguistic assimilation became clear, when mastering the language did not give “non-

Malays” access to the privileges reserved for “Malays” (There were racial quota for

university and college admissions and special scholarships for Malays to study in local

and foreign universities). Despite the new name of the national language (Bahasa

Malaysia) and the emphasis on making it the language of all Malaysians, the primary role

of the national language was to socially advance “Malays” by providing them the

protection of their “mother tongue.”

The fact that the policy did not actively engage with non-Malays does not mean that it

had no impact on them. According to the racial definition of economic inequalities, non-

Malays were described as the “haves” and Malays as “have-nots.” The framework left out
 73
the economically deprived non-Malays who had little access to public education – both

during the colonial period and after independence. An ethnographic study in a non-Malay

working-class community in West Malaysia from 1975 to 1978 notes:

In the non-Malay community, hereafter called the Kampong (Malay for village), in
which I lived, I found little evidence of implementation, adaptation, or language shift.
Kampong dwellers who did not speak Bahasa Malaysia were not learning it, although
many wished to do so. Those who knew some Malay had little or no opportunity to
speak it, and children who were learning it at school never uttered a word. Many
people were aware of the importance of speaking the national language but found
access to it impossible. (de Terra 1983:528)

Criticizing the idea that non-Malays’ attachment to their “mother tongues” and their

ethnic identity blocks them from learning the national language, de Terra claims that

“failure to learn Bahasa Malaysia may have more to do with language planners than with

language speakers/learners,” because “what language is for Bahasa Malaysia language

planners is not what it is for working class, non-Malay speakers.”

The poor non-Malays were not the primary target of linguistic nationalization,

because its goal was not to incorporate non-Malays into the emergent Malay-dominant

society, but to modernize and develop Malays while putting non-Malay development on

hold. Lower-class non-Malays needed the national language not to be further excluded

from the mainstream of education and society, but their access to the language was

limited. Furthermore, mastering the language (against all odds) did not guarantee them

the access to opportunities reserved for Malays. I will further discuss the issues in

Chapter 4 and 5 with my ethnographic description of SMK Jalan Limau where non-

Malay students from urban low-income families failed to learn the national language.

In contrast, former English-medium elite schools boasted of their successful transition

from English to Malay. The formerly English-educated non-Malays who formed the
 74
majority of the students and teacher in elite schools, the small number of English-

educated Malays who had long had presence there, and the added number of Malay

students and teachers in those schools gradually established normative English/Malay

bilingualism. In Chapter 6 and 7, with the case study of SMK Taman Raya, I discuss how

a former English-medium elite school established by missionaries had made a successful

transition from the colonial system of education to the national one. Non-Malay students

in SMK Taman Raya, most of whom were children of affluent urban professionals,

performed in the national language as well as their Malay classmates. While the

attachment to “mother tongues” and ethnic identities is blamed for the failure of lower-

class non-Malays in schools, the children of urban professional non-Malays take pride in

their “civic consciousness” transcending ethnic identities.

The issue of “national culture” demonstrated even more ambiguous nature than that

of “national language.” The Congress for National Culture in 1970, officiated by Prime

Minister Tun Abdul Razak and attended mainly by Malays, marked the beginning of

discussion about “national culture.” According to Asmah (1982:33-4), the documents

produced in the Congress implied that even the participants were unsure about “what it

meant by national culture.” They only agreed on the point that it should be something

indigenous to the region. It was not until the announcement of the National Cultural

Policy in 1982 that the agenda of “having a national culture” became materialized into

concrete government programs. The National Cultural Policy proclaimed to promote

Malaysian culture around the idea of “one culture, one language, and one citizenry”

instead of defining it as a mosaic of many different “cultures.” However, the racially

defined limitation to cultural homogenization meant that “non-Malays” had to learn about
 75
“national culture” while assuming that it belonged to the other race – “Malays.”

Islamic Resurgence Movement: New Malay Capitalists and their Critics

The policy focus on the social advancement of the Malay race did not mean the

improvement of life conditions for all Malays. Malays observed growing political and

economic differences among them (Alatas 1975; Kessler 1980). A new class of Malay

professionals and capitalists was emerging, but the neglect of lower-class Malays became

a fertile ground for social movements with a strong Malay nationalist agenda. Therefore,

“the reality in front of them – that rich Malays became richer while poorer and small-

scale Malay traders continued in their vocations – was a sore point and tended to

intensify the ‘class’ gap between them” (Hussin Mutalib 1990:64).

In the 1950s and 1960s, similar struggles revolved around the issue of language.

However, the promotion of the national language did not provide enough “protection” for

the interest of rural and urban lower-class Malays. The porous boundaries of linguistic

difference allowed some non-Malays to master the national language, despite its

identification with the Malay race. Malays achieved only limited success in the new

national literacy that they believed to be their “mother tongue.” In the face of the

significant gap between the standardized national language and the various forms of

vernacular Malay languages, Malay students experienced disenchantment with the

“protection” of the “mother tongue.”

In the 1970s, the Malay nationalist demand for more opportunities for Malays

adopted Islam as the central symbol of social reform. Some scholars point out that the

Islamic resurgence movement had aspects of class struggle (Kessler 1980:6; Shamsul
 76
1986; Reid 1988:37). However, movement leaders focused their religious language of

morality on the betterment of the underprivileged Malays, and as a result, strengthened

the racial boundaries of “nation.”

Mahathir’s ideology for “selective modernization” promoted Malays migration from

“backward rural” areas to “modern urban” areas. The rapid urbanization accompanied the

side effect of violence and poverty in the cities. The younger generation of Malay

nationalist leaders criticized Mahathir’s exclusive focus on economy and blamed

westernization, secularism and the lack of morality in the government and society for the

emerging social disorders and exacerbating inequalities (Mauzy and Milne 1983:633;

Reid 1988:39). The following statement reflects the position of ABIM (Angkatan Belia

Islam Malaysia: Malaysian Islamic Youth Movement), an influential resurgence

movement group led by Anwar Ibrahm.

[T]he government mainly provided secular education and put too much emphasis on
material development to the neglect of Islamic values and identity, and the
development of the individual personality. The consequence of this over-concern for
material development and neglect of moral and spiritual development had begun to
show on the products of the educational system. Discipline problems such as
smoking, vandalism, and disobedience to authority had risen in schools; drug
addiction had begun to spread especially among Muslim youths … Muslim youths
were deeply influenced by Western culture in terms of fashion and mannerisms but
not in their intellectualism. (Rosnani 2004:81)

The statement does not mention the word “Malays,” but, just as the national language

was considered the language of Malays, Islam was defined as the religion of Malays.

Thus, the term “Muslim youths,” in this context, is another way of addressing “Malay

youths.” The target of social reform moved from the affluence of non-Malays to the

immorality of the “Westernized” and materialistic Malay elites. The religious movements

of social reform, however, did not include the programs for the underprivileged non-
 77
Malays in their agenda.

The popularity of Islamic resurgence movement among urban Malays pressured the

Malay-led government to accommodate parts of its agenda through state-led Islamization.

As a result, Islam emerged as a symbol of a truly exclusive Malay identity. Anwar

Ibrahim joined the government owning party, UMNO, in 1982. While he was serving as

the Minister of Education, the National Philosophy of Education was announced.

Education in Malaysia is an on-going effort towards further developing the potential

of individuals in a holistic and integrated manner, so as to produce individuals who
are intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, and physically balanced and harmonious,
based on a firm belief in and devotion to God. Such an effort is designed to produce
Malaysian citizens who are knowledgeable and competent, who posses high moral
standards, and who are responsible and capable of achieving a high level of personal
well-being as well as being able to contribute to the harmony and betterment of the
family, the society and the nation at large. (Originally produced in 1987, reprinted in
Education in Malaysia, Ministry of Education 2001:16)

The national philosophy of education did not mention anything about language, though in

1986 the official name of the national language was changed from Bahasa Malaysia to

Bahasa Melayu to emphasize its Malay ownership. Neither did it contain the economist

language of manpower development and economic progress. The philosophy fully

focused on the values of harmony, wholesomeness, and morality. It shows how, in the

process of government’s absorption of dissents among Malays (in the name of Islam), the

critique of rapid urbanization and exacerbating inequalities turns into a dull and benign

emphasis on balanced personality and sound morality.

The changes in schools, however, show that the ideas reflected in the philosophy were

far from just being dull and benign. The New Primary School Curriculum (Kurikulum

Baru Sekolah Rendah: KBSR) in 1983 and the Integrated Curriculum for Secondary

School (Kurikulum Bersepadu Sekolah Menengah: KBSM) in 1989 increased the class
 78
hours allocated to religious and moral education. The dilemma in implementing the new

curricula was that, despite the dominant definition of the “nation” as “Malays,” public

schools were for Malaysian citizens of all races. The dilemma was tackled by providing

religious education for Muslim students and moral education for non-Muslim students.

During the same period, a new religious dress-code was introduced in public schools,

adding visual markers to the existing Malay/ non-Malay distinction in the form of Islamic

and non-Islamic dresses.

The connection of “national culture” to Islam made the word “national” more

exclusive than ever. Promotion of national (religious) culture was a program for making

distinctions between Malay and non-Malay rather than being a program for cultural

homogenization. In the course of government attempts to normalize Islamic resurgence

movements, the demand for social change in those movements were largely forgotten.

Instead, the idea of cultural and religious difference between races became further

institutionalized.

5. Postcolonial Dichotomies and Racialization of Modernity

Pennycook (1994:194) argues that “the struggle for Malay cultural, economic and

political ascendance was a struggle against Chinese and Indian economic power and the

language most closely connected to that power: English.” The two themes – the

competition between “races” and the competition between “languages” for the hegemony

in the state – were repeated numerous times by both politicians and academics. However,

the dichotomies (between Malays and non-Malays and between the Malay language and

the English language) distort the complicated connections among race, language, and
 79
class as much as they seem to effectively summarize the formation of economic, political,

linguistic and cultural divisions in Malaysian society.

The first theme highlights “racial segregation” in its colonial and post-independence

forms. The colonial distinction between “natives” and “immigrants” seems to be

reproduced in the post-independence distinction between “Malays” and “non-Malays.”

The post-independence demand for correcting economic and social inequalities, when

accommodated by the Malay-led government, contributed to further consolidating the

notion of economic, linguistic and cultural difference between “races.” However, the

government promotion of the Malay language, culture, and religion had important

differences from the active affirmation of the Malay language and culture that Malay-

educated nationalists with grassroots support pursued. The model of the state-led

modernization, despite the government emphasis on the “indigenousness” or

“Malayness” as the foundation of its legitimacy, was the economically successful non-

Malays (especially Chinese) and their allegedly proven ability to face the challenges of

modern world. The project of “selective modernization” was to make the allegedly pre-

modern and backward Malays catch up with non-Malays. Then, where did the English-

educated urban Malay elite belong between the oppositional categories?

The answer can be found in the “institutional segregation.” The British control of

Colonial Malaya owed much to the segregation between the English-educated local elite

(who were predominantly but not exclusively from “immigrant” population) and the rest

of the colonized people from different “races.” For the first group, English represented

modernization, development, and progress as well as their individual success. As the anti-

government Malay language movement in the 1960s and the anti-government Islamic
 80
resurgence movement demonstrate, the linguistic and cultural gap between the English-

educated Malay elites and the rest of Malay masses persisted even after the establishment

of the Malay-led government in the post-independence state. 26 The themes of the

competition between “races” and the competition between “languages” reproduce, rather

than contradict, the problematic dichotomy between the Malay ownership of the Malay

language and the non-Malay ownership of the English language. Malay elites, even when

they spoke for “Malay causes,” were themselves no less enthusiastic supporters of the

English language than their non-Malay counterparts.

26
Similarly, the persisting antagonism exists between the English-educated Chinese and the Chinese-
educated Chinese.
 81
Chapter Three

Presence of the Past: English in the State Ideology of Globalization

1. Mastering English during the Time of Nationalism

The rhetoric of “putting English aside” should not mislead us to believe that the

influence of the language evaporated in the midst of pursuing Malay nationalist projects.

What the nationalization projects in the 1970s put in opposition to the “common interest

of the Malay race” was the alleged near monopoly of English (and economic

opportunities related to the language) by non-Malays, not the language itself. Contrary to

the widespread belief that the promotion of the Malay interest, language, and culture was

at the same time a “struggle against English,” Mahathir Mohamad, former Prime Minister

and the architect of nationalization projects, distanced himself from the anti-English

viewpoint. Even during the peek of linguistic nationalization, he emphasized that Malay

students should not neglect the mastery of English.

As English is no longer the medium of instruction in the majority of schools in this

country, mastering it is not as easy as it used to be. A language can be mastered only
when it is widely used. It is difficult to get a good command of a language which is
only taught as a subject. Still, this is no excuse for such poor performance in the
English language on the part of Malay students. What is needed is the will to study
and use it to a reasonable extent outside school hours. Using English in this way does
not mean placing less importance on the national language. Refusal to acquire a
command of English or some other language may well be a front hiding a weak
personality that is terrified of exposure. (1986:43; translation from a Malay text
originally published in 1976)

Not only did Mahathir mention the compatibility between English and the national

language, he also criticized people who argued otherwise. According to him, the “refusal”

to learn English does not come from the unequal social conditions related to the language,

but from the weakness of (Malay) people who are afraid of challenges. Mahathir debunks

the anti-English argument by calling it “a front hiding a weak personality that is terrified
 82
of exposure.” Asmah Haji Omar, one of the leading sociolinguists in Malaysia, also

argues that the re-emerging enthusiasm for English started as early as the late 1970s.

Though she does not adopt the racializing rhetoric of Mahathir, her statement contains

similar psychological terms.

In the latter part of the seventies enthusiasm for the English language found a re-
emergence, and English surfaced once more from the mistiness of its status. This was
motivated by a realization from the leaders and the educationists of the country that
graduates of Malaysian universities could no longer handle English with the
efficiency comparable to their predecessors. This “linguistic deficit,” as far as
English was concerned, was felt most of all in the diplomatic, business and academic
circles. … The stigma has finally been removed, and it is no longer sensitive to talk
about promoting the standard of English among the Malaysians … Such a
phenomenon was not possible in the first 15 years or so of Independence, as it would
have been interpreted as “antinational” or as a sign of disrespect for the national
language. (Asmah 1994[1989]:72-3)

Asmah interprets the re-emerging enthusiasm for English as an indication that “stigma

has finally been removed.” According to her, an opposition to English is a symptom of

stigma, which Irving Goffman defined as “the situation of the individual who is

disqualified from full social acceptance” (1963:i). The statement clearly shows from

whose point of view the “acceptability” is defined. It is the “realization from the leaders

and educationists” that “graduates of Malaysian universities” and people in “diplomatic,

business and academic circles” can “no longer handle English with the efficiency

comparable to their predecessors.” The last phrase demonstrates that “their predecessors,”

or the English-educated colonial elite, becomes the standard of comparison in defining

“linguistic deficit.”

The statement does not mention how the “stigma” was removed: was it due to the

changed status of the Malay language or the passage of time? The individualizing

language of psychology depoliticizes the issue by concealing the differences in opinions.

 83
Even during the first years of independence, not all people considered English “anti-

national.” For the English-educated elite, who were then in control of the government,

English was an “a-national” language linking colonial elites to the modernized western

countries and to their multi-ethnic fellows in the colony. The arrival of the national

language was never based on a consensus, and the differences in opinion have never

disappeared.

While cautioning against “emotional” reactions to the English language, the two

statements call for a “rational” evaluation of the language’s usefulness for modernization.

The distinction between the “irrational force of nationalism” and the “rational state of

patriotism,” Michael Billig argues in his book Banal Nationalism, provides a framework

for the widespread logic adopted by intellectuals from “established nations” to discredit

nationalisms of emerging nations (1995:38,132). The two examples, however, show that

the same framework can be adopted by political leaders and intellectuals of the new

nations to distinguish “handicapped masses” from “model citizens” – those who are

caught up with “weak personality” and “stigma” from those who are capable of moving

beyond them and seek the best interest the country. It is unpatriotic (especially for

Malays) to be anti-English, when English stands for modernization and the already

modernized “immigrant” races in the country, and Malays need to get out of their

“backwardness” and become the leaders of the country’s modernization projects.

What does it tell about the connection between class difference and the English

language? As Mahathir pointed out, mastering English while attending schools in the

national language was not an “easy” task. But what about his statement that “mastering it

is not as easy as it used to be”? Both in Colonial Malaya and independent Malaysia,
 84
mastering English has never been an easy job for most of the people, whether they are

Malays or non-Malays. During the colonial period, only a limited number of people had

access to English-medium education. After linguistic nationalization, the opportunity to

master English in public schools became even more limited.

The English-educated elite of the pre-nationalization generation criticized both the

deteriorating quality of education and the disappearing civic consciousness in the

linguistically and culturally nationalized public schools. Their distrust in public schools

led them to send their children to “premier schools” that are mostly former English-

medium elite schools. Though they are also public schools, people usually distinguished

them from regular ones called “Malay schools” (Later in this chapter, I further discuss

what “Malay schools” are). What happened in the elite schools after nationalization

provides a good example to see how the well-equipped students from urban professional

families coped with the double challenges of polishing up their English while mastering

the national language. It also shows how the “premier school” managed to maintain its

distinctive “tradition of excellence,” allegedly required for model citizens who would

lead the country’s modernizing process. In “premier schools,” English is often identified

with the modern personality, mindset and attitude that make its members the legitimate

leaders of the country.

The second destination of my ethnographic research, SMK Taman Raya, is one of

those schools. The school, with a proportionate racial make-up of students roughly

reflecting that of the country, functioned as a Malay/English bilingual school and

produced a new generation of Malay/English bilingual elites. The case demonstrates that,

contrary to the political rhetoric, it is neither “languages” nor “races” that compete with
 85
one another. The competition is among people differentially positioned in the linguistic,

educational and economic landscapes of the society. English is the symbol of the

modernized “non-Malays.” At the same time, it is an “a-national” language that

symbolizes the unity among the “modern, urban, and cosmopolitan” Malaysians of

different races who are free from the emotional attachment to their ethnic identities

observed among the masses.

2. After Nationalization: Different Dreams and Different Evaluations

In African Language, Development and the State, Richard Fardon and Graham

Furniss write: “since most of Africa has now gained over thirty years of post-colonial

experience in language planning, it is possible to assess the legacy of these years and to

compare the best and worst practices” (1994:i). The statement assumes that the time for

nationalist projects are almost over, thus some objective and unbiased diagnoses and

evaluations can be made. However, in Malaysia (and in many other post-independence

states), there seems to be little agreement about whether the time of nationalization is

over.

The disagreement is even more salient when it comes to the evaluations of previous

nationalizing projects. Some argue that nationalization is a still unfinished project, while

others assert that it has already achieved its acclaimed objectives. Some others maintain

that nationalization was an erroneous idea from its conception, thus seriously undermined

a “sound” development of the state. The difference in opinions provides little surprise,

considering that there was no unanimous definition of “nation” even at the dawn of the

postcolonial nationhood. The different evaluations reflect the multiple goals and dreams
 86
people had in the past in the name of “nation” and lead to different models of national

development and citizenship in the present and future. However, the claims of legitimacy

tend to be made in universalistic terms even when they represent particularistic positions.

As I discuss in this chapter, the ideology of globalization is aptly adopted by some elites

to the universalizing effect, helping them to present their particularistic models of

nationhood as reflecting the inevitable direction of social changes.

Nationalization: the Unfinished Project

The Malay language as the only national and official language indicated that the

language would become the language of the state and its citizens. In fact, the exclusive

use of the national language in public schools contributed to its much wider use among

Malaysians of various ethnic and economic backgrounds. However, not every field was

equally controlled by the linguistic nationalization, creating new forms of linguistic

division in the society. Especially, the national language had limited use in tertiary

educational institutions and among urban professionals and elites who received education

before the language conversion. 27 The following statement well reflects the difficulties of

a full linguistic nationalization.

Malay faces still competition from English … Malay has not acquired control of
many important domains of language use, a very important factor in its development
process. Malay cannot remain forever a language of basic communication. It has to
become a language by means of which complex ideas and feelings are communicated
effectively and beautifully; it has to be a language of science and technology and a
language of high culture. (Nik Safiah 1987 quoted in Ozog 1990:312)

27
DBP’s effort to publish textbooks in the national language was focused on the primary and secondary
level of education. Translation and publication of textbooks for colleges and universities showed a very
slow progress and after the 1990s there was “dwindling efforts to publish tertiary books in Malay” (Roosfa
Hashim 2003; Abdullah Hassan 2005:8)
 87
Despite the important points, the image of “competition between languages” obscures the

fact that there were different opinions about the role of the national language from the

beginning. Although the English-educated elite had no option for their children but

Malay-medium schools (unless they chose to educate them abroad), the widespread doubt

about the potential of the Malay language did not disappear and the linguistic functional

dualism (that the national language serves identity purposes and English serves

development purposes) remained unchallenged.

Mahathir’s support for the national language did not fundamentally depart from the

dualism, but further complicated it by combining it to his ideas of racial differences and

selective modernization. According to him, the national language was not just for national

identity and unity, but also for the protection of Malay interests. However, he also

maintained that when there is no more need for the government to protect the Malay race,

Malays would ultimately need English to compete with other races in the country (as well

as with elites of other countries) and to continue their modernization.

The idea of providing Malays with the protection of “mother tongue” posed major

problems. It combined a conflicting agenda within the project of linguistic nationalization

– unity and division. As I pointed out earlier, the racially defined nationalization projects

focused on the “Malay interests,” while not actively getting involved with non-Malays.

Especially, the lower-class non-Malays became vulnerable to further marginalization after

linguistic nationalization in education. The government attempts at social restructuring

reserved privileges for “Malays,” but not for the poor non-Malays. In effect, “by not

implementing the plan” among the poor non-Malays, “racial or ethnic divisions are

maintained among the working class” (de Terra 1984:529).

 88
However, the disadvantaged non-Malays were not the only people who experienced

exclusion from the new education system in the national language. Despite the assumed

natural relationship between the Malay people and the national language, Bahasa

Malaysia represented a new national literacy rather than the “mother tongue” of Malays.

The national language, newly standardized after independence, was not exactly same

with the various Malay languages people spoke everyday. Not surprisingly, many lower-

class Malays struggled to master what was presented as their “mother tongue” (Leong

1983).

On the one hand, there were concerns that the national language was yet to become a

“language of science and technology” and a “language of high culture.” On the other

hand, there were signs that the language was not being fully shared by all Malaysians.

The gap existed not only between Malays and non-Malays but between different classes

within each “race.” However, despite the limitations, the national language has been the

most accessible medium of inter-ethnic communication. Mastering the language, at the

same time, has been the first test for students to receive official acknowledgement of their

educational qualification. The children of the English-educated urban elites were not

exempt from the national linguistic norm, as far as they sought to reproduce their

privileges within the system. Gradually, they formed a new generation of Malay/English

bilinguals. The new generation of nationalized elite, united in both the national language

and English, see in the government’s recent turn to English a successful completion of

linguistic nationalization.

Nationalization as a Completed Project

 89
The project introduced some remarkable changes to the way the Malay language was

used by the people with good educational qualifications. For most of the post-

nationalization generation who were educated within the country, instead of seeking

expensive education abroad, mastering the national language was prerequisite for success

in schools, thus a first step toward reproducing or improving their social status. Although

its mastery did not bring non-Malays the same privilege as given to Malays who had

mastered it, the new linguistic unity was emerging among those who had successfully

passed through the public school system.

The enforcement of the national language through institutions of mass education,

ironically, gave a new role to the English language. “[S]ociopolitical changes have

therefore created an emerging educated elite united by the national language, Bahasa

Malaysia, but divided by the ‘second language’ English” (Rajah 1990:115; Pennycook

1994:203). To gain access to the most exclusive elite membership, it was not sufficient

for the aspiring elite to mater the national language. They also had to master English,

which had no official status in the country but was still being identified with its

modernization. The normative Malay/English bilingualism in a premier school, SMK

Taman Raya, demonstrates that, unlike the old colonial elites who lacked the national

literacy, their successors had to prove their contributions to the completion of

nationalization to claim their legitimacy as the leaders. But they did not believe that,

without the mastery of English, they could maintain its “tradition of excellence.”

Nationalization as a Story of Failure

The harshest evaluation of nationalization, ironically, came from its key political
 90
players including Mahathir Mohamad. After pointing out that the original goal of having

national schools in Bahasa Malaysia was to promote national integration, he said

“Unfortunately, we have failed to do so. Because some people thought they should use

the national schools for the advancement of one race only” (Star, Oct 11, 2002). At first

glance, the fact that an architect of the race-based selective modernization denounces the

tendency of racial division in public schools may seem contradictory. However, from the

statement, it is clear that the criticism is targeting specific kinds of nationalist dreams and

blaming them of failing nationalization projects that could have been successful.

The argument is based on the diagnosis that national schools are becoming “Malay

schools.” How do they define “Malay schools”? Officially, “Malay schools” (in the sense

that only Malays attend them) disappeared, after the national language became the only

official language for public education (especially at the secondary level). Though primary

schools tend to show more racial division than secondary schools, partly due to the

inclusion of Mandarin or Tamil-medium primary schools in the system, the racial

composition of each public school (whether primary and secondary) depends on that of

neighboring areas. Especially in urban areas, most schools have ethnically mixed student

populations. “Malay schools” in this sense only exist in some rural areas where the

residents are mostly Malays.

Secondly, the failure argument points out the exclusive use of the national language in

the so-called “Malay schools,” though it does not pinpoint the language as the cause of

failure. After Mahathir’s open criticism of the weakness in national schools, a major daily

newspaper published a column that states

[I]t has generally been accepted that the Malaysian education system has some
inherent weaknesses that need to be corrected. Top of the list is the need to address
 91
the declining standard of English among students, a flaw which has posed a serious
handicap to modern and meticulous learning and hence a successful career. Only the
language jingoists will disagree with Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir
Mohamad when he says that educational shortcomings are unusually concentrated in
schools in which Bahasa Malaysia is the main medium of instruction. With the
reduced emphasis accorded to English since the late 1970s, it has been proven
beyond doubt that those less proficient in the language are handicapped when it
comes to integrating and facing the challenges of the new economy. Nationalism
must not underpin a refusal to face these facts. On the contrary, pragmatic
nationalism would argue for bringing back English into the classroom in order to
improve the competitiveness of Malaysians, especially Bumiputeras, amidst
relentless globalisation. (New Straits Times, May 8, 2002)

What did Mahathir and the column writer mean by “schools in which Bahasa Malaysia is

the main medium of instruction”? In principle, after the 1970s, all public schools were

mandated to use the national language as the medium of instruction. If there was no

exception to the principle, what are the schools that serve as the standard of comparison?

The phrases such as “declining standard” and “bringing back English into the classroom”

show that the English-medium schools during the colonial period become the standard of

diagnosing problems in the current education system. While the column criticizes the

over-concentration on the national language for causing problems, it expects that

Mahathir’s decision to “bring back English into the classroom” would solve the problems.

The position is repeated in the opposition made between “linguistic jingoism” and

“pragmatic nationalism” and in the claims that the holders of the latter view are

emotionally and intellectually superior to the others.

The third point of criticism about “Malay schools” is their religious focus on Islamic

ways of life. Mahathir argued that national schools had turned into “semi-religious

schools” and the focus on religion made non-Muslim parents shy way from sending their

children to national schools (Star, February 8, 2003). The accusation reflects the

government’s uneasy coalition with the Islamic resurgence movements and its
 92
antagonism with the Islamic oppositional party (PAS: Parti Islam Semalaysia; Pan-

Malaysian Islamic Party) that garnered significant ground among Malays. The criticism,

however, does not mean that the government was not enthusiastic about the promotion of

Islamic moral values. 28 While Mahathir presents the government as the holders of sound

and moral Islamic values, he depicts the Islamic agenda of the oppositional party as a

threat to national unity.

Prime Minister and his supporters’ attacks on the alleged overemphasis on the Malay

race, language, and religion in national schools reveal the friction within the Malay-

oriented nationalization projects. The attacks reflect a form of “class racism” by Malay

elites against other Malays. The Malay-led government’s “claim to be national” did not

resolve the “antagonisms between capitalist bourgeoisies or ‘Westernized’ state

bourgeoisies” and the “wretched masses.” Furthermore, the masses (even those from the

same race with state bourgeoisies) are blamed for disrupting unity by holding onto their

“traditionalism” (Balibar 1991:43-44; also Anderson 1991:149-150). 29

While criticizing their fellow Malays, the state elites find the new educational model

for further national development in their own colonial past, especially the English-

medium elite schools of the colonial period and the years right after independence.

Deputy Education Minister Abdul Aziz Shamsudin nostalgically recollected the past of

national schools, saying that the government need “to change things so that there will be

28
For example, every chapter of Mahathir’s book The Challenge starts with a long quotation from the Holy
Quran. It is the book where he urged Malay students to master English.
29
“The dreams of racism actually have their origin in ideologies of class, rather than in those of nation:
above all in claims to divinity among rulers and to ‘blue’ or ‘white’ blood and ‘breeding’ among
aristocracies. No surprise then that the putative sire of modern racism should be, not some petty-bourgeois
nationalist, but Joseph Arthur, Comte de Gobineau. Nor that, on the whole, racism and anti-semitism
manifest themselves, not across national boundaries, but within them. In other worlds, they justify not so
much foreign wars as domestic repression and domination.” (Anderson 1991:149-150)
 93
a cultural mix of students and teachers at national schools. That was how things were in

the 1970s when Chinese, Malay, Tamil and Punjabi children played and fought with each

other on the same field of in the same school” (Star, Feb 8, 2003). In the statement, he

did not mention exactly what kind of national schools he had in mind, but it is pretty

obvious that he was referring to English-medium public schools before the completion of

the language conversion from English to Bahasa Malaysia. The powerful ideology of

globalization comes with nostalgic recollections of “good old days” when, they believe,

schools provided high quality education and fostered cosmopolitan culture and

harmonious racial relationship.

3. Globalization, Globally Competitive Citizens and the English language

The new models for nation building and educational reform produced in the 1990s

partly reflect the impact of Malaysia’s economic recession in the mid 1980s and the

economy’s increased dependence on foreign capital (Khoo 1995). However, even in the

midst of aggressive linguistic nationalization, the neglect of English was criticized by

some political leaders and intellectuals. The criticism was not just to remind the

usefulness of English, but it often entailed attacks on personalities of people who failed to

master the language or people who emphasized its connection to colonial dominations

and social inequalities. After the 1990s, in its ambitious plans for economic development

and educational reform, the government emphasized the inseparable connection between

advanced knowledge and the English language. At the same time, it presented the English

language as a cure for allegedly “pathological” and “parochial” ethnic nationalism

especially among “unsuccessful Malays.” The point was repeated by many political
 94
leaders in even stronger terms. The new models of national development in the

“globalized world” revive some of the key colonial logics related to the English language.

The acknowledgement of globalization often becomes a way of emphasizing the

inevitability of changes in certain directions (Kessler 2001, among others, warned against

the danger of universalism in the debates about globalization). The sweeping rhetoric of

paradigm change from the era of “nationalization” to that of “globalization” helps the

government to suppress differences of opinions about the role of English in national

development. However, the fact that people talk less about nationalization neither

removes the differences nor undoes the consequences of previous nationalizing projects.

Criticizing the widespread assumption that globalization is a force from outside the

boundaries of “nations,” I discuss how a powerful ideology of globalization produced

within the country provides the framework for interpreting internal social differences.

Ironically, the rhetoric about the country’s future and its model citizens most vividly

reveals the “presence of the [colonial] past” (Balibar 1991:38).

Into the Era of Globalization

On February 28, 1991, at the inaugural meeting of the Malaysian Business Council,

Mahathir delivered a speech that later framed the state version of globalization ideology

and various government policies. The speech, titled “Malaysia: The Way Forward,”

mapped out a plan to make Malaysia a “fully developed country” by the year 2020. The

speech is widely known as Vision 2020 or Wawasan 2020. In the same year, the National

Development Policy (NDP: 1991-2000) replaced the New Economic Policy (NEP: 1970-

1990). The NDP changed the focus of the economy from the equal-distribution between
 95
races to the achievement of growth and development through privatization and

competition. The vision of the future presented by Vision 2020 argued that Malaysia was

just about to enter a whole new era in its progressive history of modernization: the

direction of the ongoing changes was irreversible and only the fittest country would

survive in the new era of infinite competitions and constant changes.

Today, the forces of globalization, liberalization and information and communication

technology (ICT) have fundamentally changed the rules and nature of global trade,
resource flows and competition. Clearly, countries that are able to rise to the
challenge will grow in success and prosperity, while those failing to do so will be
marginalized and languish in the backwaters of development. (Mahathir’s preface to
The Third Outline Perspective Plan 2001-2010, Economic Planning Unit 2001:vi,
emphases added)

Mahathir defined the critical leap from a “developing” to a “developed” country

primarily in economic terms. The all-inclusive list of virtues characterizing the fictive

Malaysia of the year 2020 shows that, in this state version of globalization ideology,

economic growth turns into a metonymy for a full-scale social progress.

Hopefully the Malaysian who is born today and in the years to come will be the last
generation of our citizens who will be living in a country that is called ‘developing.’
The ultimate objective that we should aim for is a Malaysia that is a fully developed
county by the year 2020. What … is ‘a fully developed country’? ... By the year 2020,
Malaysia can be a united nation, with a confident Malaysian society, infused by
strong moral and ethnical values, living in a society that is democratic liberal and
tolerant, caring, economically just and equitable, progressive and prosperous, and in
full possession of an economy that is competitive, dynamic, robust and resilient.
(Mahathir, “Malaysia: The Way Forward,” 1991, emphasis added)

According to Vision 2020, the first and most important pre-condition to achieve the status

of “developed” country is “establishing a united Malaysian nation with a sense of

common and shared destiny … made up of one ‘Bangsa Malaysia’ with political loyalty

and dedication to the nation.” The concept of Bangsa Malaysia, translated as “Malaysian

nation” or “Malaysian race,” provides the new model, but it does not include all the
 96
citizens in the country. The agenda indicates that people should satisfy certain conditions

to become proper members of Bangsa Malaysia. Despite its implication of inclusiveness,

cosmopolitanism, and civic nationalism, the term of Bangsa Malaysia contains

exclusiveness within it.

The general model of Bangsa Malaysia for the desirable future citizenship contains a

specified model of a desirable Malay Malaysian. The concept of “Melayu Baru” or “New

Malays” presents the model. Mahathir lists the virtues required for new Malays:

We must raise our effort to make ourselves into people who are able to take their
appropriate place in this modern world. For this we require a new Malay and
bumiputera race which possesses a culture suitable to the modern period, capable of
meeting all challenges, able to compete without assistance, learned and
knowledgeable, sophisticated, honest, disciplined, trustworthy and competent.
(Mahathir, ‘Speech at the UMNO General Assembly 1991,’ quoted in Khoo
1995:335) 30

Some scholars interpret the declaration as a signal that modern Malay capitalists depart

from “exclusive ethnic nationalism” and incorporate “inclusive civic nationalism” or

“national cosmopolitanism” (Yao 2003; Kahn 2006; Mauzy 2006). Some also interpret it

as a sign that enlightened Malay elites are now willing to break away from government

protectionism and stand on their own feet. However, the other side of the seemingly

liberal and progressive agenda is the denunciation of “the feudalistic and fatalistic vestige

of an old Malay culture, value system and mental make-up” and Malays who failed to

achieve “a mental revolution and a cultural transformation” required for modernization

(Khoo 1995:336). Mahathir’s speech in the UMNO General Assembly shows that the

colonial theme of “lazy native” is adopted by Malay elites to criticize other Malays (cf.
30
It is not a coincidence that no equivalent concept was developed for Chinese or Indians, because the
nationalization projects of the 1970s and 1980s singled out the Malay race as “backward” and made it the
target of selective modernization. Though Case (2004:40) points out that “the MCA followed suit,
announcing ‘new Chinese,’ wholly available for cross-ethnic dealings,” the concept found little circulation
after the announcement.
 97
Alatas 1977).

The Malays do not lack anything. They have the brains, the energy and skill, … just
like everyone else. If they have not succeeded after being given the opportunities
many times, after they have been helped with all kinds of facilities and even money,
the reason is that … they are not hardworking, i.e. they are lazy and like to find easy
way and the quick way, no matter what the end is. (Star, June 21, 2002; Yao
2003:220)

Are “Malay professionals and capitalists” (or New Malays) the “modern subject” distinct

from their traditional counterpart as Yao suggests (2003:221)? But how is the argument

different from the idea of “Malay backwardness” published in books such as The Malay

Dilemma and The Mental Evolution? Contradicting authors who emphasize the novelty of

the concept Melayu Baru, Shamsul argues that the term reflects the uneasiness between

the “corporate players, political elites and the professional middle class” (the so-called

New Malays) and their others that has existed since the beginning of rapid modernization

(1999:89).

The powerfully ideological but extremely abstract definition of “model citizens”

provides framework for rebuilding the education system. The official focus of education

moves from the abolishment of inter-racial inequality to the production of “globally

competitive citizens” suiting the model of Bangsa Malaysia and Melayu Baru.

The New Role of National Education: Making “Globally Competitive” Citizens

The focus of national education has departed from social restructuring (esp.

eradication of inter-racial inequality) and was geared toward neo-liberalist faith in

competition. The Education Act of 1996 stated that “the purpose of education is to enable

the Malaysian society to have a command of knowledge, skills and values necessary in a

world that is highly competitive and globalised, arising from the impact of rapid
 98
development in science, technology and information.” Surprisingly, it does not mention

“national identity” or “national unity.” Instead, it narrowly defines the knowledge that

matters – it is the knowledge about science, technology and information coming from

“developed countries” that are leading the highly competitive and globalized world. 31

Advances in information communication technology (ICT) have hastened the pace of

globalisation and the trend is irreversible. Nation states have had to and continue to
grapple with the economic, political and social implications and impacts of
globalization. … Our education system is responding to these new technological
developments, economic progress and social aspirations by re-adjusting its focus.
Strategies, reforms and the necessary institutional and policy changes are being
instituted in our education system to contend with global competition and global
penetration in this millennium. (The Ministry of Education 2001:17)

Vision 2020 initiated in the early 1990s may be perceived as Malaysia’s first step into
the Information Age and a globalised world. To enable Malaysia make the quantum
leap towards an industrialized nation status and eventually into a knowledge
economy, the country need s to build a world-class education system dedicated to
producing a world-class workforce. This national aspiration is reflected in the
mission statement of the Ministry of Education: “To develop a world class quality
education system which will realize the full potential of the individual and fulfil the
aspirations of the Malaysian nation.”(ibid)

The grand narrative produced by the Ministry seeks to fulfill the “aspirations of the

Malaysian nation” not by seeking a distinctive national identity or abolishing social and

economic inequalities in the society, but by exalting the nation’s name among the list of

“industrialized” or “developed nations.” At the same time, the statement emphasizes that

the neo-liberalist emphasis on competition in education was not a government initiative,

but just a pragmatic “response” to an “irreversible” global trend. From the “pragmatic”

viewpoint among those who secured their membership in the “world-class education” and

31
Rosnani Hashim argues that since the middle of the 1990s, the government emphasizes the role of
science and technology for the development of the nation’s economy, while putting less emphasis on social
sciences and humanities (2004:217). In tertiary educational institutions, the dependence on English is much
greater in the former fields than in the latter. The concentration of Malay students in social science and
humanities departments and the growth of Malay studies and Islamic studies in universities mutually
strengthened the tendency of linguistic division between those fields.
 99
the “world-class workforce,” the arguments may sound commonsensical. However, in

some Malay elites’ responses to the “global” question (and in the welcoming voice of

some non-Malay elites), we reencounter the antiquated arguments of some British

colonialists on the education of the “natives.”

The New Role of English: Language of “Pragmatic” and “Civic” Nationalism

Mohamad Khir Toyo, then President of Malaysian Youth Council, was quoted as

saying:

[T]he great inventions of the past century … many that have managed the way we
live, work and play had come from the English-speaking nations. This is also true for
other types of important knowledge in various fields. … Therefore in order for us to
master and use new knowledge and new technology we need to master the language
in which it is elaborated. Indeed our future survival as a modern, wealthy and
progressive nation depends on this act. (Star, December 9, 2003)

The comment has striking resemblance to Macaulay’s “Minute on Indian Education” that

dates back to 1835. To the British Parliament that was undecided about the language of

native education in India, he asked “which language is the best worth knowing?”

Macaulay answered without hesitance that it was “our own language (English).” He

claimed that “Whoever knows that language has ready access to all the vast intellectual

wealth, which all the wisest nations of the earth have created and hoarded in the course of

ninety generations,” thus “the English tongue is that which would be the most useful to

our native subjects” (1999[1835]:57-8).

Similar arguments are recently being repeated by “indigenous” political leaders of the

independent state, even though they do not make pejorative remarks on the “uselessness”

of vernacular languages among the native subjects as Macaulay did. In Post-Imperial

 100
English, Fishman argues that the continuing “spread” of English in the “non-English

mother-tongue world” without forceful interventions from the “English mother-tongue

world” only proves that the people from the non-English world benefit from their

incorporation of English (1996:3). Does the change of hands make any difference to the

message or the nature of power it seeks? Fabian criticizes the idea of language “spread,”

arguing that it encourages an “a-historical and a-political approach to linguistic change

(1986:8).” If English is just spreading due to its obvious usefulness, why did the

government decide to enforce it rather than waiting for its “natural” spread?

None of the statements in government documents and none of the speeches by

political leaders had as strong and direct impact as the reintroduction of English into

public schools for the teaching of science and mathematics in 2003. The program, titled

“English for Teaching Mathematics and Science (ETeMS),” mandated public primary and

secondary schools to teach the two subjects in English. The language transition took

effect only eight months after the government’s initial proposal of the new policy. Despite

the vehement dispute over the idea of reintroducing English as a medium of instruction in

national schools, the policy initiative, once adopted, was glossed over as the best way to

catch two rabbits – improving students’ English proficiency and strengthening their

knowledge in science and technology – at the same time.

The aggressive utilitarianism was only one among many values that the new plan for

national development assigned to the English language. In government emphasis on

“national unity,” English was described as the language of “civic nationalism” and

“cosmopolitanism.” For example, after pointing out the racial division in public schools,

Mahathir argued, “In order to bring the students from the different races together … the
 101
government has introduced the study of English and the teaching of science and

mathematics in English” (Star, June 19, 2003). 32 The idea of “national unity in English”

does not seem to match well with the image of “reaching beyond national boundaries”

that often emerges in discussions about globalization and its relation to the spread of

English. However, already more than half a century ago, the English-educated

“cosmopolitan” intellectuals of the post-independence Malaysia made the link between

English and “civic nationalism.” The link was affirmed by some scholars of “World

Englishes” who had interest in postcolonial situations (Kachru 1986; Fishman 1996).

Then, what happens to the national language? The national language is still

emphasized for identity purposes, but at the same time its loyal speakers who are cautions

the promotion of English are called “chauvinists” and “jingoists.” The government’s de

facto declaration that the national language, with its Malay identification, cannot become

the universal language for citizenship ignores the significant amount of unity achieved

through public education in it. The rapid expansion of mass education was made possible

by introducing the national language (the British has already proved the difficulty of

providing English-medium mass education in colonies, when they failed to expand

English education during the last years of their occupation). Despite the continuing racial

identification of the national language, for more than thirty years, it has been the only

language of state-level unity accessible through public education.

About half a century after independence, English is still considered by the elites as

the language of “civic nationalism.” In contrast, they often identify the dream of national

unity in the Malay language with “ethnic nationalism.” Also, among them, there is a

32
Translation of speech by Umno president Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad at the Umno general
assembly on June 9 2003 at the Putra World Trade Center, Kuala Lumpur.
 102
tendency to believe that the former is inclusive while the other is exclusive. Their value

judgments conveniently turn to the widely-adopted distinction between “civic

nationalism” and “ethnic nationalism” in mainstream social science. But whose unity and

whose “civic nationalism” does English symbolize? English was a crucial part of

excluding mechanism in Colonial Malaya and it has continued to play the role after

independence. The pro-English models of future citizenship and educational reform

demonstrate that “civic nationalism” can be just as exclusive as “ethnic nationalism.” The

extreme struggles of students and teachers in an inner-city school SMK Jalan Limau after

the reintroduction of English, and some unexpected troubles in the science and

mathematics classes at a former English-medium elite school SMK Taman Raya, will

also show that English does not always open doors to advanced knowledge in technology

and science.

4. The Presence of the Past: English in the State Ideology of Globalization

The undeniable presence of the colonial past in the new model of national development

and education reform, however, does not mean that the colonial history is just repeating

itself in the context of economic, linguistic, and cultural globalization. Unlike the

English-educated colonial elite, the nationalized elite of the post-independence generation

have a good mastery of the national language and, at the same time, support the increased

role of English in the education of their future generation. The impacts of colonization,

nationalization and globalization are superimposed in their economic and social status, as

well as in their feeling of moral, linguistic, and cultural superiority to the rest of citizens.

The era of globalization may have come, but it does not necessarily mean that the era of
 103
nationalization is gone. Nor does it mean that colonialism belongs solely to the past.

Macaulay’s Minute is rediscovered by the scholars of colonialism as an example of

colonial folly and racism in the past. However, the ideologies of globalization and “global

language,” produced both by the people from the “developed countries” in the “English-

speaking world” and by the English-speaking elite of the “developing” Malaysia, indicate

that Macaulay’s idea is not only still alive but becoming a “commonsense” of the

globalizing era. In the post-independence Malaysia, the “commonsense” is expressed in

the form of “class racism” that valorizes the “globally competitive” model citizens while

denouncing the masses who are yet to overcome emotional attachment to their nations.
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Chapter Four

SMK Jalan Limau: Experience of “Nation” on the Margin of a Modernizing City

1. On the Margin of the Modernizing City

After the 1990s, the Malaysian government repeatedly pronounced the end of

nationalist modernization, while highlighting the side effects of nationalization projects.

The allegedly exacerbating ethnic division and the supposedly deteriorating quality of

education in Malay-medium public schools were used as prime examples of the side

effects. But was the ethnic division in schools actually exacerbating during the period of

nationalization? Or was the quality of education deteriorating during the same period? If

so, what are the standards of comparison that lead to the conclusions? The nostalgia for

colonial schools is recently surfacing among the older generation elites in connection

with their diagnoses of the problems in the nationalized school system. In this chapter, I

will suggest that, though the consequences of nationalist modernization in education are

in many ways ambiguous, they cannot be simply characterized as failure, exacerbation or

deterioration. Furthermore, the seemingly negative consequences should not be attributed

to the defective minds of individuals, especially their emotional attachment to ethnic

identities and cultural traditions.

The hidden standard of comparison, that favors the “de-racialized” cultural and

linguistic practice among the urban elite, fails to acknowledge that Malaysians from

different ethnic and racial backgrounds have made significant though ambiguous

integration into one nation during the period of postcolonial nation-building. While

ignoring the conditions that kept them relatively free from the colonial and postcolonial

“racialization,” the “de-racialized” elite questions the cultural and linguistic practice of
 105
their “social others” and their alleged traditionalism. The definition of the English

language as the symbol of national unity and progress and other languages as the symbol

of ethnic division and traditionalism reflect the viewpoint of the English-educated

colonial elite and their successors.

Every morning in Kuala Lumpur’s old city center starts with the smell of exhaust

fumes from old route buses delivering people between the city and its suburbs. A thirty

minutes’ daily bus trip from the bustling city center brought me to the city’s outskirt

where Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan (SMK: National Secondary School) Jalan Limau

was located. As my bus was getting closer to the school, the scenery beyond bus windows

changed from dilapidated British-Chinese style shophouses to old colonial government

buildings, then to modern high-rise buildings with government and corporate offices.

Once the bus got out of the congested old town Kuala Lumpur, a mixture of low-rise

shop-houses and high-rise apartment buildings appeared. SMK Jalan Limau was located

right next to one of those low-cost apartment complexes.

The school opened in 1996 to accommodate the population growth in the neighboring

urban low-income residential areas and the resultant shortage of schools. More than half

of the students enrolled in this school came from nearby apartment complexes built under

Projek Perumahan Rakyat (PPR) or the People’s Housing Project. The City Hall

launched the PPR project in 1997 to make Kuala Lumpur a squatter-free city by 2005

(Dewan Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur 2003). It aimed at modernizing the city’s landscape by

turning all the squatters in KL into modern apartment buildings and providing decent

living environment to urban low-income families. To achieve the goals, the city

bulldozed makeshift houses in squatter villages and built modern high-rise apartment
 106
buildings. The PPRs absorbed some of the former squatter residents while pushing some

others farther away from the city center to the city border area. Some of SMK Jalan

Limau students still lived in squatter houses or temporary mass housing called rumah

panjang (longhouses) on the border areas. 33 Some residential areas around the school still

maintained the characteristics of ethnic enclaves, which are the “remnant of the colonial

past” (Ackerman and Lee 1990:42). Both the location of the school and the socio-

economic background of students made SMK Jalan Limau an inner-city school.

The school was made up of four parallel buildings connected to one another by

corridors. In between buildings, there were small tropical gardens. From the main gate of

the school, one could see only the school field and one side of the enclosed school

complex decorated with murals. One of the murals featured the National Philosophy of

Education in Bahasa Malaysia and two girls in Islamic dresses holding piles of books. As

the mural indicated, SMK Taman Raya was a “Malay school” in the sense that Bahasa

Malaysia had been used as the only language of instruction before the introduction of

English in 2003. The school’s strong emphasis on the Malay culture and Islam also made

it a “Malay school.” The diverse ethnic backgrounds of its students and teachers, however,

demonstrated that the public school, emphasizing Bahasa Malaysia, Malay culture, and

Islam were no more exclusively for “Malays” but also for “Chinese, Indians and Others.”

At the same time, the racial make-up of students in the inner-city school showed that,

contrary to the government rhetoric of “selective modernization,” Malays were not the

only people among the economically disadvantaged urban population.

33
Rumah Panjang or longhouse originally means a traditional form of housing in Sarawak. However, this
modern rumah panjang have no historical connection with Sarawak longhouses. The lines of box houses
with multiple cells serve as temporary home for squatter evacuees until they find proper housing.
 107
I first visited SMK Jalan Limau in 2003 for a preliminary research. It was the first

year that the government introduced the policy of “English for Teaching Mathematics and

Science (ETeMS).” An English teacher, Puan Hamidah, kindly allowed me to observe her

class, but she expressed her concern that her class might disappoint me because of its

heavy dependence on Bahasa Malaysia. 34 She explained that the difficulty of using

English in her classes came from the linguistic backgrounds of the students. According to

her, the poor command of English shared by most of the students in the school made it

almost pointless to teach her English classes in English. Despite the common assumption

that Chinese and Indians are better speakers of English than Malays, the difficulty was

not restricted to Malay students. In class, she focused on helping students to translate

English sentences into Malay and teaching them techniques to answer questions in public

exams. Little exposed to either English-speaking or Malay-speaking environment before

entering the secondary school, some non-Malay students had hard time understanding

even the Malay translations. Still, Bahasa Malaysia was the language that allowed

teachers to reach the most number of students.

Students’ inability to communicate in English, however, was not the only reason

behind the English teacher’s constant switches between English and Malay. It also

reflected the difficulties she experienced as an English-language teacher whose first

language was not English. “Even for me,” Puan Hamidah said, “English is a foreign

language.” In school, she usually spoke Bahasa Malaysia, the only official language and

the national language of Malaysia. Bahasa Malaysia was also the language of her

34
Roughly speaking, Puan is the Malay equivalent for “Mrs” in English. However, Puan is followed by
either the person’s first name or her own surname (not her husband’s). Either Cik or “Miss” is used for a
unmarried woman. For men, whether they are married or single, the Malay word Encik or “Mr.” is used.
 108
education and training, because she, like most other teachers in the school (except for a

few senior teachers in their fifties), attended schools after linguistic nationalization.

Being an Indian-Muslim, however, Bahasa Malaysia was not her “mother tongue.” At

home, especially with her parents, she often spoke Tamil.

The multiple linguistic norms that Puan Hamidah had to deal with as an English-

language teacher who was born to Tamil-speaking parents and educated in Bahasa

Malaysia provides only one example of the complicated social and historical contexts

behind the alleged “deficiency” of English among the post-nationalization generation.

Some political leaders, academics and educationists argue that the quality of English in

Malaysia has been “deteriorating” after linguistic nationalization. But, to people who had

little access to the language during the colonial period, doesn’t the situation indicate an

“improvement” or, in Fishman’s term, the “democratization” of English, rather than

“deterioration”?

In the previous chapters, I have discussed how the proponents of “global English”

interpret some people’s reservation about the spread of English as the proof of their

attachment to ethno-linguistic identities or the “culture of the past.” I have also shown

that some politicians, academics and journalists in Malaysia attribute people’s

“deficiency” in English to their “weak personality,” “stigma,” “linguistic jingoism,” and

emotional attachment to their “mother tongues.” The “democratization” of English,

achieved in the rapidly expanding mass education system that was made possible by

linguistic nationalization and locally trained teachers, does not seem to have changed the

lot of the masses. The psychological and cultural explanations direct the blames for the

current situation of “deficiency” to the minds of individuals, instead of the social and
 109
historical conditions that have contributed to it. The argument about the “deteriorating”

standard of English does not just address people’s linguistic qualification for the “model

citizenship” in the globalizing era. It challenges the mind, personality, and culture of the

non-English-speaking population in the postcolonial state while valorizing those of

English-speaking urban citizens.

The salience of cultural and linguistic divisions among students in SMK Jalan Limau,

at first glance, seems to attest the argument that their attachment to ethno-linguistic

identities keeps them from achieving national unity either in Bahasa Malaysia or in

English. The linguistic model of nation-building based on the “linguistics of community”

or the “illusion of linguistic communism,” however, tend to neglect the complicated

politics related to the government’s attempts to differently recognize citizens according to

their ethnicity, race, class, and language (Pratt 1986:49; Bourdieu 1991:43). In chapter

four, I argue that many cultural aspects of ethnic divisions observed in SMK Jalan Limau

reflect the government’s differential strategies for nationalizing Malays and non-Malays

(or often dubbed as Muslims and non-Muslims). I emphasize how the social condition of

the inner-city school makes its members vulnerable to the strategies of differentiation.

The divisive aspects of nationalization, however, should not be the exclusive focus of

interest. The case of SMK Jalan Limau demonstrates that the children of the urban poor,

once separated in different residential areas and schools according to race, now study in

same schools with mostly the same curricula in the same language. Whether to see the

situation as a proof of “improvement” or “deterioration” in the level of national unity

depends on the social positioning of the viewers. It also depends on where to locate the

initial conditions against which the changes are judged – in the experience of the masses
 110
that were subject to the colonial policy of “divide and rule” or in that of the elites who

experienced “civic unity” in the English-medium colonial schools.

2. Shared Disadvantages and Different Ethnic, Linguistic and Religious

Backgrounds

How students get to “choose” the school?

The students of SMK Jalan Limau came from diverse ethnic, linguistic and religious

backgrounds. The internal diversity seems ideal for a public secondary school, one of

whose main goal is to build mutual understanding and national unity among the multi-

ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-religious citizens of the state. The situation in the school,

however, had some distance from the ideal. Despite signs of increasing mutual

understanding, the ethnic, linguistic and religious differences among its members were

constantly confirmed through mundane practices in school. Can the situation be

explained by the “psychological need” to maintain one’s ethnic identity? Or, is the

Malay-oriented nationalization project of the last three decades solely responsible for the

problem? The two theories cannot explain why the “need” is most conspicuously

expressed in schools located in low-income areas.

Students in SMK Jalan Limau share socio-economic background. Most common jobs

among parents were manual laborers, secretaries, technicians, hawkers, clerks and taxi or

truck drivers. Only a few parents have professional jobs such as architect and banker.

Another example was the number of student who benefited from the Textbook Loan

Program (Skim Pinjaman Buku Teks: SPBT). For example, among Form Three (the third

year in a secondary school) students, about one third were under the program provided
 111
only for children of families with monthly household income of less than 1,000

Malaysian Ringgit (around $300). The ratio reflected the character of the surrounding

area with mass housing provided by the City Hall. Also, the unofficial process of

“choosing” a secondary school played a crucial role for this situation.

In principle, students are assigned to the school nearest to their residential address. In

practice, however, students and parents have several options when they proceed from

primary to secondary school. There are several conditions involved with the “choice” –

access to information about good schools in the city, personal connection with

educational officials, daily transportation to school, good exam scores, and financial

ability to pay for the tuition and fee. While students in public secondary schools pay only

RM 47 a year, the tuition and fee for private schools range from RM 3,000 to RM 25,000

per year (in 2005). Though all public school charge the same amount, some public

schools with highest reputations selectively accept students with high exam scores.

Furthermore, to commute to good schools that are usually located away from their homes,

students should arrange a reliable private transportation to school instead of depending on

the poor public transportation system in the city.

Teachers suggested that most students of SMK Jalan Limau practically had no choice

but coming to the school. Some of them were rejected by the schools with good

reputation, which officially and unofficially screen students according to their exam

scores. Other just did not have means to commute to good schools away from their home.

SMK Jalan Limau did not have a good reputation. Teachers believed that if students were

capable of choosing among different schools, they would not end up in the school.

According to Encik Amirrudin, who had been teaching at the school since its opening,
 112
while good schools reserved the power to reject students, SMK Jalan Limau did not reject

anyone. In fact, when other schools in the area expelled students with discipline problems,

some of them ended up in SMK Jalan Limau that rarely rejected any students.

Learning Under the Same Roof

In 2005, SMK Jalan Limau had around eighteen hundred students. According to the

racial categories of “Malay, Chinese, Indian and Others” adopted by the school, Malay

students made up fifty-five percent, Chinese twenty-eight percent, Indian fifteen percent

and “Others” two percent of the entire students. 35 The official racial categories reflect the

persisting model of a “plural society” made up of three major (Malay, Chinese, Indian)

races and several minor ethnic groups (Others) that are culturally, linguistically, and

religiously distinctive. The boundaries between the categories, however, are not as clear

as they are supposed to be. As Shamsul (1999) and Mandal (2004) point out, the cultural,

linguistic, and religious diversities among Malaysians do not fit into the four categories,

although studies about Malaysian society tend to adopt them uncritically. Despite the

problems with the dominant categorization, Malaysians, whether they like it or not, are

constantly asked to identify themselves with one race or another.

The visible inter-racial differences in the name, dress, religion, and social interaction

of students in SMK Jalan Limau, at first glance, seemed to confirm the model of society

made up of three races and the rest. One way of interpreting the visible racial division is

35
In general, “Others” include all ethnicity other than Malay, Chinese and Indian. The three students in
Form Three categorized as “Others” were Punjabi, Gurkha and Iban. According to teachers, Punjabis and
Gurkhas could pass as “Indians,” and the fact that these students identified themselves as Punjabi or
Gurkha in school documents might reflect their strong attachment to ethnic identities. Ibans, natives of
Sarawak, hold an ambiguous status in Malaysia. Ibans are bumiputras (sons of the soil) as Malays are. Thus,
in some census adopting the category of “bumiputra” instead of “Malays,” Ibans are grouped together with
Malays. However, people still make distinction between Malay-bumi(putra)s and non-Malay-bumi(putra)s.
 113
to see it as the conflict between the government’s attempts to culturally homogenize its

citizens and people’s resistance to the homogenizing policies imposed against their will to

keep their own cultures. The visible division, however, reflects much more than people’s

determination to maintain their own cultures. It maintains the traces of the colonial

“divide and rule” policy in residential and educational arrangements. At the same time, it

reflects the political compromises made in the process of nation-building and the

exclusivist principles in the dominant model of the nation.

Different Languages of Primary Education

Ethnicity of students in the school corresponded to the type of primary education they

received before coming to SMK Jalan Limau. While most Malay students were from

nearby “national primary schools (Sekolah Kebangsaan:SK),” more than ninety percent

of Chinese students came from “Chinese-medium national-type primary schools (Sekolah

Jenis Kebansaan Cina: SJKC).” Indian students had diverse primary education

backgrounds: some were from “Tamil-medium national-type primary schools (Sekolah

Jenis Kebangsaan Tamil: SJKT)” and others were from SK or SJKC. 36 In chapter two, I

have discussed how Mandarin and Tamil-medium primary schools ended up within the

public school system after political controversy over their status in the independent state.

National-type schools such as SJKC and SJKT provide largely mono-ethnic and mono-

lingual learning environment. Except for the English and the Malay language classes, all

subjects are taught in Mandarin (in SJKC) or Tamil (in SJKT), respectively considered as

36
A small number of Indian and Malay parents send their children to SJKC where they can learn Mandarin.
As the language gets more important locally and globally, some parents expect that Mandarin would help
their children’s social success in the future.
 114
the “mother-tongue” of Chinese and Indians in Malaysia. School assemblies and

announcements are also delivered in the “mother tongues.”

No Mandarin or Tamil-medium secondary school exists within the public school

system. Therefore, students from Mandarin-medium primary schools have to enter either

a Malay-medium national secondary schools (Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan: SMK) or

a private Chinese-medium secondary schools called Independent Chinese School

(獨立中學: dulizhongxue). For students from Tamil-medium primary schools, SMK is the

only option (Tamil-medium private secondary schools do not exist). Entering Malay-

medium public secondary school after six years of schooling in Mandarin or Tamil means

a drastic language transition for students. Not only they have to re-learn terms for schools

subjects in Bahasa Malaysia, they also need to learn how to communicate with their

teachers and classmates in the language. The transition is especially tough for students in

“Remove Class (Kelas Peralihan),” who have failed Bahasa Malaysia subject in the

UPSR (Ujian Pencapaian Sekolah Rendah: Primary School Achievement Test) and had

to take one-year intensive Bahasa Malaysia course before entering Form One. In SMK

Jalan Limau, located close to some Chinese enclaves, most students in Remove Class

were Chinese from SJKC. 37

The different languages of primary education seem to pose some challenges to the

integration and unity that the national education system seeks to produce. The persistence

of primary schools in languages other than Bahasa Malaysia may seem to reflect the

influence of ethnic nationalisms and people’s attachment of their ethnic identities.

However, as Billig (1995:60) argues, neither ethnic nationalisms nor ethnic identities

37
In 2005, Jalan Limau’s Remove Class had fifty four students and fifty of them were Chinese from SJKCs.
 115
“develop in social vacuums.” Not all Chinese-Malaysians feel the same about the

Chinese language, which is supposed to be their “mother tongue.” The difference partly

comes from the division between the English-medium elite education and the vernacular-

medium non-elite education during the colonial period. It also comes from the

ambiguities in the post-independence linguistic nationalization that contained both

inclusive (the national language as the language of all Malaysians) and exclusive (that as

the language of Malays) principles.

Religious Identification of Race

According to the stereotypical religious identification of race in Malaysia, Malays are

Muslims, Chinese are Buddhists and Indians are Hindus. The school documents showed

striking correspondence between race and religion among students. Malay students were

all Muslims, as the Islamic identification of the Malay race written in the Constitution.

Though conversion to other religions is not completely impossible, Malays lose their

privilege as the “natives” of the country upon their apostasy. Chinese students in Form

Three were mostly Buddhists and only five of them were Christians. Indian students in

Form Three were mostly Hindus, while there were three Indian-Christians and several

Indian-Muslims.

The identification of Islam as a “Malay religion” thus the “national religion” makes

the Muslim/non-Muslim division visible in public schools by promoting Islamic religious

practice while discouraging expressions of other religious faiths. It is tempting to

interpret the situation as reflecting the oppressive power of Islamic Malay nationalism on

its ethno-religious others. The interpretation, however, does not pay due attention to
 116
religious difference within each race (including different styles of Islamic practice among

Malays) while emphasizing religious difference between races. Before discussing the

Muslim/non-Muslim division, I examine the relationship between the religious majorities

(Chinese-Buddhists and Indian-Hindus) and the minorities (e.g. Chinese-Christians,

Indian-Muslims) among non-Malay students. The relationship indicates that the different

religions or the different styles of religious practice within a race often serve as the

symbol of non-religious differences.

In my short questionnaire to the students, I asked them to identify their “race,” which

was a conventional practice in most surveys in Malaysia. Though the question was asking

only about their racial identifications, some Indian students identified themselves as

Indian-Muslim while some of them did not answer the question. Because the survey

happened after I got to know most students in three classes of Form Three and after I

looked through the school records of students, I was able to notice that a few students

who gave no answer to the question were Indian-Muslims. When I told the story to my

Indian-Muslim friend Fatimah, an interesting smile appeared on her face as if she knew

exactly what was going on. According to her, if she said she is Indian, people would

automatically assume that she is Hindu. She is Indian but not Hindu, Muslim but not

Malay. She said that, whenever she was asked to identify her “race,” she had to think

about what the right answer should be. One solution she found was to identify herself as

“Malaysian.” Furthermore, some people suspected that non-Malay Muslim converts

might have non-religious motivation for their conversion: to become counted as

“Malays” and gain access to the privileges given to the “natives.” The small number of

Indian-Muslim students did not get along well with either Indian-Hindus or Malay-
 117
Muslims, who had no problem identifying themselves just as Indians or Malays. Their

Islamic dress, which was mandatory for Muslim girls in the school, visually set them

apart from non-Muslim Indian girls. At the same time, the difference of “mother tongue”

contributed to their social distance from Malay-Muslim girls.

If Indian-Muslims experienced ambivalence between two racial categories, Christians

were often accused of turning their back against their ethnic origins. In Malaysia, where

most major religions are identified with one race or another, Christianity is often

considered a “middle-class religion” that entails de-racialization of people (Ackerman

and Lee 1990:31). With the strong connection of mission schools with English-medium

elite education during the colonial period, being a Christian in Malaysia is often, though

not always, related to English names, English-medium schools, a middle-class status, and

the “weakening” of authentic ethnicity.

Ms. Lim, a senior teacher from a Mandarin-speaking Buddhist family, recollected the

time when her brother entered Methodist Boys School. Ms. Lim’s mother was concerned

that her son would one day come back from school and declare that he had decided to

become a Christian. According to her, the fear of conversion was felt even stronger by

Malays that only a small number of them sent their children to English-medium schools

run by missionaries. While the possibility of conversion was institutionally precluded for

Malays, some non-Malays, especially urban residents among them, joined Christianity.

Missionary schools sometimes influenced the conversion, though they maintained largely

secularist characteristics.

Becoming a Christian could bear the implication of forgetting one’s root and denying

one’s religious tradition. The fact that conversion into Christianity often came with a new
 118
English name strengthened the impression. For example, a group of Indian girls in SMK

Jalan Limau criticized a Christian-Indian girl for not being true to oneself and faking a

new de-racialized identity. The girl’s new English name, which was dramatically different

from her previous old-fashioned Indian name, and the cross pendent hanging on her

necklace were the main targets of criticism. The group of Hindu-Indian girls diminished

the changes as contrived gestures to look “glamour (sic.),” cool and attractive.

The uncomfortable feeling about being “disloyal” to the racially identified religious

tradition may seem to reflect their “traditionalist” orientation and their connection to a

divisive multiracialism. The examples, however, also demonstrate that the “traditionalist”

value cannot be solely attributed to the minds of individuals. On the one hand, the

gradual transformation of Islam into an exclusive symbol of Malay-ness put non-Malay

Muslims into an awkward position. On the other, the middle-class aspect of Christianity

makes it an expression of social distance as well as religious difference from the majority

of “one’s own people.”

The implications of religious differences in SMK Jalan Limau should also be

analyzed in a broader social context. As I will discuss in chapter six, the religious

differences among students in SMK Taman Raya, a former English-medium elite school

established by missionaries, did not bear the same meaning as they did in SMK Jalan

Limau. In the presence of the secularized Christian tradition of the school and the

pressures from parents who were mostly urban professionals, the promotion of Islam as

the national religion was toned down to a respect for Islamic culture. At the same time, as

an elite school that started as an English-medium mission school and still caters primary

to the children of affluent urban families, most members of SMK Taman Raya did not
 119
interpret the incorporation of Christianity as an expression of social distance.

Therefore, it would be dangerous to assume that the strong religious identification of

race in SMK Jalan Limau reflects the “traditionalist” orientation among urban low-

income families. Also, it is too simplistic to explain the visibility of the Muslim/ non-

Muslim division as showing the oppressive effect of Islamic Malay nationalism on other

ethno-religious traditions. In the following pages, I will highlight the social context in

which Islamic Malay nationalism and other religious identifications of race gain

dominance in SMK Jalan Limau, a multi-ethnic school in an inner-city area. By doing so,

I would be able to discuss two different kinds of divisions coming from the promotion of

“national culture” – one is related to racial difference and the other is to class difference.

3. Creating “National Culture” out of Diversities

With the post-1970 education policies, the Malay language, Malay-style codes of

conduct and Islam gradually permeated into daily routines in public schools. Bahasa

Malaysia replaced English that had been the language of instruction and inter-ethnic

communication in urban elite schools. On official school occasions, women teachers,

regardless of their ethnic backgrounds, are required to wear Malay-style dresses such as

baju kurung or baju kebaya, while men teachers are asked to wear shirts with batik print,

which is defined as a Malay traditional fabric art. Formal expressions of deference to

educational officials, invited speakers, and high-rank teachers, which are also considered

distinctively Malay-style, and the recitation of pantun, poetry in a traditional Malay

format, are crucial for giving important school occasions a properly official look. As

Islam is defined as the Malay traditional religion, Arabic greetings and Islamic prayers
 120
38
have become part of mundane routine in most public schools. With the growing number

of Malay (especially Malay women) teachers in public schools, the emphasis on the

Malay-ness of national culture gradually defined public schools as the “Malay-dominated

space.”

Despite the emphasis on a homogeneous national culture in the school routines, the

patterns of dress and socialization among students demonstrated a strong tendency of

racial divisions. During a twenty-minute recess, allowed only once in a school day,

students would rush out of their classrooms and head to the school cafeteria in groups.

Among the students who were chatting with their close friends over snacks and drinks, I

could easily identify Malay, Chinese, and Indian groups. What made their “racial

grouping” immediately noticeable? Despite the widespread idea that Chinese are fairest

of the three races, Malays are medium-fair and Indians are dark-skinned, some Malay and

Indian students were just as fair as their Chinese classmates. Therefore, if the students

had worn exactly same uniforms and hairstyles, it would have been much harder for me

to recognize the division. The subtle differentiation in the uniforms and hairstyles,

however, produced a strong connection between “what they looked like” and “whom they

got along with.” The connection made racial division noticeable even before hearing the

different languages they spoke.

What do the two conflicting tendencies – the emerging national culture and the

visible racial divisions – imply about the impact of national education polices on

everyday lives of students and teachers in public schools? Existing studies point to the

Malay-oriented linguistic, cultural, and educational policies and the politics that have

38
But, in Malaysia, non-Muslims are not expected to respond to the Arabic greetings.
 121
produced those policies. They commonly emphasize how the concept of “Ketuanan

Melayu (Malay primacy)” became central to the definition of national culture, making

nationalization projects more exclusive than inclusive. Those studies, however, tend to

put too much emphasis on policy statements and the political process of their production

(especially, the rivalries and negotiations among racially divided political parties), while

neglecting the ambiguities built into the policies. Furthermore, the exclusiveness and

inclusiveness of nationalization projects are often evaluated only in racial terms, failing

to grasp the process of exclusion and inclusion based on social and economic differences.

How could the government, after implementing Malay-oriented policies for decades,

accuse “Malay schools” as the hotbed of problems in the education system? How could

the state elites, who once actively participated in the pro-Malay nation-building process,

now valorize former colonial elite schools as the living proof of developmental potential

in the education system? My discussion focuses on how the ambiguities within education

policies are addressed in specific local, social and economic contexts of policy

implementation, producing connection between class division and different styles of

practicing inter-racial unity and divisions.

School Uniforms as the Markers of Differences

Public secondary schools in Malaysia adopt a set of universal school uniform

nationwide. The imposition of universal uniform seems to provide an optimal way of

creating a national-level cultural homogeneity and producing “national bodies” out of

students coming from diverse backgrounds. The implementation of dress codes in SMK

Jalan Limau, however, shows that the actual practice of wearing uniform may turn the
 122
standardized dress into the most visible marker of racial and religious differences among

students. The transformation of uniform into the marker of differences partly reflects the

adaptations of the nationally-imposed cultural norm within the specific social and cultural

contexts of SMK Jalan Limau. At the same time, the national norm of dress for students

reflects the government’s ambivalence between inclusive and exclusive definitions of

“national culture” and the ambiguities coming from the ambivalence.

The discipline booklet (buku peraturan disiplin) prepared by the Educational Bureau

of Kuala Lumpur contains regulations about school uniforms. After introducing general

rules about the dress of school girls and boys, the booklet provides special guidelines that

apply only to Muslim girls and boys. While the written guidelines contain two sets of rule

for girls (one for all students and one for Muslim students), the pictures in the book show

three girls in different styles of uniform. Each of the three girls unambiguously represents

a Malay, a Chinese, and an Indian student – a Malay girl wears a loose-fit two-piece

uniform (baju kurung) that hides body lines and a long white headscarf (tudung) that

covers her head, shoulder and chest; a Chinese girl is wearing short-sleeved shirts and a

knee-length skirt; and an Indian girl is in short-sleeved shirts and a knee-length jumper.

Though I focus on how uniforms become the religious and ethnic markers among

school girls, there are a few things that need to be mentioned about the dress rules for

boys. The same booklet shows pictures of two (not three) boys – one in a Malay-Muslim

style uniform and the other in shirts and khaki pants. Even the simplified distinction of

dress, however, was not actually visible among students, because boys, regardless of their

religion or race, usually wore shirts and khaki pants. Uniforms turned into the marker of

Muslim/non-Muslim division only on Fridays, when Muslim boys were encouraged to

 123
wear a pair of white baju Melayu (a loose two-piece dress for men) with samping (waist

wrap) and songkok (religious hat), the proper Malay-style dress for the weekly prayer in

mosques. But in practice, on Fridays, most Muslim boys in Jalan Limau came to school

in their regular shirts and pants and put on songkok when they headed to mosques.

The guidelines in the booklet sends the message that Malaysia is made up of three

major races that can be collapsed into a binary religious division of Muslims and non-

Muslims. The discipline booklet shows how school uniforms may create a national-level

cultural uniformity while, at the same time, highlighting racial and religious differences

among students (especially between Malay-Muslims students and others). If we find a

similar pattern of uniformity and differences among the students of SMK Jalan Limau,

does it mean that the rules just reflect the actually existing cultural and religious

diversities among students? Or does it indicate the successful imposition of rules that

seek to give a uniform order to diversities? Neither of the explanations properly addresses

the conflict between unifying and divisive tendencies within the rules and regulations.

The government’s ambivalence between inclusive and exclusive definition of

“national culture” seems to be temporarily resolved by making the rules and regulations

ambiguous enough to open up possibilities of multiple interpretations. Therefore, the

responsibility for the consequences of implementing the rules may seem to fall on people

who interpret and practice the rules, not on their producers. How do some people manage

to highlight the unifying aspect of the rules (cosmopolitanism) while others trap

themselves within the divisive model of a multi-racial and multi-religious society

(multiracialism)? Why, despite the Malay-oriented nationalization projects introduced to

all public schools, some schools turned into problem-ridden “Malay schools” while some
 124
did not? Because of the ambiguity, the government elite can attribute the divisive effect

of state regulations to individual psychology and mentality that are allegedly responsible

for certain (mis)interpretations of the rules. In contrast, my discussion emphasizes the

social and economic conditions that contribute to the tendency to locate “divisive

multiracialism” among the speakers of “ethnic dialects” and the “unifying

cosmopolitanism” among the English-speaking people. 39

The moral judgment that favors cosmopolitan interpretations of the policies over

multiracial ones, without considering the conditions that contributed to the different

interpretations, would only legitimize the class division in cultural terms. By emphasizing

the social and political benefits of speaking English, the elites assume that their de-

racializing and secularist behaviors represent their moral superiority to the masses who

practice racially and religiously marked dresses and socialization patterns. In the

following, I discuss how the state regulations about students’ dress and behavior, on the

one hand, and the interpretation of the regulation by school administrators and teachers,

on the other, influence the production of “national culture” among multi-ethnic students

from an inner-city area. Later (chapter six and seven), I will compare the “national

culture” practiced in SMK Jalan Limau with that of SMK Taman Raya to socially locate

the viewpoint from which the moral judgments are made.

Ambiguous Rules: Should Muslim Girls Cover Themselves?

39
In Malaysia, people rarely speak just one language but have different levels of fluency in several
languages. Students who speak English at home and attend Malay-medium public school may have some
limited ability to communicate in their ethnic dialects. Similarly, students who speak ethnic dialects
(sometimes multiple of them) at home and attend Malay-medium public school can understand some
English, though they do not feel confident using the language. The two categories, rather than being
mutually exclusive, highlight different languages that have primary importance in people’s everyday lives.
 125
The Ministry of Education and the Education Bureau of Kuala Lumpur encourage,

not mandate, Muslim girls to wear Islamic uniform (that fully covers one’s body lines,

head, shoulders and chest, usually a set of baju kurung and tudung). The principals have

the authority to decide the details of dress codes according to the situations of their

schools. Since its opening in 1996, SMK Jalan Limau made it compulsory for Muslim

girls to wear Islamic dresses. What does the gap between ministry and school regulations

imply for the everyday lives of Muslim girls? The ambiguous rules reflect the political

process in which Islamic dress became a part of “national culture.”

Until the 1960s, the dominant fashion style among affluent Malay women in urban

areas had little difference from that of non-Malays. The latest fashion in western

countries had significant influence on urban Malay women. English-medium mission

schools adopted jumper-style uniform for all girls. Students in Malay-medium schools

wore Malay-style dresses such as baju kurung but Islamic aspects were understated. In

the 1970s, the supporters of Islamic resurgence movements introduced the conservative

women’s attires from Islamic middle-eastern countries, arguing that the emphasis on

Islamic religious morality would fix the social problems caused by rapid modernization

or “westernization.” The external expressions of religiosity and the pursuit of religious

knowledge provided the foundation for Islamic reformists’ claim of their moral

superiority to the westernized urban elites (Nagata 1984; Zainah 1987). As the movement

gained popularity among the new generation of urban Malay-Muslims, in 1981, the

government launched state-led Islamization projects. In 1984, the Ministry of Education

asked all schools to “allow Muslim students to dress according to the Islamic code”

(Utusan Melayu 26 and 27 October 1984, quoted by Hussin Mutalib 1990:143).

 126
The inconclusiveness of the government’s position on Islamic dress code reflects

conflicting opinions within the government. Nagata (1995:108) notes that the dresses of

women dakwah (the call to Islam) movement supporters were often criticized by older

generation urban Malay women for being “narrow-minded, fanatical and orthodox

(berfikiran sempit, fanatik, ortodoks).” Some were worried that “extreme” forms of

Islamic dress might “scare off” foreign investors (Ong 1995:179; Sloane 1999:73). The

strong negative opinions dissipated as “moderate” forms of colorful and stylish Islamic

dresses became widespread among Muslim women. Once adopted as the symbol of

protest against the westernized colonial elite, the Islamic dress is now normalized into the

Malay “middle-class” culture (Ong 1990; Stivens 1998). The development, however,

does not mean that the reservation about Islamic dress has completely dissolved among

urban elites. SMK Taman Raya, a former English-medium elite school, does not ask

Muslim girls to wear religious headscarves. According to teachers there, parents of

Muslim students in the school, mostly successful urban professionals, did not want their

daughters to wear headscarves. The indefiniteness of government position on Islamic

dress code allowed the elite school to do without it.

The ambiguity of the rules that has to be dealt with at the level of individual schools

causes confusions and conflicts among students and teachers. Ustazah Nuraini, one of the

five religious teachers in SMK Jalan Limau, had the primary responsibility to monitor

Muslim girls’ dress. She complained that the inconclusiveness of the ministry’s guideline

sometimes put her in an awkward position. One of the case happened when she tried to

punish a Muslim girl who did not wear a religious headscarf in school. After the incident,

the student’s mother visited the school to express her anger at the religious teacher’s
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disciplinary measure. The mother argued that the teacher had no right to punish her

daughter, because the ministry did not mandate Muslim girls to wear headscarves.

Ustazah Nuraini said, at this point, she had to admit that the right of decision ultimately

belonged to the students and their parents, not to religious teachers. She told me that,

fortunately for her, similar incidents happened only twice after she started working in the

school and her authority as a guardian of Islamic dress code was effective most of the

time.

If the school had no authority to punished students for not abiding by the Islamic

dress code, why almost all Muslim girls in the school remained “covered”? Does it mean

that they have already internalized the norm? Some students, regardless of the presence

of religious teachers, kept the Islamic dress code that women have to cover themselves

whenever they leave their houses. But, for some other students, the conformity in school

was a strategy to stay away from troubles. On special school occasions, such as the sports

day (hari sukan) or the speech day (hari anugerah cemerlang), girls participating in

certain performances were allowed to take off their headscarves. Students expressed their

excitement about the rarely allowed freedom, but in the end, showed up in school

wearing headscarves. Nor Amirah, a Form Three girl who participated in a Malay

traditional dance performance on the speech day said that she did not want to be nagged

by religious teachers anyway.

According to the group of Muslim girls I often got along with, only about half of

Jalan Limau girls wore headscarves after school. Noraini, one of the group members and

a friend of Nor Amirah, told me that many Muslim women they saw outside the school,

especially in shopping streets and malls, did not cover themselves. She said that students
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also wanted to “follow the contemporary trend (ikut gaya semasa)” that they observed in

the city and the choice was ultimately up to individuals. But, to stay away from troubles,

she had better play by the rule of the school at least when she was in school. 40

How could the school impose Islamic dress on Muslim girls despite the presence of

schools doing otherwise and the “contemporary trend” in the city? Teachers had

conflicting interpretations about the issue. Ustazah Nuraini argued that Islamic dress code

should be unconditionally applied to all Muslim women. According to the religious

teacher, covering aurat (the part of body that must always be concealed, except in front

of spouses) was a matter of the relationship between the God and Muslim people. Though

covering aurat was an option (sunat) for men, for women, it was an obligation (wajib).

Ustazah lamented that nowadays many Muslim women, including some Jalan Limau

teachers and students, tended to neglect their religious obligations. She also believed that

the problem was not limited to Muslims – with the growing secularism among believers

of diverse religions, people stopped obeying what their gods ordered them to do.

Puan Hamidah, though also a Muslim, had a different take on the issue. She believed

that the school needed to introduce to Islamic dress to Muslim girls, but she did not see it

just as reflecting the desirable relationship between the God and its people. For her, the

imposition of Islamic dress on Muslim girls in the school was related to the disciplinary

problems among them. She argued that the Islamic dress, especially headscarves, helped

teachers control Muslim girls with discipline problems (as an example she mentioned

girls’ hairstyles unsuitable for students). Because the problems were especially serious

40
Teachers are not exempt from moral accusations for “opening” their headscarves (buka tudung). In SKM
Jalan Limau, Muslim women teachers who did not wearing tudung became easy targets of gossiping among
other Muslim teachers. Muslim teachers, even though some of them did not cover themselves outside
school, conform to the Islamic dress code in school.
 129
among students from inner-city areas, she thought that the imposition of Islamic dress

code could be legitimized in SMK Jalan Limau, if not in “good” schools in middle-class

residential areas in the city.

Puan Selvi, who identified herself as a “modern” Hindu, argued that the Islamic dress

had little to do with maintaining good discipline among students. 41 If students in other

schools had demonstrated that they could manage their own discipline without being

forced to wear headscarves, there was no reason to believe that the students of SMK Jalan

Limau could not do the same. According to Puan Selvi, the crucial difference between

SMK Jalan Limau and other schools was not the degree of discipline problem. 42 Partly,

the difference came from the parents of Muslim students in SMK Jalan Limau, who were

much more influenced by Islamic Malay nationalism than the well-to-do Malay-Muslims

in the city. It also came from the lack of involvement in the school’s decision making

process by the parents, many of whom were exhausted from their daily struggle to make

ends meet. In contrast to schools where the school administrations and teachers had to

remain attentive to parents’ opinions, in SMK Jalan Limau, the decisions made by the

school were rarely challenged by parents.

Judith Nagata (1995:107) argues that it is superficial or misleading to interpret visible

cultural characteristics (e.g. styles of dress) as the external expression of internal beliefs.

The conflicting interpretations show the complicated social conditions in which SMK

Jalan Limau was able to impose Islamic dress code on Muslim students, despite the

41
The distinction between “modern” and “traditional” styles of religious practice in Malaysia is primarily
related to whether the followers of a religion emphasize the external expression of religiosity. For example,
a Sikh man who does not wear turban or a Muslim woman who does not cover her aurat is called
“modern.” The popular usage of the words “modern” and “traditional,” however, does not necessarily
reflect the depth of a person’s religious faith.
42
The “other schools” of her reference were primarily old elite schools such as SMK Taman Raya and the
school in the neighboring middle-class area where her own daughters attended.
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ambiguity in the ministry’s position on the issue, the “contemporary trend” in the city,

and many urban schools that left the choice up to students and parents. My comparison

between Muslim students’ dress in SMK Jalan Limau and SMK Taman Raya

demonstrates that the debates about the “suitable dress for Muslim students” are still in

progress after more than twenty years of introducing Islamic dress code to public schools.

The common pattern of dress among Muslim girls in Jalan Limau, at first glance, seems

to attest the argument that the post-1970s cultural and educational policies imposed an

Islamic definition of Malayness on Malay people and made Muslim women the bearers

of racial difference (Ong 1995:159). But what explains the remarkably different norms of

dress between the two public schools where the same education policy has been applied

for three decades? How does the school uniform make racial difference observable in

SMK Jalan Limau, while the boundaries are blurred in SMK Taman Raya? The debate

within SMK Jalan Limau about the Islamic dress code and the two schools’ different

approach to it indicate who are most vulnerable to the racializing effect of state-led

Islamization and who are relatively free from it. The difference between “vulnerability”

and “freedom” cannot be solely attributed to the cultural and religious inclinations of

individuals.

Non-Muslim Girls:

Does ethnic identity keep them from incorporating the national culture?

While the enforcement of Islamic dress code made it possible to tell Muslim (mostly

Malay) students from their looks, the western-style uniforms (jumper/shirts or

skirt/shirts) of most Chinese and Indian students did not bear any visible ethnic or
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religious markers. Although the discipline booklet had two separate pictures for a

Chinese and an Indian girl, in fact, it was hard to tell the racial difference from their attire.

The adoption of the western-style uniform, however, gave visibility to their being “non-

Muslim,” in contrast to the Muslim students in Islamic dress. In principle, non-Muslim

girls were allowed to choose their uniforms among baju kurung, shirts/jumper, or

shirts/skirt, but they were not expected to wear headscarves. 43 Despite the relative

freedom of choice given to them, the dresses of non-Muslim students in SMK Jalan

Limau showed little variation. Only a small number of non-Muslim girls owned baju

kurung, but even those who owned one did not wear it to school very often. Their choice

of uniform shows more than their personal preference of style. It reflects how non-

Muslim students perceive their relationship with the “national culture” promoted in

school.

Describing the changing dress patterns among Malaysian women, Aihwa Ong

(1995:185) argues that the modest dress of Muslim women has become “a patriotic

fashion” that, when adopted by non-Muslim women, symbolizes a “generalized loyalty

and vision of a multicultural Malaysia.” The discipline booklet, however, does not have

pictures of Chinese or Indian girls wearing baju kurung, the most commonly adopted

“modest dress of Muslim women.” Instead, the girls in the pictures are in a set of

shirts/jumper or shirts/skirt. The racially and religiously differentiated dress codes raise

an important question: Is baju kurung a Malay dress, a Muslim dress, or a national dress?

The ambiguous status of the dress contributes to the diverse interpretations among non-

Muslim students about adopting baju kurung. As Ong suggests, however, the various

43
Unlike in some of middle-eastern countries where all women are asked to be covered, in Malaysia,
wearing headscarves is a symbol of Muslim-ness.
 132
interpretations are not equally appreciated and respected. How do people tell a “patriotic

fashion” from “unpatriotic” ones? Is the adoption of baju kurung by a non-Muslim

woman always considered desirable, favorable, and patriotic? The tensions among non-

Muslim students, parents, and teachers of SMK Jalan Limau regarding their different

interpretations of the “appropriate” dress for non-Muslim women demonstrate that the

standard of evaluation also changes with the social setting.

What are the reasons behind the non-Muslim girls’ clear preference of western-style

uniforms over baju kurung? The strong Malay identification of the dress, together with

the students’ family background and the cultural environment of their primary education,

contributes to the tendency. Students living with their grandparents most acutely felt the

pressure to keep away from baju kurung, though their parents also discourage them from

wearing it. According to some non-Malay students I talked with, their parents and

grandparents believed that baju kurung was a “Malay dress” and it was awkward for a

Chinese or an Indian girl to wear the dress of different race.

Students did not necessarily share the opinions of their parents or grandparents. The

difference in opinion seems to reflect the inter-generational cultural gaps within

immigrant families (e.g. among China-born grandparents, Malaysia-born Chinese-

educated parents, and Malaysia-born Malay-educated daughters). Yi-Mun, a Chinese

prefect girl, told me in Bahasa Malaysia with Chinese accents that “only really old people

(orang tua-tua sahaja)” would argue that a Chinese girl should not do certain things. 44

According to the student, because nowadays people of different races mix together, one

44
Bahasa Malaysia was usually the only common language I could use with Chinese students in the school.
I did not speak Mandarin or Cantonese, the languages widely used among them, and they had difficulty
speaking in English.
 133
should not keep the attitude like her grandmother’s.” Yi-Mun’s friend Lai-Mei added that

people were “close-minded (fikiran tertutup)” in the past, but nowadays many people had

“already opened up their minds (fikiran sudah buka).” Lai-Mei said that she would just

ignore her mom and head to school in baju kurung when she nagged her for wearing it.

The definition of baju kurung as a “Malay dress” and the uncomfortable feeling about

dressing across racial boundaries, however, did not exclusively belong to the old

generation. Ms. Tan, an English teacher who was Chinese, often showed up in school in a

baju kurung or a Punjabi suit that fully covered her body lines, arms, and legs. Her

preference of the “patriotic fashion” to the combination of blouse and skirt (the typical

dress of Chinese women teachers) drew some jeering from Chinese students. They

sometimes made fun of the Chinese teacher’s serious take on the “national dress” and

even claimed that she was not a real Chinese. 45 Does the example indicate that the

students’ identity as Chinese was stronger than that of Ms. Tan? If they believed that

western dresses did no harm to their identity, why did they find the “national dress”

threatening to their identity? To understand the meaning of the differences, it is necessary

to know the historical and social contexts in which the “patriotic fashion” emerged.

According to senior non-Malay teachers who grew up in Kuala Lumpur, most urban

non-Malays were little exposed to the Malay culture until the 1970s. The mass migration

of rural Malays into urban areas including Kuala Lumpur, supported by the racial quota

system for employment and education, brought important cultural changes to the

predominantly non-Malay population in urban areas as well as to the new urban Malays.
45
Language difference also seems to influence some Chinese students’ attitude toward Ms. Tan. As an
English language teacher in a public school, she asked students to speak either English or Malay to her,
while discouraging Chinese students from using Mandarin or other Chinese languages in school. In chapter
five, I will discuss how language differences produce divisions among students and teachers and how the
divisions correspond to their dress-styles and attitudes toward “national culture.”
 134
The government’s emphasis on the Malay culture and customs after the Malay Cultural

Congress in 1971 also had far reaching influence on non-Malays. The spread of the

Malay culture redefined as the national culture, however, unevenly affected non-Malays.

Urban non-Malays, especially who worked for major corporations and government

offices, had to accustom themselves to the new Malay-dominant environment in their

work places. It was the successful urban non-Malays from English-medium elite schools

that most actively incorporated the new national culture. In chapter six, I will discuss in

detail how SMK Taman Raya, a former English-medium elite school established by

missionaries, successfully incorporate the national culture. The historical and social

contexts explains why the site that carries the most important symbol of Malaysia’s

modernization and development (the once world-highest Petronas Twin Towers) is also

one of the places where the influence of the “patriotic fashion” is most visible. In the

shopping mall connected to the Twin Towers, it is not hard to site non-Malay women

white-collar workers walking in elegant baju kurung made of quality fabric.

In contrast, the new national culture was slow to gain its ground among non-Malays

in urban ethnic enclaves or rural areas who usually sent their children to Chinese or

Tamil-medium primary schools. Ms. Tan, who attended a former English-medium

mission school in another major city (Melaka or Malacca), found it hard to fit into the

dominant cultural norm among Chinese students and teachers in SMK Taman Raya, most

of whom lived in Chinese ethnic enclaves and received Chinese-medium primary

education. The mutual disapproval between Ms. Tan and some Chinese students in the

school indicates that the national dress, not western-style dresses, became the symbol of

educational, linguistic, social differences among Chinese, especially between those who
 135
were deeply incorporated into the post-nationalization state system and those who stayed

on the margins of it. The idea that the non-Malay adoption of baju kurung has gained the

meaning of “patriotic fashion” reflects only one end of the wide spectrum of opinions.

The definition of “national culture” largely maintains its Malay identification, but not all

non-Malays keep an equal distance from it. The definition of “patriotic fashion” reflects

the viewpoint of non-Malays who have least problem accommodating the official version

of “national culture” which bear the meanings of both “Malay culture” and “Malaysian

culture.”

Moral Disciplining: Good Muslims vs. Good Non-Muslim Citizens

The rapid urbanization and economic development during the period of

nationalization also introduced various forms of inequalities and social problems,

together with signs of prosperity in the city. A major political movement to correct the

inequalities and social problems focused on criticizing the increasing economic gap

between the rich and the poor Malays. The movement adopted Islam as the symbol of

moral and spiritual values against the materialism and secularism among affluent urban

Malays. When the government incorporated part of the demands by the movement and

accommodated them into education policies, it had to face the fact that Malay-medium

public schools were no more exclusively for Malays.

At the same time, as the government assumed the role as the guarantor of morality

instead of remaining as the target of criticism, the voice of social reform gradually

transformed into the project of morally disciplining citizens. The strengthened emphasis

on morality thus rendered social problems into a matter of individuals’ minds. While
 136
individualizing social problems, the project of moral disciplining added a new dimension

to the racially defined social restructuring programs already at work (i.e. projects aiming

at the removal of inequalities between Malays and non-Malays and not actively engaging

with the economically and socially disadvantaged non-Malays). The reinforcement of

“Islamic education (Pendidikan Islam: PI)” and the introduction of “moral education

(Pendidikan Moral: PM)” demonstrate how the project of creating a “disciplined,

cultured and united society” led to the separate programs of moral disciplining for

Muslims and non-Muslims. The following document shows the dichotomies of

Muslim/non-Muslim and religious/secular moral values.

125. While Islamic religious education is compulsory for all Muslim pupils, other
religious education cannot be made compulsory for other pupils not professing that
religious except with a written consent from their parents.
126. Islamic religious education aims at creating a disciplined society with high
moral value. The element of discipline and high morals serve as a strong foundation
for moulding a united society, because Islamic religious education cultivates good
values and attitudes in life apart from moulding good character and behaviour as well
as respect for one another.
127. While Muslim pupils receive Islamic education, non-Muslim pupil must be
given moral and ethics education to cultivate good values and attitude in life, as well
as to mould their character such that they are well-mannered and respectful towards
one another, in line with the belief that morals and ethnics are the basis in the
building of a disciplined, cultured and united society.
(Report of the Cabinet Committee 1985, emphases added)

How successful was the new educational program for moral disciplining? The fact that

students received Islamic and moral education as school subjects does not necessarily

mean that they internalized the knowledge and values taught in those classes. Learning

the two subjects required students to memorize the content of the textbooks and give

correct answers to exam questions. For example, in SMK Jalan Limau, religious teachers

taught Muslim girls to cover their aurat, but the student who received the highest grade

for the religious education subject did not wear headscarf once she was away from school.
 137
It did not imply, by any means, that she had a low moral value or discipline problems.

Therefore, even people who favored the strengthening of religious/moral education

remained skeptical about the outcome, as it often meant that “facts are memorized more

than applied to life” (Rosnani 1996:149).

In SMK Jalan Limau, the impact of the religious/moral education was felt in what

was at stake as well as what students learned from it. Most of the time in school, Muslim

and non-Muslim students of diverse ethnic backgrounds stayed in a classroom learning

same subjects from same teachers. During Islamic/ moral education classes, however, the

ethnic and religious diversities in a classroom could not be maintained. To learn different

kinds of moral values, Muslim and non-Muslim students had to be physically separated in

different classrooms and the absolute majority of students in Islamic education class were

Malays. The program for a “disciplined, cultured and united society” in fact entailed the

routine confirmation of the Muslim/non-Muslim division.

The physical separation, however, was not completely new to the students. Before the

introduction of moral education, non-Muslim students (who are also non-Malays) had

“People’s Own Language (POL)” classes while their Muslim schoolmates were getting

Islamic education. In POL classes, non-Malay students learned the “mother tongues” of

their races (i.e. Mandarin for Chinese and Tamil for Indians, which was not always same

with their home languages). Once moral education was introduced, POL lessons were

moved to after-school hours. But, in fact, it was extremely hard for POL teachers and

students to find the time and classroom for the lessons. Due to the shortage of facilities,

almost all public schools were run as two-session schools. After the morning session (for

Form Three, Four and Five), most classrooms were occupied by the afternoon-session
 138
students (in Form One and Two).

Does the situation indicate that the government project of moral disciplining had the

side effect of oppressing the “language rights” of non-Malay students? The varying

degree of emphasis that non-Malays of different economic, social, and educational

backgrounds put on their “mother tongues” shows that the idea of “language rights” may

lead to an “ethnically and politically simplistic” analysis of the linguistic complexity in

society (Whiteley 2003:712). The near abolition of POL classes had relatively little

impact in elite secondary schools where most of non-Malay students were from Malay-

medium primary schools and did not put much emphasis on their “mother tongues” even

at home. In contrast, in schools with a large number of non-Malay students from Chinese

or Tamil-medium schools, such as SMK Jalan Limau, the impact of the change was

significant.

Many non-Malay students in SMK Jalan Limau, especially Chinese students from

Mandarin-medium primary schools, had difficulties with both Malay and English. If they

wanted to go to colleges, they had to overcome the burden of learning two more

languages in addition to the languages of their families and their primary education. 46

Furthermore, most of the students were from urban low-income families and SMK Jalan

Limau was not the best school that they could “choose.” Not surprisingly, the chances for

them to enter college were not high and the employment opportunities available for them

were limited. In fact, many Chinese students believed that learning Mandarin was more

46
For some of the students, the language of their primary education (Mandarin or Tamil) is different from
the language of their families. Many Chinese families, who send their children to Mandarin schools, use
Cantonese, Hokkien, Teochew or other Chinese “dialects” at home (sometimes multiple of them). Also, as
Mandarin Chinese gain global and local popularity with the economic emergence of China, some non-
Chinese parents send their children to Mandarin-medium primary schools. For those students, their
academic success requires them to master at least three languages (Malay, English, Mandarin/Tamil) in
addition to their home languages.
 139
important for their future than learning Malay or English, because the kind of jobs

obtainable for them (mostly jobs in small businesses within ethnic enclaves) required the

language. Puan Selvi and Mr. Ho, who were struggling to maintain Tamil and Chinese

classes, also argued that learning these languages would help the students to secure

whatever humble jobs available for them. The removal of POL from the curricula would

further limit the inner-city non-Malay students’ choices after secondary education.

The programs for morally disciplining citizens have the effect of individualizing

social problems that emerged with urbanization and modernization. In other words, the

programs suggest that social instabilities, inequalities and divisions can be resolved by

individuals who befit the model of a “disciplined, culture, and united society.” In contrast,

the colonial and post-independence social orders that have contributed to the problems of

urbanization and modernization remain unquestioned. At the same time, the programs

demonstrate that nationalization does not always mean a process of homogenization. It

produces and reproduces the distinction between Muslims and non-Muslim citizens,

which is often considered another way of addressing the distinction between Malays and

non-Malays. If the inequalities and divisions reflect ambiguity within nationalist

modernization projects that contain principles of both inclusion and exclusion, what is the

ideological effect of individualizing the social problems? And what are the standards of

judgment that operate behind the identification of problematic individuals?

4. Race, Class and Nationalist Modernization

The correspondence between the observed linguistic, cultural, and religious

differences among students and the racial categories such as

 140
Malay/Chinese/Indian/Others or Malays/non-Malays indicates that public schools did not

completely homogenize their students from diverse backgrounds. Criticizing the

argument that the division originates from the mind and attitude of individuals, I

emphasized both inclusive and exclusive elements in the government definition of the

“national culture.” Especially, the Malay-Muslim identification of national culture led to

separate norms for Malay and non-Malay citizens even when public schools were

expected to produce a common imagination and experience of nation among all citizens.

However, it is hard to argue that the strong Malay-Muslim identification of national

culture indicates the valorization of the “Malay culture” and the oppression of “non-

Malay cultures.” The cultural division among the multi-ethnic students in SMK Jalan

Limau does not just reflect the different cultural tradition among races, but the colonial

policy of “divide and rule” and its lingering influence in low-income urban residential

areas that still bear the characteristic of ethnic enclaves. Despite their ambiguous role in

the production of the national culture for all citizens, public schools that educate children

of different races under the same roof with common curricula indicate “improvement”

rather than “deterioration” in national unity.

The recent discussions within the government and among educationists about the

alleged “failure” of public schools, however, highlight the “deteriorating” quality of

education and “disappearing” civic consciousness in schools. The “deterioration”

argument points out the so-called “Malay schools,” including inner-city schools like

SMK Jalan Limau and rural schools, as the site of problems, while presenting a small

number of elite schools (so-called “premier schools”) as the model for school reform. The

discussions about the new model of schools needed for the country’s development and
 141
progress in the globalizing era, however, ignores the fact that the different levels of

academic achievement and the different ways of practicing nation have close connections

with social and economic inequalities in colonial and post-independence Malaysia. The

standard to diagnose the problems in public schools comes from the experience of elite in

exclusive elite schools which emphasize a cosmopolitan definition of national culture.

Though the definition may be relatively blind to racial differences, it reflects important

aspects of class differences.

In Malaysia, English is not just a language of communication and knowledge

acquisition required by the era of globalization. It also symbolizes the elite’s sense of

intellectual, moral, and social superiority to the masses. At the same, it stands for the

affluence of the successful non-Malays that the government project of “selective

modernization” sought to achieve among Malays by providing them the protection of

their “mother tongue.” In chapter five, I will discuss the role of the national language for

the production of unity and divisions in public schools and whether the introduction of

English would solve the alleged problem of deteriorating quality and disappearing civic

consciousness in them.
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Chapter Five

Normative Monolingualism and Incomplete Linguistic Nationalization

1. Moralizing Linguistic Differences

SMK Jalan Limau was a “Malay school” in the sense that the standardized Malay

language, Bahasa Malaysia, was the dominant language of the school. School

announcements, assemblies, and staff meetings were all conducted in Malay. Before the

introduction of English into the teaching of science and mathematics, Bahasa Malaysia

used to be the only language of instruction for every subject except English. Bahasa

Malaysia was the most widely shared language among both Malay and non-Malay

teachers and students in the school. Despite the importance of the national language,

however, it was far from being the only language spoken. In the staffroom, in the corridor,

and in the classroom, I could hear several different languages simultaneously. The

linguistic diversity had some connection to the “racial” diversity in the school, but the

way multiple languages were used in various contexts showed no one-to-one connection

between a person, a “race,” and a language. Most people had command of multiple

languages, and language selection for each conversation depended on its context and

participants. Only the speakers of all languages used in a conversation could fully join it

without feeling excluded at any moment. The fact that some conversations could not (and

were not meant to) be understood by some people in the same space not only caused

communication breakdowns but produced systems of moral judgment about people who

were responsible for the breakdowns.

As I discussed in chapter two, the promotion of the Malay-based national language

originally aimed to achieve double goals: On the one hand, it sought cultural and
 143
linguistic unity among citizens of multiple “races”; On the other, it sought to assist social

advancement of the Malay race by making “their language” the official language of state

institutions. In other words, the mastery of the national language is required for all

Malaysians, but it is still identified with the Malay race. The alternating names of the

national language between “Bahasa Malaysia” and “Bahasa Melayu” reflect the tension

between the double goals. 47

As a public secondary school, SMK Jalan Limau required students and teachers to

use the national language. Even after the introduction of English as a language of

instruction, people in the school were expected to use English only in limited contexts.

However, Bahasa Malaysia used by many non-Malay students in the inner-city school

was just not good enough to guarantee smooth operations of the school. Does the non-

Malay students’ “deficiency” in the national language reflect their strong attachment to

their ethno-linguistic identities? I suggest that the “deficiency” owes greatly to the

colonial legacy of “divide and rule” and the dual goals in the project of nation-building

that often conflict with each other. Despite the historical and political circumstances, the

consequent “deficiency” tends to be individualized as “attitude problems” of students –

their disrespect for the linguistic norm of the school and the state and their lack of

motivation to make social advancement through education. At the same time, many

teachers believe that the “attitude problems” reflect the “cultural characteristics” of non-

Malays from low-income families.

47
At the time of independence in 1957, the official name of the national language was Bahasa Melayu.
After the “race riots” in 1967, the name was changed into Bahasa Malaysia to emphasize national unity
beyond racial differences. The name was switched back to Bahasa Melayu in 1986, when Anwar Ibrahim, a
leader of Islamic Malay-nationalist movement, joined the government. Finally, in April 2007, the Cabinet
decided to readopt Bahasa Malaysia as the official term refereeing to the national language (The Star June 6,
2007).
 144
Contradicting the cultural and psychological explanation that identities and personal

attitudes are responsible for the linguistic “deficiency” of many non-Malay students as

well as the lack of linguistic homogeneity in the school, I show that, for most non-Malay

students from low-income families, neither the linguistic discipline of the school nor the

promised reward for the success in education seem meaningful or necessary. The

structure of Malaysian society provides different vocational niche to people from ethnic,

racial, and economic backgrounds and the speakers of ethnic dialects are accommodated

into low-wage jobs in private sectors. The lack of linguistic homogeneity in SMK Jalan

Limau, therefore, demonstrates both the colonial legacy of “plural society” and the

exclusivity within the project of linguistic homogenization, rather than simply reflecting

the presence of divisive ethnic nationalisms among the urban poor.

The preservation of one’s “mother tongue” is not always recognized as freedom from

the discipline of the national language. Neither is it received as a defense of “linguistic

rights” as a member of an ethnic group. Rather, Jalan Limau students’ heavy dependence

on their “mother tongues” is often interpreted as a proof of one’s marginal social status

and the “traditional” and “parochial” mindset of the inner-city residents. Despite its

identification with Malays, the discipline of the national language is universally applied

to all citizens. Though students may “resist” the discipline, they are not free from the

consequences of the resistance. The distinction between two groups of non-Malay

students – those who accept the discipline of the national language and those who do not

– shows how the national language marks the social, cultural, and economic differences

among non-Malays. While suffering from the lack of educational resource, non-Malay

students in the inner-city school bear the burden of navigating through multiple linguistic
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norms that come from (1) the linguistically nationalized world of public schools, (2) the

community of families and neighbors whose social connections depend on the use of

“ethnic dialects” or the “mother tongues” of respective races, and (3) the English-

speaking world of the urban elite.

Contrary to the assumption that the introduction of English into public school

reflects the new trend of globalization initiated primarily outside the country, English is

not new to Malaysian education system. It was the language of colonial elite education

which was strictly separated from vernacular-medium education (or education in “one’s

own language”) for the rest of colonized subject. Though English lost its status of official

language in the late 1960s, the linguistic functional dualism among the elite still assign

the language the role of modernization and development, while emphasizing the

importance of the national language for the identity of the country. The functional

dualism combines with the racial distinction between “natives” and “immigrants” when

the government argues that the “natives,” especially Malays who had been protected by

the project of “selective modernization,” are lagging behind non-Malay immigrants in

modern fields that operate in English. The idea that the improvement of English

proficiency is more needed for the “natives” than for “immigrants” systematically ignores

the presence of non-elite “immigrants” and the elite among “natives.”

After independence, English, which was once the language of “white men,” became

the language of the rich and educated urban Malaysians. It now stands for the social,

cultural, economic differences within each race in Malaysia, or the distinction between

the “de-racialized” minority at the top of social hierarchy and the racially-divided masses.

Would the new definition of “model citizens,” that requires every citizen to incorporate
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English into their lives to participate in the county’s march toward the status of

“developed country,” break the exclusive link between English and the elite status and

privileges? Contrary to the argument that the promotion of English means the

democratization of elite resource, in 2005, most students and teachers in SMK Jalan

Limau did not seem to be approaching the new model of desirable citizenship. It does not

mean that the members were consciously “resistant” to the new norm. They were unsure

whether the unpromising struggle to master English, which had long been the language of

their social “others,” would produce any meaningful result for them. Even before the

students on the margin of the nationalized education system became fully incorporated

into it, the English-speaking elite began to treat the project of linguistic nationalization as

an outdated legacy from the nationalist “past” in conflict with the “present and future” era

of globalization.

2. Authority of the National Language

When I was doing research in 2005, the policy of teaching science and mathematics

in English, first introduced in 2003, affected students up to the third year in secondary

schools (Form Three). In Form Four and Form Five classes, Bahasa Malaysia was still

the only language of instruction, while younger students were already learning the two

subjects with textbooks in English. The first class that Puan Zainah allowed me in was

her science class with Form Four students. Before students’ arrival at the science lab, I

looked around the charts, posters, diagrams, specimens, and chemical bottles in the room.

The language on all of the items in the lab was Bahasa Malaysia, not English. Although

the room was also used for Form Three classes, the space was yet to go through a
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48
language transition. When all students entered the lab, following the class captain’s lead,

they greeted Puan Zainah in Bahasa Malaysia (In her Form Three classes, the same ritual

was conducted in English).

As soon as the lesson began, a voice came out of a speaker. After the conventional

greeting in a mixture of Arabic and Malay (Assalamwalaikum dan salam sejatera), the

voice asked (in Malay) Puan Zainah to come to the staff office immediately. After briefly

introducing me to her students, she left the lab. Once she was gone, a group of Chinese

girls approached me and asked something in Mandarin. When they noticed that I could

not understand or speak Mandarin despite my Chinese-looking face, they showed no

more interest in me and started chatting among themselves. Then, a Chinese boy wearing

green shirts (which indicated that he was a school librarian and probably a hard-working

student) came to me. But instead of using Mandarin or Malay, he insisted on speaking

English with me. The only person who talked to me in Malay during the teachers’

absence was a Malay girl in a Muslim-style uniform. After around twenty minutes, Puan

Zainah came back from the staff room and resumed her lesson. Despite the different

preference of languages among students, her lesson was conducted almost exclusively in

Bahasa Malaysia.

Before the end of the class, Puan Zainah asked students if they had any question for

me. It was after some moments of hesitation, and only after I told them that they could

ask questions in Malay, that they started asking about me and my work. I answered their

questions in Malay, expecting that it might be the beginning of my amicable relationship

48
In SMK Taman Raya, the former English-medium elite mission school that I discuss in chapter six and
seven, all the charts in Bahasa Malaysia were replaced by English ones exactly one year after the
introduction of English in 2003.
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with students. Therefore, I was surprised when Puan Zainah used the exchange in Malay

as an opportunity to scold non-Malay students whose Malay was not yet good enough to

follow classes. After emphasizing that the foreign guest in front of them learned Bahasa

Malaysia in two months (which was a gross exaggeration of what I had told her), she

pointed out a very thin boy who had been quiet throughout the lesson. He was wearing a

hairstyle that was popular among Chinese boys. To the entire class, she told that the boy

did not speak good Malay even though he was Malaysian. Then she told the boy that he

must feel ashamed and try hard to master the language. Similar situations occurred in a

couple of other classes, even when I did not speak much Malay in class.

I was not unfamiliar with the kind of situation. It was something I experienced

almost every time I visited public offices. As soon as the staffs (mostly Malays) noticed

that I was not “Chinese (i.e. Chinese-Malaysian),” they would compare my Malay

language with that of Chinese. They usually complained that the strong Chinese “slang

(sic)” or accent made it really hard for them to understand the Malay language spoken by

Chinese. However, the kind of conversation usually happened in the absence of “orang

cina (Chinese people).” In contrast, in Puan Zainah’ class, the accusation was made right

in front of the Chinese boy and his classmates. I felt embarrassed to notice that my use of

Malay gave the teacher opportunities to openly question the student’s linguistic

qualification for citizenship. Still, no other language could better connect me to the

students in SMK Jalan Limau than the national language.

Puan Zainah’ criticism of the student might have come from her frustrating

experience that the use of the national language could not always guarantee the teacher’s

effective communication with her multi-racial and multi-lingual students. At the same
 149
time, the fact that Puan Zainah was Malay and the national language maintained its

identification with the “Malay race” might seem to reflect the dominance of the racial and

linguistic majority over racial and linguistic minorities. The following examples, however,

show that the norm of the national language does more than guaranteeing the

effectiveness of communication. It works as a standard of moral judgment and the

distinction between “good” and “weak” non-Malay students. The judgment and

distinctions are not always made by Malays, the alleged owner of the national language,

but also by non-Malay teachers who have incorporated the discipline of the national

language.

Functional Necessities

The imposition of the national language as a “norm” can be rationalized in terms of

its functional necessities – the need for a common language of communication among the

multi-lingual population of the country and the successful operation of state institutions

including schools. Most functions in school, including classes, morning assemblies, and

announcements, were conducted in Bahasa Malaysia. Without learning the language,

students could not properly follow school routines.

One day, a voice from school speakers ordered students to immediately evacuate the

building through designated stairs then line up in the school yard. After the evacuation,

several students were called up to the podium so that teachers and other students could

see them. They were three girls from the “weak” classes in Form Three and several boys

from Remove Class. According to the announcement of a discipline teacher, who was in

charge of what later turned out to be a fire drill, the students on the podium used the stairs
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near the science lab where the fire was assumed to have started. While they were being

scolded in front of other students, teachers were observing the situation in a shade next to

the podium. One Malay language teacher, pointing at the students standing on the podium,

quietly told other teachers that they did not understand Malay. According to the teacher’s

explanation, they probably left the building without knowing what was going on because

they did not understand the evacuation order given in Malay. She argued that it was

almost useless to scold them, because they neither knew what they did wrong nor could

understand Bahasa Malaysia in which the discipline teacher scolded them. According to

the teacher, despite the public humiliation, they would probably make the same mistake if

the school had another fire drill.

Who were the students that did not speak or understand the national language? Why

didn’t they see the “necessities” that seemed too obvious to others? The mastery of

Bahasa Malaysia plays an important role for a student’s achievement in school and its

official evaluation in standardized exams. Since the early 1970s until 2002, every subject,

except for English and People’s Own Language, was taught in Bahasa Malaysia. Despite

the recent introduction of English to science and mathematics classes, Bahasa Malaysia is

still the primary language of instruction in schools. Students who want to proceed to

colleges and universities in Malaysia have to pass SPM (Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia: the

Malaysian Certificate of Education) conducted in the national language. Therefore, the

mastery of the language and the accumulation of knowledge in the language are crucial

for students’ social advancement through education.

The norm also applies to students from English-speaking families of all races. In the

current system where standardized exams are conducted in Bahasa Malaysia, the mastery
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of English can have only limited value without the mastery of the national language.

Puan Selvi, who taught both English and history, expected that the condition would not

change unless every subject were taught and tested in English. However, she also pointed

out that, for non-Malay students, the necessity of the national language might dissipate

after secondary schools.

Of course, Bahasa Malaysia is very important, because students have to take SPM in
Malay. For non-Malays, the language is important only until they turn seventeen and
take SPM. After the exam, they don’t really need to use Malay. I would not care
about my daughters’ Malay once they finish the exam, but, until then, the language is
very important. I always emphasize the importance of Malay to my daughters, make
them watch television programs in Malay, and help them study subjects that are still
taught in Malay.

The state education system in Bahasa Malaysia came into a full existence as late as the

1970s, when the Cambridge system in English was gradually replaced by the new system

in the national language. Before linguistic nationalization, Malaysian citizens were not

required to master the Malay language. Even after linguistic nationalization, the

promotion of Bahasa Malaysia was linked to the protection of the “Malay interest” which

was also secured by the introduction of “racial quota” in college admission and

employment. Non-Malays could succeed in school by mastering the national language,

but their success in Malay-medium schools did not necessarily guarantee their places in

colleges, universities, and government offices. For further social advancement, according

to Puan Selvi, non-Malays had to invest in their English.

Despite the importance of the national language in school, not all students sought

social advancement through education. For example, some Chinese students in SMK

Jalan Limau believed that learning the national language, let alone English, was not

relevant to their current and future lives. They were already earning money from their
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part-time jobs in Chinese-run small businesses (such as grocery shops, cellular-phone

kiosks, and hawker-food stalls). They saw their future there, not in colleges, government

offices, or big companies. Ms. Lim told me that her attempts to make the students

understand the importance of the national language often turned out to be futile. When

she advised a Chinese boy that he would need to speak Malay to successfully manage his

small businesses in the future, he answered that, if necessary, he would hire a person who

could speak both Chinese and Malay, rather than improving his Malay language.

Although Ms. Lim was concerned that the “short-sightedness” of some Chinese students

might have detrimental effect on their lives, she also acknowledged that it would be

difficult for them to become “far-sighted.” How could they imagine a life that was

dramatically different from those of their families, relatives and neighbors? It was not

uncommon for the owners of Chinese small businesses (especially shops in

predominantly Chinese residential and commercial areas) not to be able to speak Malay.

They did most of their business with Chinese customers. Only some of them hired clerks

to answer phone calls and handle official paperwork in the national language.

While some students saw their success in the Malay-medium public schools as a

vessel that would deliver them to the next stage in their lives, others found the national

language only potentially necessary for their lives, if not at all. Does it indicate their

desire to defend their ethno-linguistic identities against the dominance of the Malay

language? If that is the case, why do some non-Malays actively incorporate the norm of

the national language rather than resisting against it? Neither the logic of functional

necessities nor that of “language rights” seems to explain the division by the national

language in public schools that are supposed to be the institution of linguistic

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homogenization.

Disciplining Students in the National Language

The Malay language has a dual status in Malaysia – as the language (or the “mother

tongue”) of Malays (Bahasa Melayu) and as the national language for all Malaysian

citizens (Bahasa Malaysia). All Malay students in SMK Jalan Limau spoke Malay. But

their language was not identical to Bahasa Malaysia, the standardized national language.

According to Puan Zainah’ explanation, just as the “Chinese language” includes

Cantonese, Hokkien, and Hakka as well as Mandarin, the Malay language has various

“dialects” characteristic of different regions in the country and some of “dialects” have

significant difference from the standardized Malay language. Students were aware of the

differences within the Malay language, especially between the standard Malay and the

colloquial Malay. They were also aware that the use of colloquial Malay, called bahasa

pasar (market language), was not fully acceptable in school. In front of me, students tried

to avoid using bahasa pasar. When they slipped out some words in bahasa pasar, they

would ask me not to write down those words. For them, the use of bahasa pasar was

something to be ashamed of.

If the Malay students had been surrounded by the “ideal speakers” of Bahasa

Malaysia, their linguistic “deficiency” (in what is supposed to be the “mother-tongue” of

the Malay race) would have been immediately recognizable. However, in SMK Jalan

Limau where many non-Malay students had problem communicating in Malay, the Malay

students’ non-standard usage of the language was rarely picked up by the school as a

serious problem. As a result, the Malay ownership of the national language looked almost
 154
“natural” in the context of SMK Jalan Limau. If the loyalty of Malay students (and

teachers) to the national language was ever questioned, it was when they used English

even when they did not have to (i.e. outside English, science or mathematics classes).

While the loyalty of Malay students to the national language was safely assumed,

that of non-Malay students was often questioned by school administrators and teachers.

They made a distinction between non-Malay students who were compliant to the norm of

the national language and those who were not. The former was considered “good”

students, and their compliance with the linguistic norm was interpreted as a proof of their

respect for the cultural and moral norms of the school. According to teachers, the “good”

non-Malay students not only spoke decent Bahasa Malaysia, but studied hard in their

classes, socialized across racial boundaries, and behaved in front of teachers. In contrast,

the “weak” non-Malay students not only had very limited ability to speak or understand

the national language, but did not show much interest in classes, always got along with

friends of the same race, and did not know how to behave.

The language that non-Malay students spoke in the presence of teachers (especially

in staff rooms) often became the primary indicator of whether they were good students or

not. For example, when teachers heard a group of Indian girls speaking Tamil in a staff

room, they could make judgment about them without understanding even a word of their

conversation. The very act of speaking Tamil in the staff room constituted a breach of the

linguistic norm that, in school, they should speak Bahasa Malaysia, the only language

supposedly shared by all members. In contrast, when non-Malay students showed their

respect for the linguistic norm, teachers expected them to be students of good discipline

not just in their language use but in every aspect. One day, a Chinese girl walked into the
 155
staffroom with her mother. She was a new student just transferred from another school.

Upon entering the room, she approached Ms. Lim, a Chinese teacher sitting nearest to the

entrance. There was nothing exceptional about the student’s move. Most Chinese students

in the school (and their parents) were inclined to talk with Chinese teachers in Mandarin

rather than talking to other teachers in the national language (or English in limited

contexts). But the language she spoke to Ms. Lim was not Mandarin. In a refined Bahasa

Malaysia, she asked Ms. Lim where she could find her new homeroom teacher Puan

Hamidah. Ms. Lim later told me that she was impressed by the girl who did not hesitate

to speak Malay to a Chinese teacher. Based on the short encounter, she made a judgment

that the girl must be a modest student who was well-educated at home.

Ms. Lim believed that students, regardless of their race, should use Bahasa Malaysia

in school. The principle, however, was constantly ignored by most non-Malay (especially

Chinese) students in SMK Jalan Limau. She contrasted the situation in SMK Jalan Limau

with that of her former school in a predominantly Chinese middle-class area. Although

Chinese formed the majority of students in her previous school, the norm of the national

language was strictly implemented. Ms. Lim said, “Once students came to school, they

were not allowed to speak languages other than Malay and English. Chinese students did

not dare to speak Mandarin in school.” She expected the students of SMK Jalan Limau to

follow the same rule. Though she knew how to speak Mandarin, she tried to use either

Malay or English (she was an English teacher) with her Chinese students. But in SMK

Jalan Limau, instead of following her lead and talking back to her in Malay or English,

many Chinese students went to other Chinese teachers who did not mind speaking

Mandarin with them. Ms. Tan criticized both the Chinese students who spoke Mandarin
 156
in school and the Chinese teachers who allowed them to do so.

Students in the afternoon session do not know me. But they dare to talk to me in
Mandarin, without asking me if they could. In those cases, I just ignore them. The
official language in school is Malay. They should be using Malay in school. Stefani
(another English teacher who is Chinese) speaks Mandarin with Chinese students.
How could she ever do that? As a language teacher, she should know better than that.

Ms. Tan did not ignore the difficulties that Chinese students from Mandarin-medium

primary schools experienced in the course of the language transition from Mandarin to

Bahasa Malaysia. However, she suggested that the tendency among Chinese students

reflected their “attitude problem” as well as “language problem.” According to her,

“good” Chinese students would do their best to use Malay in school, even if their Malay

was far from being perfect. In contrast, some would not even try to improve their Malay.

A similar point was also made by Puan Kartini, a Malay teacher who taught English.

Arguing that many Chinese students in the school, especially those in “weak” classes, had

an “attitude problem,” she pointed out that they did not even try to write down what was

already written on the blackboard. Students with good attitudes would at least try to do

everything she ordered them to do in class, even when they did not completely

understand what they were doing.

Some non-Malay teachers were more sympathetic with non-Malay students

struggling with language transition, but, in class, even they did not use or allow students

to speak “ethnic dialects.” It was not necessarily because they were afraid of the sanction

from authorities including the school’s administrators. Even when students had no real

choice but to attend a Malay-medium public school, the common goal of teachers was to

make them succeed in school and not to fail.

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3. The Languages of Non-Malay Races

The languages of non-Malay races become political issues in two different ways. On

the one hand, in the framework of competition between Malays and non-Malays over the

limited resources in the country, non-Malays are presented as the owners of the wealth,

the social status, and the language (English) once belonged to the British colonialists. On

the other hand, the continuation of non-Malay languages in the country reproduces the

idea that non-Malays belong to “immigrant nations” with distinctive cultural, religious,

and linguistic identities, thus pose a potential threat to national unity in what is supposed

to be a Malay-dominant nation-state.

Although the first logic played some role in SMK Jalan Limau, the strong presence of

non-Malay students from Mandarin or Tamil-medium primary schools made the second

logic more prominent in the inner-city school. The division among students from non-

Malay-medium primary schools and the different “cultures” of linguistic practice in SMK

Jalan Limau and my second school, SMK Taman Raya, demonstrate that the use of

“ethnic dialects” is not simply a matter of ethnic and linguistic identities or the “language

rights.” My discussion here focuses on Chinese students in the school. Students from

Mandarin-medium primary school had a strong presence in the school and formed the

majority of students who had problem communicating in Bahasa Malaysia.

Different Language, Divided Loyalty?

Chinese parents choose to send their children to Mandarin-medium primary schools

for various reasons. Some parents just want to expose their children to an environment

where they could learn the standard Chinese. Some others, especially those who are not
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familiar with the national language, are afraid that they may not help their children’s

study if they send their children to Malay-medium primary school. Whatever the reason

is, by the time students leave their Chinese primary schools, they have to decide whether

they want to continue their education in Mandarin-medium private secondary schools or

in Malay-medium public secondary schools. For most Chinese students in SMK Jalan

Limau, private Chinese secondary schools were not among viable options. Private

schools selectively admitted students with good academic performance and charged high

fees. Still, the diplomas from Mandarin-medium secondary school were not recognized

by the government (therefore, some famous Chinese schools adopted dual programs, in

which students repeat the same curricula once in Mandarin and once in Bahasa Malaysia).

For children from financially challenged Chinese families or students with mediocre

achievement in Mandarin-medium primary schools, Malay-medium public secondary

schools were the only available option.

At the time of my research, about twenty-five percent of students in SMK Jalan

Limau were “Chinese” and more than ninety percent of them were from “national-type

Chinese-medium primary schools (Sekolah Jenis Kebangsaan Cina: SJKC),” including

one that was located right next to the school. Despite the physical proximity, the primary

school had important differences from SMK Jalan Limau. The school’s Chinese name

hanging on the main building was not in the Roman alphabet (used for both Bahasa

Malaysia and English) but in Chinese characters. The only language heard during

morning assemblies was Mandarin. The school followed the standardized national

curricula, taught the Malay language as a required subject, but adopted Mandarin as the

main language of instruction. While students attended the primary school, Mandarin was
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the de facto official language. Once the students finished their primary education, unless

they proceeded to Mandarin-medium private secondary schools, Mandarin suddenly

stopped being an official language and turned into an “ethnic dialect.” As they moved to a

“national secondary school (Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan: SMK),” in addition to

going through language transition, they had to learn about new ways of greetings, new

styles of dresses, and new patterns of socialization.

The strong presence of Chinese students from Mandarin-medium primary schools

both helped and interrupted their linguistic and cultural transitions from a Chinese-

dominant environment to a Malay-dominant one. In SMK Jalan Limau, they could find

many Chinese friends from the same type of schools with whom they formed ethnically

exclusive peer groups communicating primarily in Mandarin. Despite the common

linguistic, ethnic and educational backgrounds, however, there were significant

differences among the students regarding their relationship to the national language. In

other words, being Chinese and being educated in Mandarin-medium primary schools did

not necessarily mean that they were “disloyal” to the national language. The Mandarin-

medium primary schools provide compulsory Bahasa Malaysia classes. At the end of

primary education, all Malaysian students, whether they attend Malay-medium national

schools (SK) or Mandarin or Tamil-medium national-type schools (SJKC or SJKT), have

to take a standardized national exam (Ujian Penilaian Sekolah Rendah: UPSR or Primary

School Assessment Examination) to demonstrate that they have the minimum

qualification for entering secondary schools. Bahasa Malaysia is a subject that students

have to pass in order to enter secondary schools without interruption. Those who have

passed the exam directly enter Form One, but those who have failed should spend one
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year in Remove Class polishing up their Bahasa Malaysia.

SMK Jalan Limau streamed students into different classes according to their

academic achievement (sometimes making adjustments to make the racial ratio of each

class balanced).The first group of Chinese students, who did well enough in the national

language test to make an uninterrupted transition from a Mandarin-medium primary

school to a Malay-medium secondary school, usually ended up in one of the “good”

classes. Despite their struggle during the early period of transition, this group of Chinese

students gradually accommodated the linguistic and cultural norms of the school. In

classrooms, they usually sat in front rows (in contrast to the second group of Chinese

students in “weak” classes who always stayed in the back), as it helped them to

concentrate on lessons. Chinese student who were relative proficiency in the national

language also played the role of translators between their Chinese-speaking classmates

and Malay-speaking teachers. Most of Chinese students that I interviewed in SMK Jalan

Limau belonged to the group.

When I first sat down with a group of Chinese students to interview them, I did not

feel sure about what was the best language to start the conversation. From my experience

in the city, I knew that my Malay was not always well received by non-Malays. Many of

them insisted speaking in English or Chinese with me, partly because I was often

mistaken as Chinese-Malaysian. When I barely started talking to them in English,

however, one student interrupted me. She said they would not be able to continue a

conversation in English and asked me to speak in Malay. I was allowed to use English

words only when I had real problem finding equivalent words in Malay. The case

indicates that the identification of English as the language of non-Malays does not apply
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to most students in the inner-city school. Bahasa Malaysia, despite its ambiguous status

as the language of all Malaysians and the language of Malays, served better for the

students as a language of communication across ethnic, racial and linguistic differences

than English does.

Although the first group of students accepted the norm of the national language, they

could not easily choose to leave their “mother tongue” behind. Students were asked to use

Bahasa Malaysia while in school, but they were also exposed to social pressures from

families and friends to speak Chinese among Chinese. Jun Hui, a boy from a “good” class

in Form Three, was one of the small number of Chinese students who did not hesitate to

talk with me in Bahasa Malaysia. Despite his relative familiarity with the language,

however, he told me that he rarely spoke Malay at home. He said that most of his family

members, speaking both Mandarin and Hokkien, felt “uncomfortable (tak selesa)” with

his use of Malay. In school, the “uncomfortable” feeling led to social isolation of non-

Chinese speaking Chinese students. In Form Three, there was one Chinese student who

did not speak Mandarin. Though there were five Chinese girls in her class, she was close

to none of the four other girls. She made friends with a couple of Indian girls in the next

class who came from the same Malay-medium primary school, but she could not join the

group of Indian girls either. To maintain social connections to Chinese in their classes,

families and neighborhoods, the students had to follow the linguistic norm among

Chinese-speaking Chinese. At the same time, to make a success in the Malay-medium

education system and to be acknowledged as a good student, they had to master the

national language. For them, the transition did not mean discarding their “ethnic

identities” to incorporate the “national identity,” but bearing double burdens for their life
 162
in a multi-lingual society (As I discuss later, the introduction of English added another

burden).

If the Chinese students in the first group made a relatively smooth transition from a

Chinese-dominant environment to a Malay-dominant one, the transition was much

tougher for the other group. The school had two remove classes and most of their

students were Chinese students from Mandarin-medium primary schools. In isolation

from other students who made a normal progress from a primary to a secondary school,

the two classes were under the custody of Chinese teachers who spoke both Mandarin

and Bahasa Malaysia and served them simultaneously as Malay language instructors,

translators, and transition facilitators. Students in remove classes became the target of

special attentions, as they were unable to follow regular school routines because of their

minimal proficiency in the national language. Though they were expected to make a

dramatic progress in learning Bahasa Malaysia during the one year in remove classes,

they were very slow to pick up the national language. The lack of ethnic and linguistic

diversity in class had some negative influence on their transition. However, some teachers

believed that the most important reason behind their slow acquisition of the language was

those students’ psychological resistance to adopt Bahasa Malaysia. In weekly staff

meetings, the headmistress would remind teachers that the students in remove classes had

extremely poor ability to understand the national language. She urged teachers to “force”

the students to speak only in Malay. According to the headmistress, unless forced, they

would not “open their mouths” to speak Malay.

After spending one year in Remove Class, students finally joined Form One with

students one year younger than them. However, because of their slow improvement in the
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national language, they usually ended up in one of the “weak” classes. In those classes,

there were always groups of Chinese students sitting in the back rows. Although they

stayed in the same classroom with students from diverse ethnic and linguistic

backgrounds, they were socially separated from non-Chinese students as they had been in

primary schools and remove classes. Even during classes, they chatted among them in

Mandarin and Cantonese and showed little interested in the lessons conducted in Bahasa

Malaysia or English.

One day, about half way through Puan Kartini’s English class with one of the most

“weak” classes in Form Three, two Chinese girls showed up at the front door of the

classroom. After asking the permission of the teacher, one of them started making

announcement to students that Chinese Language Club (Persatuan Bahasa Cina) would

have a meeting after school. Both the conversation with the teacher and the

announcement were delivered in Bahasa Malaysia, though the target audience of the

announcement was Chinese who spoke Mandarin. The message, however, was soon

interrupted by a Chinese girl, Chung, who started speaking in Mandarin while, with her

hands, asking the messenger girl to come closer to Chinese students sitting in the back.

After a little hesitation, the girl walked to the group of Chinese students and switched her

language to Mandarin. From the moment on, the teacher and non-Mandarin-speaking

students could not understand the conversation that went on among the Chinese students

for a while.

Even after the two girls left, Chinese students, who were exited about the rarely given

opportunity to speak up in Chinese in classroom, hardly calmed down. If their attitude

during the first half of the lesson was characterized by the lack of enthusiasm and interest,
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during the second half, they were active and verbose. Puan Kartini tried to calm down the

students and continue her lesson in the mixture of English and Malay as usual. But her

attempts turned out to be futile. The exited Chinese students in the back kept speaking

various Chinese languages and giggling among them. Until the end of the class, the

teacher could not regain the control over students.

In the institutional setting, it is naïve to romanticize the occasion as a resistance

against the school’s linguistic discipline or the assertion of “language rights” as members

of minority ethnic groups. The freedom of expression that the Chinese students gained by

using “encrypted language” hardly subverted the authority of the national language in

school, though it challenged the authority of individual teachers. The open use of Chinese

languages in the presence of multilingual and multiethnic teachers and students was not

considered by the school as the expressions of their ethnic identity or the right to speak

their “mother tongue.” It constituted an “attitudinal problem,” a testimony of their

“uncultivated” personality, and a sign of their failure in the school system. The dialect-

speaking students staying in the back were also the group of potential drop-outs. After

weeks of frequent absences, Chung, the girl who started the brawl by braving to speak

Mandarin in the presence of the teacher and the entire class, disappeared from the school.

The diverse reactions among non-Malay students to the discipline of the national

language do not necessarily reflect the strength or weakness of their ethnic identities or

attachment to their “mother tongues.” They reveal an important aspect of class difference

within each ethnic group. Who, among Chinese, did not feel the need to learn the national

language despite its importance for their social advancement through education? Who,

among Indians, did not fear the failure in school? Encik Nor Hashim, a Malay science
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teacher, argued that the key issue was not whether students had received primary

education in Bahasa Malaysia, Mandarin, or Tamil. According to him, there were two

groups of Chinese students: those seating in front rows and those staying in the back. The

first group of students was found in “good” classes. They were relatively good at the

national language and had little problem socializing with non-Chinese. The second group

socialized exclusively with Chinese-speaking Chinese and their Bahasa Malaysia showed

little improvement during the several years in the Malay-medium secondary school. What

made the difference between the two groups of Chinese students? The teacher argued that

the second group of Chinese students came from “ghettos,” the low-income residential

areas that also bore the characteristics of ethnic enclaves. Most of those students were

from the families of Chinese peasants, laborers, or factory workers. In contrast, the

second group came from “mixed areas” where Chinese families of “middle” or “upper-

class” status lived side by side with Indian and Malay families of similar socio-economic

status. Encik Nor Hashim suggested that, for the second group of students, it was almost

impossible to get out of their world that formed their “mindset (dalam hati).”

According to the teachers, the problem with SMK Jalan Limau was that the frequent

violations of the linguistic norm in school almost made them taken for granted as part of

SMK Jalan Limau’s “culture.” I will contrast the “culture” of the inner-city school with

the alleged “culture of excellence” in a former English-medium elite mission school

(SMK Taman Raya) where most non-Malay students did not speak their “mother

tongues” (Chapter 7). The comparison of the two schools strongly suggests that the

concepts such as “identities” and “cultures” tend to individualize the linguistic

expressions of social distance among people. It is neither “identities” nor “cultures” that
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make people pass or fail the test of the national language (and the test of the “global

language”). It is the power relations between different linguistics norms in society and the

different amount of burdens that people have to carry during their navigation through

them.

Navigating Through Multiple Norms

Puan Khoo, who taught a remove class, argued that children born into Chinese-

speaking families had disadvantages in the current education system in Bahasa Malaysia.

She believed that the students in her class could have done better in school if they had

been born in Chinese-speaking countries such as Taiwan. But students could not choose

the country of their birth or its national language. They just happened to be born into the

families of “immigrants” who spoke languages different from the national language.

Overcoming the linguistic gap between the family and the school required more than the

willingness and effort of individuals. Puan Khoo emphasized the role of parents in

bridging the gap – they had to provide continuous monitoring and pay for tuition classes

if necessary. Parents had different educational experiences and economic abilities to

support their children’s multiple language acquisition. The teacher’s own experience as a

mother of two sons shows what it takes for parents to help their children bridge the gap.

Puan Khoo sent her elder son to a Chinese-medium “national-type” primary school.

She originally had the same plan for her younger son. However, he had difficulty learning

how to read and write Chinese characters (which shows that living in a Chinese-speaking

environment is one thing and being literate in the language is another). Facing the

unexpected problem, Puan Khoo decided to send him to a Malay-medium “national”

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primary school. It was a choice that not all parents of Chinese-speaking families could

make in similar situations. She emphasized how demanding it could be for parents to

send their Chinese-speaking children to a Malay-medium school. Because textbooks were

all written in Bahasa Malaysia, from her younger son’s first year in primary school, she

had to go over the textbooks page by page with him and help him memorize every new

Malay word. Puan Khoo was able to do the job because she received college education in

Bahasa Malaysia and worked as a teacher in a Malay-medium secondary school.

Furthermore, it had to be done while she took care of her first son in a Mandarin-medium

school, which required her literacy in Mandarin. According to her, the “poor and

uneducated parents” could do very little to help their children accommodating the

linguistic norm in school.

The school visits of parents who did not speak the national language revealed the

linguistic distance between the school and the families of some students. During the first

weeks of a new school year, the school had many visitors, including parents or elder

siblings of students wanting to meet new homeroom teachers. They did not always share

a language with the teachers, not even the national language. In those cases, they had to

depend on a translator – usually a teacher speaking Mandarin or Tamil. One day, an

Indian lady visited the staffroom to meet her daughter’s homeroom teacher who was

Malay. She tried to start her conversation with the teacher, but could hardly make herself

understood in Bahasa Malaysia. After several futile attempts, the mother and the teacher

just had to wait for an Indian teacher who could speak Tamil. When Puan Selvi showed

up in the room, other teachers, who were helplessly observing the situation, immediately

brought her to the Indian mother. Only with the translation of Puan Selvi between Tamil
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and Bahasa Malaysia, the mother and the homeroom teacher could move on with their

conversation.

The dependence of both students and parents on non-Malay teachers speaking the

“mother tongue” of their race produced a special bond between them. If Malay/English-

speaking Chinese teachers (such as Ms. Lim and Ms. Tan) were critical about Chinese

students who spoke Chinese in school, Mandarin-speaking Chinese teachers were

sympathetic to the difficulties that Chinese students from Chinese-speaking families

experienced in a Malay-medium secondary school. Most Chinese students in the school,

while distancing themselves from Chinese teachers who did not want to use Chinese with

them, turned to the sympathetic teachers when they had concerns. The presence of

teachers who could speak “ethnic dialects” and sympathized with dialect-speaking

students made those students’ life in a new linguistic and cultural environment much

bearable. However, even the most sympathetic teachers did not use “ethnic dialects” in

classrooms. In their classes, they taught students either in Bahasa Malaysia or in English.

Students could not understand the lessons unless they familiarize themselves with the two

languages.

4. Who Owns English?

What are the status and the role of the English language in the school, compared to

the official norm of the national language and the social pressure to speak the “mother

tongue” of one’s race? English is not an official language in school. But unlike other non-

official languages, English is an important part of school curricula. Even before the

introduction of English to the teaching of science and mathematics, schools taught

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English as an independent subject as well as holding several annual events to improve

students’ ability to use English. SMK Jalan Limau had events such as the annual English

week, inter-class English song contest, and English essay-writing contest. The school also

participated in the annual inter-school English debate competition. However, not all

students in SMK Jalan Limau could actively participate in the classes and events

conducted in English. A small number of students experienced English as a language of

participation, but the majority experienced it as a language of exclusion. It was not the

willingness of individual students to learn English that determined the difference between

participation and exclusion. In the inner-city school, English symbolized both racial and

class differences among its members.

Racial Identification of English

If Bahasa Malaysia still maintains some of its identification with the Malay race, just

as Chinese is identified with the Chinese race and Tamil is with the Indian race in

Malaysia, what is the racial identification of English? As I have discussed earlier, there

are two conflicting arguments regarding the question. The English-educated colonial

elites argued that English was an “a-national” language, a language with no racial or

ethnic identification. Many of them believed that the colonial language would gain a new

role in the in the independent state as a language of national unity and progress. But,

when Malay nationalism became politically dominant after the 1969 riot, English came to

symbolize the economic and social privileges of non-Malay races, while the Malay

language was redefined as the tool of “selectively modernizing” the Malay race.

The non-Malay identification of English could also be found in folk theories about
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inter-racial difference in English proficiency. For example, Puan Selvi believed that the

tough historical experience of “Indians” in Malaysia made them daring and resilient in

adverse conditions and those characteristics might have turn them into better language

learners than other races. In contrast, Form Three Malay girls, Farah and Ismah, argued

that most “Malays” did not have English proficiency, because they historically lacked

exposure (kurang didedah) to different languages, had a strong sense of shame (perasaan

malu tebal), and did not want to try hard (tak nak berusaha).

The programs to promote the use of English among students also incorporate the

idea of inter-racial difference in English proficiency. The racialized approach to the

inequality in English has much similarity with the government’s definition of economic

inequality primarily as a relationship between Malays and non-Malays (or between

bumiputras and non-bumiputras). 49 While assuming that non-Malays already have

proficiency in English, the language allegedly much needed for “modernization,” the

government urge Malays to improve their English to catch up with non-Malays already

active in “modern” fields. The process of selecting students to participate in the inter-

school English-debate competition shows how the theme of “selective modernization” for

Malays applies to educational programs. To the competition, each school sends four

students – a debate team of three students plus a backup – at least two of whom should be

bumiputeras. According to Puan Selvi, the rule is introduced to urge “bumi(putera)s” to

improve their English because “non(-bumiputera)s” tend to speak better English.

Before selecting the school’s representatives, English teachers asked six students to

49
The category of “bumiputra” includes all ethnic groups aboriginal to the current territory of Malaysia as
well as Malays. However, where non-Malay bumiputras have no strong presence, the two terms (bumiputra
and Malays) are often used interchangeably. Also, with the influence of Malay nationalism in politics,
Malays have been the focus of many pro-bumiputra policies.
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gather in the staff room. They were the students who made regular appearances in

English-related events in the school – a Punjabi boy (Arvinder), a Serani boy (Emir), an

Indian boy (Ryan), a Chinese-European boy (Kevin), a Malay girl (Linda), and a Malay

boy (Idrus). They were all from the two best classes of Form Three and Form Four. The

teachers easily reached an agreement on the two non-bumiputra (Ryan and Kevin) and

one bumiputra (Idrus) students to be sent. But the selection of the fourth student, who

should be a bumiputra, led to a long debate among teachers.

The English teachers agreed that Emir spoke English more fluently than Linda did.

There were several issues that concerned the teachers, among which were his rather

“immature” personality and his lack of attentiveness to precision in delivering English.

But the most important issue was that Emir was a Serani, a child from a Malay-European

cross-marriage (His father was Chinese-Australian converted to Islam and his mother was

Malay Muslim). Although he had a Muslim first name (which his homeroom teacher

called a “Malay name”), his last name (which came from his father) sounded “European.”

Ms. Tan, one of the English teachers, pointed out that Emir’s background might endanger

the team’s qualification for participation. Sending Emir to the competition could lead to

the same controversy as occurred a few years before, when the school included in the

team a girl with both Chinese and Muslim elements in her last name (Her mother was

Malay Muslim and her father was Chinese who had converted to Islam). The debate

competition was suspended when one of the judges questioned whether she was

bumiputra. It did not resume until they received the words from the Ministry of

Education that she should be considered bumiputra, thus the team satisfied the

requirement to have at least two bumiputra students. After deliberation, teachers decided
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to send Emir as a reserve.

The similarity among the six candidates was remarkable despite their different

ethnic backgrounds. English was one of the primary languages they spoke at home with

their siblings and college-educated parents. Being among the few English-speakers in the

school, they kept close social connection and attended the same private tutoring center

after school. But, the English-speaking students often maintained social distance from

other students of same “race” who were inclined to speak their “mother tongue.” Though

Emir was selected to represent the school as bumiputra, allegedly in need of improving

English to compete with non-bumiputras, he socialized exclusively with English-

speaking Punjabi, Indian and Malay boys in the two “best” classes in Form Three, while

having a rough relationship with other Malay students in his own class. Emir, whose

father was a company manager and whose mother was a banker, did not share the

economic condition, cultural taste, and linguistic practice of most Malay students in the

school.

English-speakers as “De-racialized” Minority

Emir’s case is just one of many examples that show how English-speakers become a

linguistic, social and cultural minority in the school. The racial identification of English is

still effective as a framework of interpreting linguistic differences among its members.

The three cases that I introduce below, however, reveal the role of English as a symbol of

social and cultural distances within each race. Speaking English in the social setting of

SMK Jalan Limau, where students heavily depended on the “mother tongue” of their race

for socialization, often symbolized the speaker’s disapproval of racially identifiable

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linguistic, cultural and social practice. In comparison with the national language that still

maintains its identification with the Malay race, English may seem an ideal linguistic tool

for national unity and a solution to the divisive ethnic nationalisms. The argument of

national unity in English, however, ignores the fact that the language has become a

symbol of social divisions, cultural differences, and economic inequalities within each

race.

The three English-speakers in the following examples had their reference of linguistic

and cultural practice outside the social settings familiar to most members of SMK Jalan

Limau. Their interpretation of the situation in SMK Jalan Limau were affected by the

linguistic and cultural norms in mission schools and other de facto Malay/English

bilingual schools, to which they had personal and family connections. They commonly

expressed their feeling that SMK Jalan Limau was not the right place for them. As

English-speakers, they experienced social marginalization in the school, but they

expected that the marginalization would come to an end once they leave SMK Jalan

Limau and distance themselves from the linguistic, cultural, social environments

characteristic of inner-city schools.

A year before I met her, Pavi transferred from a school in a middle-class suburban

area to SMK Jalan Limau. When her grandmother became seriously ill, Pavi’s uncle (her

father’s elder brother), who lived in the Jalan Limau area and had been taking care of the

sick grandmother, asked her father to share the role of caregiver. Pavi’s family moved to

her uncle’s neighborhood and she was sent to SMK Jalan Limau where her cousins

attended. Unlike her cousins and other Indian students in the school, Pavi was little

exposed to Tamil-speaking environment or Indian pop culture. According to Pavi, her

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father tried to keep her away from the “Indian language,” “Indian culture,” and “Indian

friends” since she was a little girl. Pavi’s father, who attended an English-medium elite

school (Methodist Boys School) when he was a student, always spoke English at home

and did not teach her how to speak Tamil. English was the language that she felt most

comfortable to speak, but she had to use Tamil to get along with other Indian students.

She gradually learned Tamil from her Tamil-speaking Indian friends in school.

Although she managed to learn Tamil, she still knew little about Indian pop culture

that most of other Indian girls in the school shared. She knew almost nothing about Tamil

movies, actors, and actresses. For many Indian girls, ignorance in those topics was hardly

imaginable. They often talked about Tamil movies they watched on television over the

weekend or newly released movie CDs. Some students would show off their scrap books

full of pictures cut out from Tamil newspapers and magazines. Pavi found it hard to fit

into the cultural and linguistic environment of her new school. Most of the time in her

class, Pavi was alone. She would tell me that she wanted to go back to her old school,

where she could speak English freely without being conscious and did not feel pressured

to know about the “Indian culture.”

Ms. Tan was an English-speaking Chinese teacher who taught English. Educated in

convent schools that now turned into Malay-medium public schools, she spoke fluent

English and Malay. Ms. Tan could roughly understand Mandarin, but did not speak the

language that was supposed to be her “mother tongue.” She was critical about students

and teachers who did not mind speaking Chinese languages in school and socializing

exclusively among Chinese. Unlike most other Chinese teachers, Ms. Tan often wore a

baju kurung or a punjabi suit, respectively considered a Malay and an Indian dress.
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Because of her language and dress, many Chinese students complained that Ms. Tan was

not a “real Chinese.” However, Ms. Tan had a great pride in her cosmopolitan attitude

and her respect for the linguistic and cultural norms of the school.

Cik Hamidah was a Malay teacher in her early thirties and taught English. She

received her Master’s degree in the UK and had a plan to go back in the near future. Aida

was the name she wanted to be called by, instead of Hamidah that sounded “too

traditional.” She maintained her British accent even after returning to Malaysia and did

not mind speaking English in front of other Malay teachers. She was also one of the two

Malay women teachers who did not wear headscarves. Because of her language, dress

and attitude, Aida often became the topic of gossip among other Malay teachers. But she

did not seem to care much about what other Malay ladies talked about her. As an alumni

of a convent school, she identified herself more with the thoughts and attitudes of the

people in urban elite schools (many of them used to be mission schools) than those of the

people in SMK Jalan Limau. She believed that she used to be one of “them,” but the

cultural and social pressures of the inner-city school was spoiling her once sophisticated

and urban attitudes.

The three were “de-racialized” people who, like the nationalist elite in Anderson’s

discussion, would not yield to the cultural and social pressures to know one’s “point of

origin.” However, the de-racialized persons formed a minority group in the inner-city

school. Furthermore, they believed in their cultural superiority to the majority of the

school members who bore the cultural and linguistic characteristics that were considered

typical to their respective races. The cosmopolitan imagination of national unity among

the de-racialized minority does not simply diffuse to the majority of people who are still
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subject to the mechanisms of racialization in the independent state. The following

examples, together with the three cases that I have just introduced, reveal the mutual

sense of cultural and social distance that exists between English-speakers and those who

are dependent on their “mother tongues.”

From the “White-Men’s Language” to the Language of the Rich and Educated

During the colonial period, English was introduced to the area by the “white men.”

As Fishman (1996) suggests, once the British colonialists left the country in the 1950s,

the connection between the English language and “the whites” may not be as obvious as

it had been in the past. However, it does not mean that the identification of English with

the “whites” have completely disappeared into the past. Instead, English gained another

social meaning as the language of rich and educated Malaysians. The change indicates

that, despite linguistic nationalization, the colonial linguistic hegemony has localized in

the post-independence state. As the idea that English is indispensable for the success of

individuals and the development of the country becomes dominant, the ambivalence

toward the language, which has its root in the country’s history, is treated as a marker of

“backwardness.”

One day, when I was talking with several girls from Form Three, some of them

started complaining about their mid-term exams. With the new policy, they had to take

science and mathematics exams in English. Saying that the exam was too hard for them,

they asked why they needed to learn the subjects in cakap orang putih (white-men’s

speech) despite all the difficulties and problems. When asked about the exact meaning of

the expression, Ismah answered,

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We usually don’t call the language Bahasa Inggeris (the English language). Among
us, we call it bahasa orang putih (white-men’s language) or cakap orang putih
(white-men’s speech). If I say someone is pandai cakap orang putih (good at
speaking white-men’s language), it means that the person is speaking (sic; able to
speak fluent English). If I speak English to Malays, not all of them understand the
language. They would ask me why I am trying to speak bahasa orang putih instead
of Malay.

Some government officials, as Fishman does, claim that the identification of English with

the British colonialist reflects an outdated anti-imperialist ideology that fails to see the

changing role of English in the world after the end of imperialism. However, students’

ambivalence about English reveals that English has maintained its role as the symbol of

social inequalities and cultural differences despite the absence of the “whites” in the

country. Even when students had no problem accepting some benefits of learning English,

they could not simply ignore the social meanings of using the language. Aishah’s story

shows that the social distinction in English works even within one extended family.

Last time, I visited my aunt’s family. She is very rich and always speaks English.
Even her son, just three years old, speaks fluent English. Though my cousin is still
young, I really admire him (saya hormat dia). He speaks English to everyone else,
but because he thinks I cannot speak English, he uses Malay when he talks to me.
The Malay language he speaks is Indon(esian) Malay, because an Indonesian maid
always takes care of him. For example, if he wants to have some milk, he doesn’t ask
the maid to buat susu (prepare milk in Bahasa Malaysia). Instead, he asks her to bikin
susu (the same expression in Bahasa Indonesia). My aunt always emphasizes the
importance of English to me. But, in my family, we always speak Malay. When
someone starts speaking English, I feel different (rasa lain) from the person.

Aishah’s aunt, who emphasized the importance of English, was not a white British

woman, just as she was not a white girl. Still, accepting the linguistic norm of the aunt’

family made her feel somewhat inferior to her three-year-old cousin. But she also felt it

awkward to speak English within her own family. Do the senses of inferiority and

reluctance reflect the “weak personality” or “stigma” of this Malay girl (Mahathir 1986;

Asmah Haji Omar 1994; Chapter 2)? Or, do they reflect her strong attachment to her
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ethnic and linguistic identities? Explaining the ambivalence in terms of individual

psychology and identity tend to obscure the social and historical foundations of that

ambivalence. Puan Zainah provided her own explanation for people’s different feelings

about those who speak fluent English.

If someone speaks English, Malays usually think that person is “highly-educated

(berpendidikan tinggi).” People may feel envious and jealous. If my neighbor’s
children speak fluent English, I would wish my children could speak English as well.
I would want to become like them. Speaking some English will make me look like a
highly-educated person. If I compare people in the “middle,” Indians speak English
better than other races. Maybe it is because of their history and environment. People
from the “bottom,” living in areas where everybody speaks the same language, might
have some bias against people who speak English. But telling from my own
experience, people usually envy those who speak fluent English and assume that their
educational level is high. We don’t even need to talk about people living in rumah
bungalow (mansions). If I compare the residents of rumah settinggan (squatter
houses) and those of rumah terrace (row houses), people living in rumah terrace are
more open-minded and have less problem mixing with other races.

She did not talk much about the people at the “top” of the socio-economic pyramid, who

usually lived in large houses on independent lots. She took it for granted that the people

at the top had no ambivalence about speaking English. They were the English-speakers,

who had good access to wealth and educational opportunities. According to Puan Zainah,

people in the “middle” envied the people at the “top,” but their feeling was closer to pure

jealousy than ambivalence. It was only the people from the “bottom” that had bias against

English-speakers. The teacher suggested that people in the middle, including herself and

the people around her, were not the bearers of bias and parochialism, but the people at the

“bottom” were.

But Puan Kartini, an English teacher who was Malay, admitted that she was among

the people who often felt reluctant to speak English. Despite the widespread belief that

English is the language of the affluent and the educated or the language of social
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superiors, not everyone could communicate in English. Even when it was one of the

official languages (from the colonial period to 1967), access to it was limited to a small

number of elites. Therefore, speaking English in the presence of people who did not

understand it was often interpreted as an act of confirming social differences. But, at the

same time, Puan Kartini believed that the uncomfortable feeling was especially strong

among Malays.

Malay students, even those in good classes, have problem speaking English. Most of
students in good classes can understand when they listen. When asked questions, they
cannot answer them in English. I think this is because of their way of life at home.
They do not use English at home. I would say it is part of their culture. Among
Malays, speaking English can be embarrassing. Of course, in every race, there are
people with different levels of proficiency in English. Malays are not different. But
the problem is their attitude. Even the Malays who understand English do not speak
it. If you do, people would think you are showing off. Until they demolish the
attitude, the problem will continue. I am an English teacher, but I don’t speak
English with Malays. I usually speak Malay with them. I feel very uncomfortable
about using English with Malay teachers. Some Malay teachers can speak English,
but not all of them can. I think the policy of teaching science and mathematics is the
government’ first step to demolish the attitude and improve people’s English
(emphases added).

In fact, the reintroduction of English to schools and the inclusion of the language in the

model of “globally competitive citizens” strengthened the idea that English is

indispensable for the country’s modernization and development. At the same time, the

ambivalence toward English is attributed to the parochialism of people at the “bottom” of

social hierarchy or the culture and attitude of Malays that should be demolished. However,

it is not the attitude, psychology, or mentality of individuals that has produced the social

and political meanings of speaking English. The struggles of teachers and students in

SMK Jalan Limau after the introduction of English demonstrate that they may not

become “model citizens” just by change their mind, attitude, and culture.
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5. Adapting to English: Playing by the Rule of “Others”

For most people in SMK Jalan Limau, English was still the language of “others” –

the language of the “whites” who once colonized their country and the language of the

wealthy and educated among citizens of the independent state. Considering that the

access to English was limited a small number of elite during the colonial period, the

reintroduction of English to public schools may seem to signal the “democratization” of

the linguistic resource once monopolized by the elite. Does the new linguistic norm of

English, however, actually guarantee the open participation of people who had little

access to the language before? Would the members of the inner-city school soon

incorporate the language of “others” and make it their own? The threatened authority of

teachers, the constant communication breakdown, and the frequent silence in the

classroom indicate the promotion of English would not easily allow the inner-city

students to become the “globally competitive” model citizens. Instead of allowing an

open participation, the new linguistic norm becomes a medium of “symbolic violence”

when its supporters blame the mind, attitude, personality of individuals who fail to

incorporate the norm (Bourdieu 1998:9).

Teachers had no power to change the policy produced by the government. They did

not want to discuss explicitly about the policy itself. Some politicians warned the critics

of the new language policy that the government might use Internal Security Act (ISA),

allowing arrests without trial when people are suspected of threatening the security of the

country, to punish people who oppose the reintroduction of English. Issues related to

language policies had been considered extremely “sensitive” in Malaysian politics.

Teachers would say that, before making any judgment about the new policy, they needed
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to wait and see what would happen in several years. However, they could not just wait

and see. Teachers could not change the policy, but they were the people responsible for

implementing it in school. Few teachers denied that English was a prestige language in

society and mastering the language might do some good for their students. The key

question was whether it was practically possible to teach their students in English when

many of whom were yet to master the national language. The challenging job could not

be done just by changing their minds and their students’ attitudes.

The new textbooks published in English contained the message that the new

curricula would not only connect students to the network of international communication

but also nurture “a culture of science and technology in Malaysia.” While the new

textbooks emphasized that the new curriculum would improve students’ access to the

advanced knowledge in science and technology, in classrooms, the communication

between teachers and students was constantly breaking down once English was

introduced. The utopian image of a “global community” freely exchanging information

and knowledge in English could not hide the fact that English was the language of social

“others” for most of people in the inner-city school.

Despite the problems that emerged with the introduction of English, the school did

not have the option to continue their lessons in the national language. In staff meetings,

the school administration repeatedly reminded teachers that, in science and math classes,

English should be used all the time. The administration also warned teachers that the

officers from the Ministry of Education might make a sudden visit to check if the new

policy was fully in effect. But, in fact, no inspection was made during my four-month

stay in the school and several months following it. The absence of direct inspection,
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however, did not allow teachers the freedom to teach in Bahasa Malaysia, the language in

which they were educated and trained. On the one hand, teachers had to worry about

standardized tests that students had to take in English. They could help students

understand the subjects by using Bahasa Malaysia, but it would not make them get high

scores in tests provided in English. On the other hand, the government and mass media

constantly sent the message that any reluctance to fully incorporate English indicated the

backward and parochial mindset that failed to see what the country need in the

globalizing era.

Teachers or Translators?

In SMK Jalan Limau, English-language teachers had assumed the role of translators

between English and Bahasa Malaysia. As English became the language of instruction for

science and mathematics, teachers of those subjects had to do translations that had so far

been the job of English teachers. But how could the science and mathematics teachers,

most of whom were educated and trained only in the national language, manage the new

role as translators between English and Bahasa Malaysia? Short retraining courses were

provided to prepare teachers for the language transition. The transition, however, was not

a simple addition of linguistic skill to the knowledge and experience that teachers had

already established in their career. It was the imposition of a new linguistic norm that

most teachers were yet to incorporate as theirs. They were asked to be speaking (sic) ,

despite the complicated social implications of using English in the school. At the same

time, becoming the enforcer of a linguistic norm that was unfamiliar to them seriously

undermined their authority as teachers.

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Puan Zainah had to teach her science classes in English for the first time in her life.

Almost every time that I visited her desk to borrow textbooks, check class schedules, or

ask questions, she was busy looking into teaching guidebooks in English. She told me

that because she was “not smart (tak pandai)” she had to do a lot of preparation before

classes. Was she really “not smart” in what she had been doing for more than a decade?

Puan Zainah was not exactly talking about her knowledge in science but about her ability

to deliver it to students in English. In addition to memorizing every technical term in

English, she had to worry about making grammatical errors in front of students some of

whom (though just a few) spoke English as their first language. After a class, she told me,

I am not an English major and I have never learned anything in English. From the
day I entered school until I finished college, I learned everything in Malay. But all of
a sudden, we have to teach in English. This is a really tough change. English teachers
have been teaching in English from the beginning, but we (science and mathematics
teachers) first have to learn English to teach our subject in English. This is a
tremendous burden. It requires lots of preparation. The explanation I give to students
changes when I teach in English. I feel I can easily deliver my knowledge and
thoughts when I teach in Malay. But when I teach in English, I feel so limited. I want
to say something, but often words just don’t come up. I wish it gets better as years go
by. If the transition is embarrassing even to teachers, I can easily imagine how tough
it could be for students. I tell the students that this is a new experience for me as it is
to them, so we have to try together. I remind them that, even though I am not
proficient in English, I have the knowledge in my subject and I am teaching them the
knowledge. I’d rather be honest with them. If I’m not clear about this, other thoughts
will enter their minds when I make mistakes.

Science and mathematics teachers were required to teach only in English, but it was

practically impossible to do so. A large number of students in SMK Jalan Limau had

limited ability to communicate in the national language let alone in English. Teachers had

to spend a great amount of time in class translating English words into Bahasa Malaysia.

The national language was most widely shared among students, though the “shared-ness”

could not be taken for granted for reasons that I have discussed earlier. Teachers still had
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to be worried about students who did not understand even the Malay translations. At the

same time, they were forced to reveal their own “deficiency” in English, which was

measured by the standard of their linguistic and social “others.”

The new technology introduced to classrooms, together with the presence of English-

speaking students in class, complicated the challenge of incorporating the linguistic norm

of “others.” The CD-ROMs provided with the textbooks in English (MyCD) were

supposed to help teachers while adapting to the new language of instruction. However,

playing CD-ROMs in front of students (new computers and projectors were equipped to

science labs to do this) was almost like having another teacher in classroom. The virtual

teacher spoke fluent English with little Malaysian accents or grammatical errors, while

the real teachers were struggling with the new language. Though some English- speaking

students would make fun of English that their teachers spoke, most of the students in

SMK Jalan Limau simply could not understand the lessons in English. Teachers had to

bridge the gap between the old and the new linguistic norm in science classes, even

though it was not the job they were originally trained to do.

With the introduction of English, the authority of teachers as the “agents of regulation

and imposition” of the national language was weakening (Bourdieu 1991:45). They had

to operate both as teachers and translators, but they could not perform the double role as

well as their linguistic, cultural and social “others” in the same profession, especially the

English-speaking teachers in the colonial elite schools that had turned into Malay/English

bilingual schools in the course of nationalization. Despite the great contribution of

Malay-educated teachers to the rapid expansion of the mass education, with the

introduction of English, their qualifications as teachers were being judged and challenged
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by the linguistic norm that had no official status for more than three decades.

Silencing: Communication Breakdown

In time for the reintroduction of English in 2003, new science and mathematics

textbooks in English were published. In addition to the language shift, there were some

significant changes to textbooks. To make the language transition less burdensome, new

textbooks left out some topics that had been included in old ones in Bahasa Malaysia. As

a result, the new curricula provided less information about each topic than the previous

one. The introduction of the “global language” into the inner-city school did not

automatically connect the students and teachers to the sea of scientific knowledge

produced in English. Instead, the language switch further limited the amount of

knowledge they learned in school. At the same time, students were loosing their ability to

accumulate knowledge in Bahasa Malaysia. According to a science teacher, Puan Maryati,

From 2005 to 2007, standardized exams will be given in both languages (Bahasa
Malaysia and English), but after the year 2008, they will be given only in English.
Students feel relieved to know that they have the choice to take exams in Malay.
However, if they want to do so, they first have to go over the entire subject by
themselves. The textbooks, reference books, and even tuition classes are already in
English. Unless they learn scientific terms in Malay, having exam papers in the
language would not help them much. A few students are able to learn the subjects in
English, but even in “good” classes, most students cannot easily write in English.

A large portion of already limited time in class was spent on translation. To learn

geometric concepts (such as “cyclic quadrilaterals” or “interior and exterior opposite

angles”) in a mathematics class, students first had to learn every single English word in

the terms. However, it was only a part of the problem. Conducting lessons in English had

the effect of “silencing” students. Puan Zainah was using MyCD in her science lesson

with the best class in Form Three. When the CD asked a question – “Where does
 186
transpiration occur, leaves or stems?” – an English-speaking Punjabi boy answered only

to give a wrong answer. The teacher waited for other students to answer, but they

remained quiet. After relatively long time of waiting, Puan Zainah finally asked students

if they knew the meaning of the English word “transpiration.” Only a few students

answered in a very quiet voice that they did not know the meaning. Puan Zainah, after

translating the English word (transpiration) into Bahasa Malaysia (kehilangan air), asked

the same question to students, but this time in Malay. At her second trial, some students

shouted the right answer in unison. The same pattern of interaction – teachers explaining

concepts in English, confirming silence of students, and translating English into Malay –

was repeated in every science and mathematics classroom. The language switch from

English to Malay immediately broke the overwhelming silence among students.

Students were just looking into the air with vacant eyes when explanations and

questions were given in English. They started to show some reactions only when

questions were repeated in Malay, although it did not necessarily mean that they fully

understood the concepts. The fact that even the national language was barely shared by

students also complicated the situation. With the introduction of English, some non-

Malay students who had spent a year in Remove Class and then sent to “weak” classes

experienced multiple linguistic barriers in their classrooms. Some of them believe that

overcoming the barriers was neither viable nor meaningful for them. They often chatted

with their friends in their common languages (which were neither English nor Malay),

rested their heads on desks, and even fell asleep in class.

For students who were striving to succeed in school, the introduction of English led to

a painful realization that they might not be able to achieve what they aspired. For them,
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the silence was not an act of resistance to the new linguistic norm abruptly imposed on

them. They wanted to adapt to the new norm, but even after their hard attempts they saw

little prospects of rewards. The new norm was unfavorable to most of the students in the

inner-city school, whether they were willing to incorporate it or not.

After a science class by Puan Zainah, a group of Malay girls came to her. In

desperation, they plead the teacher not to accept their silence as a sign of unwillingness to

learn. One of them emphasized how good she used to be in science classes when she

learned the subject in Bahasa Malaysia. Once English was introduced to science classes,

it was not enough for her to try hard. To study science, she first had to spend enormous

amount time just looking up English words in an English-Malay dictionary. But

memorizing scientific terms in English was a relatively easy part. Students told me that

the most difficult part was to build phrases and sentences in English to answer questions

spoken and written in English. Even when they managed to acquire the scientific

knowledge in English, they found it extremely hard to reproduce it in the language. To

borrow a student’s words, it was one thing to learn knowledge and it was another to put it

into words (Baca lain, keluar lain).

The introduction of English to science and mathematics classes made some students

reconsider their long-term career prospective. Although the smartest students were

expected to specialize in science from their fourth year in secondary school, students

were finding the choice much less viable than before. Joining the “science stream”

required them to take more than half of their classes in English. Considering the

embarrassment and frustrations that students were already experiencing in science and

mathematics classes, it was hard for them to imagine their success in the field.
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Furthermore, the increased use of English in classrooms did not relieve the students

and teachers the burden of managing multiple linguistic norms suitable for different

social contexts in their everyday lives. Students were asked to use English in classrooms,

but the norm was not effective outside classrooms. In class, they contained the feelings of

embarrassment and frustration to themselves, because English was the norm they had to

follow whether they liked it or not. However, the sudden imposition of a new linguistic

norm could not do away with the implications of “speaking” that reflect the cultural,

social and economic divisions historically formed via the English language. Outside

classrooms, the use of English was not well tolerated by students who did not “speak.”

Among most students in the inner-city school, speaking English was an act of expressing

social distance, implying that the speaker was socially superior to the rest of the company.

A student in Form Three, Aishah, told me,

When I was in Form Two, I thought I really needed to improve my English, because
we now learn mathematics and science in English. So I tried to practice speaking
English all the time. But I don’t do that any more. It did not work well. Everybody
said I was just trying to show off. I know I can’t improve my English without
practicing it all the time. But what can I do? I don’t think I can speak English to my
friends.

As the Malay language was claimed as a language not up to the value of “progress,”

students in SMK Jalan Limau where the Malay language had the moral authority became

caught in between languages. For them, either “going back” to the previous system or

“catching up” the new system seemed unrealistic. At the time of a major political debate

in 2005 about “going back” to the previous system, many students whom I talked with

opposed the idea of going back. If they go back, the students argued, the energy and time

they spent struggling with the new language would become wasted. Furthermore, while

they were learning the two subjects in English, they were also losing the opportunity to
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learn the equivalent knowledge in Malay. After three years of hard transition, they could

best understand lessons when they were conducted in the mixture of English and Malay.

For the students who were having difficulty adjusting to the new environment of the

Malay-medium secondary school, the challenge was even more daunting.

6. “Disqualifying” Attitude and Culture and the Denial of Membership

The case of an inner-city school, SMK Jalan Limau, demonstrates that the

promotion of the national language failed to incorporate all the citizens to the “national

community.” It also shows that the promotion of English would not automatically

incorporate people all over the world into a “global community.” What is responsible for

the failures? The “linguistics of community” or the idea of “linguistic communism”

assumes the universal accessibility to languages and excludes the possibility of

“dispossession” (Pratt 1987:56; Bourdieu 1991:43). It systematically ignores the

mechanism of inclusion and exclusion that distinguishes those who are “qualified” to join

the community and those who are not. It also fails to ask whose linguistic and cultural

norms become the standard to judge the difference between qualification and

disqualification. As I have discussed in chapter four, the dominant imagination of nation

differentially recognizes the citizens according to their race and class. Would the new

imagination of nation, based on the belief in the potential of the English language for

national unity and development, produce a more inclusive definition of citizenship as the

government claims? In the following two chapters, I will compare the cultural and

linguistic practice in SMK Jalan Limau with that of a former English-medium elite

school SMK Taman Raya. My discussion will focus on how the elite school legitimizes
 190
its members’ exclusive entitlement for “model citizenship” in terms of their “qualifying”

attitude, mindset and culture distinctive from those of their social others.
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Chapter Six

SMK Taman Raya: Defining “Model Citizens” in an Urban Elite School

1. From a Colonial Elite School to a Model Public School

In late April of 2005, I left my first school, SMK Jalan Limau, and started working at

SMK Taman Raya. The two schools had some commonalities: they were both located in

Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia, and away from each other only about twenty

minutes by car and one hour by public transportation; they were both “National

Secondary Schools,” which meant that their curricula and school administration were

controlled by the Ministry of Education; they had similar ethnic make-ups roughly

corresponding to that of the entire country.

Despite similarities, the two schools had many noticeable differences. In SMK Jalan

Limau, it was hard to find a lasting silence. In the school, located next to low-cost

apartments near the border of the city, the noise from the traffic running between the

school and the apartment complex and the voices of students constantly moving around

the school echoed between four identical buildings standing parallel to each other. In

contrast, the century-old school complex of SMK Taman Raya had a mission-style

structure, made up of several buildings surrounding a school ground at the center. Each

building had at least one cross on its top. Nestled in a small patch of rainforest, SMK

Taman Raya was free from the noise of the city. The disciplined movement of students

and teachers in the school also contributed to the tranquility. Like most old elite schools

that separated boys and girls, SMK Taman Raya accepted only female students since its

opening. Even teachers were all women, except for two men teachers. 50

50
I do not pursue gender issues further in this work, though I have some short and scattered discussions on
 192
Nothing showed the difference more dramatically than the comment by one of the

school’s mathematics teachers, Puan Chan. In my second week in the school, she asked

me what exactly I was looking for in her school. When I explained that my research was

about social-cultural impact of reintroducing English as a medium language of instruction,

she expressed her doubt whether I could ever find any significant impact in her school. At

the moment, I hardly understood what she meant to say and why she said that to me. Was

she saying that the language shift would not change anything in her school? After

observing expressions of frustration, embarrassment, and agony that the language switch

brought to teachers and students of SMK Jalan Limau, Puan Chan’s comment was the last

thing I expected to hear from a mathematics teacher who had to change one’s language of

instruction over a short period. Furthermore, at the time of my research, the language

shift affected only up to the third-year students in secondary schools. Puan Chan, who

taught both Form Three and Form Four classes, had to explain mathematical concepts in

Malay in one class and in English in another class on the same day. How was it possible

that she expected little change in her life and the lives of students and other teachers?

While I was still trying to figure out what she meant by the remark, she told me that

Malaysia is a Commonwealth country, once a part of the British Empire. She added that,

therefore, in a good school like Taman Raya, people had little problem using English. The

statement reflected much more than Puan Chan’s personal opinion. Unlike teachers of

SMK Jalan Limau, Taman Raya’s teachers and students little doubted that they had better

English proficiency than people in any other Malaysian public schools. In any case, the

them. However, topics such as the considerable overlap between the division of single-gender/co-education
schools and old-elite/ new-mass schools, and the different types of gendered socialization and discipline
that people expect from each form of school are worth developing in separate works in the future.
 193
girls of SMK Taman Raya would be the last among Malaysian students to fail under the

new policy. Therefore, when teachers and students learned that my research was about the

recent language conversion to English and its impact, many of them assumed that I was

there to learn from their “successful” example. 51

How could the use of English language survive the twenty-year project to make

Bahasa Malaysia the only official language and the national language of the state? Does

this indicate the failure of post-independence nationalization projects? Was the alleged

“hegemony” of the national language, repeatedly mentioned in scholarly and non-

scholarly works on the linguistic conditions in Malaysia, a mere illusion? How could they

cherish the school’s continuity from its colonial past rather than emphasizing

discontinuity from it? Could the continued presence of English mean that they were still

bearers of colonial values, yet to be assimilated to nationalist ideas? If so, how could

some government officers argue that the “tradition of excellence” in the school provide

inspiration for the new government models of citizenship, modernization, and progress

for the “globalizing era”? Does the reintroduction of English symbolize a denial of

nationalism and a return to colonial values?

SMK Jalan Limau and SMK Taman Raya represent two oppositional ends in the

social, economic and cultural landscapes of the city. The economic gap, social distance,

and cultural difference between the two schools indicated that they were not two identical

units within one school system. My relocation was not just a movement from one school

51
One English teacher actually asked her students to guess why I chose their school as a place of my
research. One student immediately raised her hand and answered that it was because they spoke good
English. Even the student herself seemed a little surprised to notice unabashed confidence in her voice and
added that she meant it only in comparison with students in other schools. Her confident acknowledgement
of their own excellence made other students giggling, but when the teacher asked them if they agreed to her
opinion, they shouted “Yes” in unison.
 194
to another, but a movement from a periphery to the center of the city, from a place of

recent urban development to a place of prospering urban businesses over a century, and

from among children of the urban poor to among children of urban professionals. At the

same time, the two schools represent different ways of imagining, practicing, and

experiencing the nation.

The following discussion focuses on the cultural practice in SMK Taman Raya as a

product of fusion between the school’s “pre-national” past and its “national” present. The

case of SMK Taman Raya shows that, despite the school’s beginning as an English school

during colonial period, its students and teachers are far from being mere successors of

British imperialists or imitators of English-speaking “white men,” but are people well-

versed in the cannons of national language and culture. The unforeseen and ironical

consequence is that, unlike their predecessors around the time of independence, the new

generation of English-speaking urban Malaysians, who are now also knowledgeable in

the national language and culture, became relatively free to support the English language

without the risk of being called “anti-national.”

Some former and current top government officers argue that the English language

should now be “freed” from both colonialist and nationalist burdens (Chapter 3). They

also maintain that once the education system has completed the task of building a stable

identity as a nation, their focus should move further toward modernization, development,

and progress. The change, according to them, requires the communicative competence,

knowledge, and personality of the “first class.” In the process of change, the so-called

“premier schools” came to receive highlight as the locally existing proof that Malaysians
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52
can possibility compete with the “first class” people in other parts of the world. Some

of the premier schools received special recognition from the government officers,

including the Minister of Education, as the model for the educational reform to improve

the country’s competitiveness in the globalizing world.

In contrast, the absolute majority of students in SMK Jalan Limau were still being

accused of their poor mastery of the national language and culture, let alone of the

English language and the attitudes and values it usually represents in Malaysia. In

addition, contrary to the premier school SMK Taman Raya that has produced its unique

way of expressing “national unity” among citizens of different ethnicity and race, the

members of the inner-city school did not experience nationalization as a participation in a

homogeneous national community. Both the traces of the colonial racial segregation and

the independent government’ distinction between “native” and “immigrant” citizens (or

Malays and non-Malays) contributed to the ethnic and racial divisions among its

members. Then, how could the premier school SMK Taman Raya produce and practice

the imagination of nation that is relatively free from both colonial and national forms of

racialization? I discuss the political effect of finding the cause in the mentality and

psychology of individuals. The distinction between the “civic consciousness” among the

elite and the “ethnic nationalisms” among the masses demonstrates the “moral politics of

class” based on the institutional segregation in both colonial and national education

systems. The identification of English with “civic consciousness” and other languages

with “ethnic nationalisms” legitimizes the elite’s exclusive linguistic and cultural

52
“The (education) ministry sees the five-year period as very significant to develop citizens with first class
mindsets towards achieving Vision 2020 and lay a strong foundation to propel the education system in the
country to one which is world class” (the government press Bernama, January 17, 2007).
 196
qualifications for leadership rather than promoting an inclusive model of citizenship.

2. Between the “Bottom” and the “Top”

Before I left my first school to do research in SMK Taman Raya, teachers told me that

the transition would expose me to the difference between the “bottom” and the “top” in

the school system. The hierarchical contrast they made was not just about academic

performance of students. It was about differences in dress, religious practice, language

uses, athletic and artistic performance, and destinations after secondary schools. They

said that, unlike in SMK Jalan Limau, in the new school, I would find many “modern”

students and parents who do not stick to religious dresses; unlike in SMK Jalan Limau, I

would meet smart students with good discipline and manners. According to Puan Selvi,

one of Jalan Limau’s English teachers, many students in SMK Taman Raya spoke

English at home and, upon finishing secondary school, left Malaysia for their higher

education abroad. Students told me that the students of SMK Taman Raya are “speaking

(sic)” and excel students of other schools in everything – not just in exams, but in all

different kinds of inter-school competition, such as drama, debate, cheerleading, and

sports. When they talked about what SMK Taman Raya had, the stories were also about

what SMK Jalan Limau did not have. They had no drama troupe, cheerleading team,

school band, good academic performance, and English proficiency. In contrast, the smart,

foreign-bound, multi-talented, “modern” and (English) speaking girls in SMK Taman

Raya had them all.

Teachers of SMK Taman Raya also showed interest in my transition between the two

schools. From newspapers and television news reports, they learned about problems in
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other public schools: students’ lack of motivation to study; disciplinary problems such as

frequent absence from school, violence, smoking and drug uses. However, having spent

most of their careers in SMK Taman Raya or other “premier schools,” teachers had little

first-hand knowledge about schools in other parts of the city. On the one hand, they asked

me whether, in my first school, I could actually observe the problems that they only

learned from media reports. On the other hand, they told me how relieved they felt to

work with students who had nothing to do with the rampant problems in public schools

nationwide. Teachers had little doubt about their students’ strong motivation to study and

they found little disciplinary problem among the girls. What are the characteristics of

SMK Taman Raya that puts the school on the top of the hierarchy among public schools?

Premier Schools

The term “premier school” literally means the “best school” in the country. There

seems to be nothing strange about the argument that schools of highest reputation should

become the model for educational reform. However, what is the meaning of being the

“best”? What are the alleged “virtues” of those schools that, according to educational

officials, should provide guidelines for other schools to follow? The actual uses of the

term “premier school” in Malaysia bear much more complicated meanings than high

exam scores and college entrance rates. It denotes an exclusive circle made up of old

schools that not only show good academic performance but also compete among

themselves in sports leagues (e.g. inter-premier school leagues for soccer, rugby and

hockey), marching band competitions (where students play drums, brasses, and bagpipes

marching in costumes resembling European military dresses), cheerleading competitions

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(where girls wear common cheerleading attire with extra layer of clothes covering their

bare arms and legs, which is still considered unacceptable in many public schools that

require modest dress by an Islamic standard), and other extra-curricular activities. The

category of “premier schools” often overlaps with “mission schools” or “centenary

schools.” For example, the Minister of Education said,

In our effort to strengthen national schools across the nation, we have been
identifying a set of premier schools. Such schools exemplify what we are trying to
achieve in every school. Many of these premier schools are mission schools. I have
asked for an increase in capital allocation for the mission schools, so that they may
continue to pass on their traditions of excellence into the 21st century. (The Star,
April 30, 2005, emphases added)

The Education Ministry is on the lookout for outstanding schools that will set the
benchmark for other schools. Its minister, Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein, said
that in the next five years, the ministry would identify centres of excellence among
boarding, premier and 100-year-old schools, and schools of different streams. “It is
impossible to devise a formula to ensure excellence in all schools,” he said today.
(New Straits Times, September 20, 2005, emphasis added)

“Mission schools,” as the words indicate, are schools that were opened by Christian

missions mostly between the late 19th century and the early 20th century. A special

characteristic of the mission schools in Malaysia is that, with the British colonial

administration’s heavy dependence on them for providing English-medium modern

education for junior officials, they, in effect, functioned as semi-secular elite educational

institutions. 53 Once the schools were subject to “nationalizing” projects, which

emphasized the language, culture, and religion of “Malays,” they not only experienced

further limitations in their religious activities but also stopped being exclusive elite

“English schools.” Then, how could they still be called “mission schools” and how did

53
Their share in English-medium education during colonial period was even greater than that of
government English schools. In 1900, out of 24 English schools, only seven were run by the government
(Roff 1967:29).
 199
they maintain their reputation as “premier schools”?

“Centenary schools” or “100-year-old schools” include some of the oldest schools in

the country, whether they are “mission schools” or “government English schools.” At the

time of my research, “centenary schools” included those opened between 1816 (when

Penang Free School, now SMK Penang Free opened) and 1905. In 2004, St. John

Institution (SMK St. John), established by La Salle Brothers of the Roman Catholic

Church, turned one-hundred years old. In 2005, the Malay College Kuala Kangsar

(MCKK, which is still a boarding school), opened by Wilkinson for boys from families of

Malay sultans, followed it. Another commonality among “centenary schools” was the

language of instruction they adopted at their beginnings – English. 54 During colonial

period, especially before 1945 when the British finally decided to “spread English as

widely as possible,” being educated in English was a privilege allowed only to a small

number of colonial subjects.

In practice, “premier schools” are a group of secondary schools whose foundations

predate Malaysia’s independence. They adopted English as the language of instruction

and followed British format of academic and non-academic trainings. Many of them are

still “controlled schools,” giving admissions only to primary school leavers with good

exam scores. There are some emerging good public schools (especially in upper-middle

class suburbs of Kuala Lumpur) that excel others both in academic and non-academic

performances, but they are rarely called “premier schools.”

54
Some old secondary schools that started as Chinese schools turned into English-medium schools after the
Second World War. After independence, they became part of the national school system adopting Malay as
the medium language of instruction. Chinese schools that remained Mandarin-medium went private after
independence.
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In its search for “outstanding schools” or “centers of excellence” among “boarding,

premier schools and 100-year-old schools,” the Ministry of Education promised extra

financial and administrative supports for the selected schools. The government would

concentrate its resources to make a small number of selected national schools reach a

high standard, hoping that the investment would later have trickle-down effect to other

public schools. Some critics argued that those schools being “controlled schools,” their

academic excellence was nothing surprising. Even people on the side of “mission

schools” expressed concerns that the plan targeted old urban schools with strong alumni,

while younger mission schools in rural areas were mostly in need of assistance (The Star,

May 8, 2005). The concern was whether the plan would add up to the affluent, with the

likely result of intensifying inequality among schools. Can it be interpreted as an

intentional move to serve the exclusive interest of the old English school alumni? Or, as

some educational officials argue, is it the best way to improve national schools, thus to

develop the country to the level of the most powerful countries in the world?

What are the characteristics of “premier schools” that, according to the ministry,

make them exemplary for other schools? In the past, the adoption of the English language

was the primary character that set those schools apart from “vernacular schools.” After

the 1970s, the government mandated both “premier schools” and “non-premier schools”

to adopt Bahasa Malaysia as the only medium of instruction, officially abolishing

linguistic division between the two types of schools. Outstanding academic performance

is the first condition to be a premier school. However, government officials, current

school administrators, and premier school alumni agree that good academic performance

alone does not amount to the “traditions of excellence” or the “culture of excellence.”
 201
The words “tradition” and “culture” imply that there are special qualities among premier

school students that make them excel in every activity they participate, or be “all-

rounders” as they are called. Their “rare and exclusive qualities” are often explained in

terms of abstract concepts such as “ethos,” “personality,” “mentality,” and “mindset,”

making up a “mystique of excellence” (Cohen 1981:1).

According to the nostalgic recollections by old premier school alumni or “oldies,” the

origin of the exceptional quality lie in the past of premier schools during the pre-national

period. In contrast, they question whether the current students and teachers are living up

to the schools’ glorious past. They lament that the blindness to racial differences,

“wholesome” approach to education, and proficiency in English have almost disappeared

from their alma maters. The period of “nationalization” is considered the time of a

challenged generation – who has almost lost the past glory, distinctive culture, ethos, and

the tradition of “premier schools.” The future of those schools, therefore, does not lie in

importing advanced knowledge and teaching methods from abroad, but in “restor[ing]

premier schools to their former eminence” and “returning to past grandeur.” 55 The deeply

emotional recollections of their “good old days” in exclusive English-medium premier

schools indicates that the elements of the intellectual and cultural excellence, allegedly

the quality that the country needs for its survival in the harsh competition of the

globalizing world, are defined based on the particularistic experience of the elite. The

sentimental recollections and the statements about school reform often come from the

same people who are both alumni and current government officials. The two different

modes of statement easily merge into each other in individual speeches. If there is an

55
The Star, June 25, 2005, New Straits Times, September 4, 1992
 202
important difference, the statement of school reform represents nationalization as a once

necessary step while the nostalgic recollections focus on what was lost in the course of

nationalization.

However, if nationalization was just a “homogenizing” force, making premier schools

resemble other “mediocre” national schools, how could they still remain “different”

enough from other schools to be selected as “center of excellence”? Do the current high

reputations of premier schools only reflect the lingering remnant of their past glory?

While the nostalgic “oldies” highlight what nationalization failed to do, they neglect

another important question: what did education policies of last thirty years achieved to

produce the specific version of “national culture” in premier schools? SMK Taman Raya

is one of the strongest candidates among “premier schools” to be selected a “center of

excellence.” I discuss how the school’s young students of post-nationalization generation,

with the guidance of their parents and teachers, practice “nation” through their dress,

daily lives, events and ceremonies in school. The “nation” they practice seems very

“inclusive” in the sense that it shows relative blindness to racial differences. My analysis,

however, suggests that their belief in their own qualification for “model citizenship” is

based on “exclusive” definitions of “excellence” in education and in society. SMK Taman

Raya’s promotion of the “culture of excellence” shows that its members actively seek to

distinguish their shared characteristics from those of the people in other schools.

Contrary to the argument that English is the only non-sectarian and neutral language

for “national unity,” in SMK Taman Raya, the cosmopolitan definition of “nation” as well

as the “culture of excellence” is practiced in both English and the national language.

Their practice also incorporates etiquettes, manners, attitudes, and values from periods of
 203
both colonization and nationalization. I argue that, instead of the English language and

British cultural influence, solid bilingualism and cultural versatility play the key role in

building the notion of “excellence” and legitimizing the eligibility for leadership in the

country. However, would the transformation of once English-medium elite school free the

English language from colonial burdens and make it a politically neutral language of

national unity, development, and progress?

The valorization of cosmopolitanism and the excellence in former English-medium

elite schools demonstrates that the “moral politics of class” downplays the exclusiveness

of elite experience and emphasizes the contribution of elite viewpoints to the collective

well-being of a country and its people. Neither the promotion of the national language

nor the “democratization” of English in the rapidly expanding mass education allowed all

people the membership to the community of “model citizens.” Contrary to the analysis of

“nation” based on the “illusion of linguistic communism,” only a small number of

citizens have achieved the English/Malay bilingualism and become free to promote

English without being called anti-national. When some people identify the promotion of

English with “reason” and “practicality” and any reservation about it with “irrational

passion” for “ethnic identities,” English turns into a central symbol of the “moral politics

of class” and of the distinction between “our patriotism” of the elite and “their

nationalism” of the masses (Billig 1995).

Daughters of Urban Professionals

Like most mission schools in Malaysia, Taman Raya had a primary school and a

secondary school in the same complex, and the primary school was the feeder school for
 204
SMK Taman Raya. At the time of my research, more than a half of the students came

from the Taman Raya primary school – Sekolah Kebangsaan (SK) Taman Raya. Having

spent six years in SK Taman Raya, they were already familiar with the Taman Raya

culture. The rest of students were selected by the local educational bureau among the

applicants from other primary schools. Because SMK Taman Raya was a “controlled

school,” applicants from outside were required to have excellent results from Primary

School Achievement Test (Ujian Penchapaian Sekolah Rendah: UPSR). About thirty

percent of students came from other Malay-medium public primary schools, around ten

percent from Mandarin-medium primary schools, and another ten percent from rural

primary schools. Despite the linguistic and cultural environment of Mandarin-medium

primary schools, the students from those schools experienced relatively little difficulties

in transition because they were urban residents with multilingual family background. 56

The rural students, usually called “FELDA students” or “asrama (dormitory) students”

came from special rural districts developed by FELDA (Federal Land Development

Authority). The State of Selangor Foundation (Yayasan Selangor) sponsored their school

fees and boarding facilities in the city. Coming from predominantly mono-racial and

mono-lingual environment in deep rural areas, FELDA students, all of whom were

Malays, were unfamiliar with the cultural environment of the urban school.

Although academic achievement and residence were the primary criteria for selecting

56
Multilingual Chinese teachers in SMK Taman Raya adopted common strategy for selecting their
children’s schools. Although their major language of communication at home and at work was English,
they sent their children to Mandarin-medium primary schools. Once the children established language
proficiency in Mandarin, learned about Chinese culture, and learned to socialize with other Chinese, they
transferred to mission schools. The teachers – fluent in English, Malay, and Mandarin – helped them to
cross the language gap between the two types of school.
 205
57
students, majority of SMK Taman Raya students came from affluent families. In case of

one Form Three class, parents worked as business consultants, lawyers, doctors,

professors, teachers in other premier schools, high-rank government officers, and CEOs

(of a bank, an insurance company, a luxury hotel, and a local branch of an international

luxury car company). Only a small number of parents were engaging in low-income jobs

such as low-rank municipal service employees (pekerja am). I asked the homeroom

teacher how many students in her class benefited from the Textbook Loan Program. The

number of beneficiary was a reliable indicator of students’ economic background. In fact,

the program was very popular among SMK Jalan Limau students from inner-city areas.

The teacher, however, looked at me with curious eyes and told me that none of her

students joined the program. According to her, the students preferred having their own

textbooks to borrowing and they had no financial need to do otherwise.

Arrangement of transportation to school was another important factor that affected

students’ accessibility to SMK Taman Raya. The school’s vicinity in the walking distance

had little residential areas. Most of students came to school by their parents’ cars or LRT

(Light Rail Trains). Only FELDA students and a few other students used school buses.

When students did not have a good access to the LRT system, private cars were the only

transportation they could use. Therefore, some lower form students, who had classes in

the afternoon session, came to school in the early morning when their parents went to

work and stayed in school cafeteria reading and doing homework until they began class

around 1:30 p.m. Upper form students in the morning session spent their afternoon taking

57
The actual process of selection becomes complicated by various factors. In principle, to get an admission,
students should have address in the vicinity of the school, but there were some long-distance commuters
from suburban towns. As widely known, some parents move their address to a relative’s place near the
school to get their daughters admitted.
 206
extra courses or participating in club activities. In the late afternoon, their parents picked

them up on their way back home. Early morning and late afternoon on every weekday,

the narrow road to the school was filled with endless cars that came to drop off or pick up

students. Due to the difficulty of arranging transportation to school, the enrolment was

mainly limited to children of professionals who had their offices in the city center.

In contrast with the situation in the inner-city school, the parents of students in SMK

Taman Raya actively participated in the school’s administration and decision making

process. The school’s Council of Parents and Teachers (Persatuan Ibubapa dan Guru-

guru or PIBG) had influential members such as politicians, businessmen, and lawyers

who were readily available to assist the school administration in case of need. The school

held frequent meetings with parents to collect their opinions and inform them about

students’ performance. Troubles and problems in school, such as unsatisfactory teaching

performance of some teachers, incurred immediate complaints from parents. The

authority of the school administration and teachers to impose certain rules on students

was constantly checked by parents who had the power to pressure the school to

accommodate their opinions.

Taman Raya Teachers

Teachers in SMK Taman Raya, who were mostly women, also had different

background and career history from those in other schools. Teachers usually stayed in

SMK Taman Raya for decades. 58 In Malaysia, teachers can stay in one school as long as

58
By 2005, Puan Aminah had never worked in other schools during her sixteen-year career. Puan Yeo
taught in SMK Taman Raya for fifteen years after spending one year in another school. Puan Anne spent
thirteen years in SMK Taman Raya and four years in another mission school in KL, out of her twenty-five
 207
they want, but after teaching in one school for several years, they usually apply for

relocation to another school. Sometimes teachers relocate to experience different kinds of

students and teaching environment, but often one’s husband’s job requires the family to

move to another city. Most teachers in SMK Taman Raya had husbands who were from

Kuala Lumpur and currently working in the city. Their children’s easy access to good

schools in the city, including SK Taman Raya and SMK Taman Raya for their daughters,

was another advantage of teaching in the school. Even when they had to leave the school,

often due to their husbands’ out-postings, they usually returned to Taman Raya in a few

years as husbands were called back to KL head offices.

Despite the advantages, a senior science teacher said, many teachers from outside felt

afraid to join SMK Taman Raya. It was a good school, with no doubt, but maintaining the

high standard meant extra heavy workload for teachers. She compared the high

expectations in SMK Taman Raya with those of rural schools where it was enough to

teach some basic knowledge to help “girls to become women and boys to become men.”

On top of excellent teaching skills, meticulous paper works, and good management of

extra-curricular activities and school events, Taman Raya teachers were expected to be

familiar with the school’s peculiar norms. With few exceptions, teachers who were newly

posted to Taman Raya did not join the morning session immediately. The school

administration considered the morning session (for Form Three to Form Six) to be more

important than the afternoon session (for Form One and Two). New teachers could join

year career. It was Puan Loke’s eighteenth year in the school. Puan Wong started teaching in SMK Taman
Raya in 1977 and left the school only for one year. Some teachers not only taught in SMK Taman Raya or
other mission schools for decades, but attended mission schools as girls when those schools were still
English or semi-English schools. However, there were only a handful of Taman Raya old girls back in the
school teaching. Teachers explained that teaching was neither a well-respected nor a well-paid job in
Malaysia and Taman Raya old girls were expected to have better chances of lives than coming back to their
own school to teach.
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the morning session only after they had proved their good teaching ability and familiarity

with rules and work processes specific to Taman Raya.

Although teachers tended to stay in Taman Raya for many years, some new teachers

applied for transfers within several years. The demanding amount of teaching and

administrative duties was one reason, but they also found many other things hard to catch

up – from the sophisticated dress codes to communicative skills among the longer-

serving teachers. The language barrier posed a special challenge to new teachers who

were unfamiliar with English-speaking environment. Veteran teachers of Taman Raya

spoke both English and Malay fluently, though non-Malay teachers used English more

often than Malay. Malay teachers usually spoke Malay among themselves but switched to

English whenever necessary. The school had many events conducted in English and quite

a few of its students were from English-speaking families. Without a certain degree of

English proficiency, therefore, teachers experienced serious restrictions performing their

duties, communicating with students, and socializing with other teachers. Some of new

teachers remained “outsiders” even after a few years in Taman Raya and finally chose to

leave the school. In contrast, once teachers became “insiders,” they did not leave the

school for a very long time. While they further familiarized themselves with customs of

Taman Raya, they gradually lost their knowledge about the conditions in other schools.

Family Connections

The Taman Raya alumni and current students and teachers had interesting family

connections. Many teachers sent their little girls to Taman Raya primary school and many

others had their daughters in Taman Raya secondary school. Every weekday, the girls
 209
came to school with their mothers and went back with them. While they were waiting for

their moms to finish their work, they participated in extra-curricular activities or, in case

of girls in primary school, did their homework at their mothers’ desks. For example, one

senior teacher sent three of her four children to SMK Taman Raya including the youngest

one who was in Form Five in 2005. Another senior teacher had a daughter who was once

a famous student in SMK Taman Raya for winning top prizes in English speech contests

as a representative of the school. After secondary school, she went to a medical school in

the UK. At the time of my research, she was temporarily back in Malaysia, preparing for

another medical school in the United States, meanwhile replacing an English teacher who

was on maternity leave.

The school’s anniversary publication introduces several renowned families that sent

most of their girls to Taman Raya for several decades. As a result, they have two or three

generations of Taman Raya alumni in one extended family: a mother sent their daughters

to Taman Raya and when they grew up they sent their daughters to the same school.

Sisters went to the same school and later the next generation of female cousins joined

Taman Raya or other mission schools in the city. In one morning assembly, the

headmistress announced that the school was preparing an alumni event, temporarily

called a “high-tea for old girls,” to be held in a couple of months. She emphasized that

even though it would start with just a simple tea gathering, she hoped it would ultimately

become the first step to organize “Old Girls Association” as strong as those of some

premier boys’ schools. To the students gathering in the hall, she asked to inform their

sisters, cousins, mothers, aunts, or other alumni in their families about the event.

Maintenance of the connections over a long period means that the entire female
 210
family members come to have the same kind of school experience and become exposed

to the same kind of people and culture. The official and unofficial process of selection

and inbreeding shows that the members of SMK Taman Raya form an exclusive group of

people. What makes the public school an exclusive institution of elite association? What

are the characteristics of the school allegedly in danger of disappearance? How does the

exclusive institution become the model for all other public schools to follow? The close

connection that the government makes between the exclusive cultural and linguistic

practice in premier schools and the universal model of “globally competitive citizens” for

the country’s future demonstrates how the “moral politics of class” operates in the

education system. The supposedly inclusive logics of practicality and reason in the

discourse of educational reform contradict with the exclusiveness of the “tradition of

excellence” and of the English language as the symbol of the “tradition.”

3. Origins of the Cultural Difference: SMK Taman Raya’s History

Mission Schools: Egalitarian Intentions and Discriminatory Effect

The fame of SMK Taman Raya has a long history. As a Christian mission school that

opened independently from the British colonial government, Taman Raya emphasized

that the core values of its education were egalitarianism and humanitarianism. A retired

missionary wrote in retrospect,

Traditionally, church schools in most countries were private schools and private
schools were often elite schools because of the necessity of collecting fees to pay
teachers. … The biggest disadvantage of this was the inability to provide for a large
number of the really poor. In Malaysia, it was very different from the very beginning.
There was no distinction between race, religion and social class. Malays, Indians,
Eurasians, and Chinese were accepted. It did not matter whether they were Muslims,
Hindus, Christians, Buddhists or Taoists – all were welcome and people of all these
races and religions were equality generous in helping to build schools. (TR
 211
Anniversary Book, p.15)

As a school that predates the idea of national education, however, the egalitarianism did

not mean providing all citizens with equal access to education. Ideally, the idea was

directed toward ultimate human equality before God and the potential of conversion (Pels

and Salemink 1999:29-31; Li 2007:14-15). However, as the colonial administration

forced mission schools to concentrate on secular education, the focus moved from

equality to “character building.” The education in mission schools was expected to

produce a common personality among their students (Viswanathan 1989:36-40; Pels

1999:87; Srivastava 1999).

Unlike what often happened in other colonies, British colonial administrators in

Malaya did not consider religion as a tool for colonization. Still, they heavily depended

on mission schools to relieve the financial and administrative burdens of producing junior

administrators. Colonial government provided mission schools with financial assistance,

on condition that those schools focus on departing the English language and the modern

knowledge and personality required for low-tier administrative jobs and private

enterprises. Partly due to their relationship with the colonial government, missionary

schools in Malaya took a liberal approach to religious matters and did not force their

students to convert (Loh 1975:51; Stevenson 1975:167). Although the origin of mission

schools indicates that they were “religions institutions,” they actually functioned as

“semi-secular educational institutions” in their relationship with the colonial

administration.

The secularizing tendency implies that the lack of Malay enrollment was not

completely due to Muslims who boycotted mission schools for religious reasons. Even
 212
when Malays (who are also Muslims by definition) wanted English-education, whether in

mission schools or in government English schools, the opportunity was not widely

allowed in the name of “protecting” traditional society. In contrast with “Malays” who

were considered the “natives,” “non-Malays” as “immigrants” were not subject to the

same kind of colonial “protection,” thus were relatively free to learn English and join

colonial enterprises in urban areas. However, there were exceptions to the general inter-

racial division in education. Urban Malays who wanted and could afford to educate their

girls beyond basic literacy had no choice but to send them to English schools, because

Malay-medium school did not provide secondary and post-secondary education.

Although Malay enrolment was not high in Taman Raya, as early as the 1930s, several

well-known Malay families sent all their girls to the school. Taman Raya Anniversary

Book notes “Muslim families liberal enough to want to educate their daughters would

want to enroll them in Taman Raya because it was the premier school” (p.71, emphasis

added). Whether it was due to colonial policy or the scarcity of “liberal” Muslims,

attending “mission schools” was an exception rather than ordinary thing for Muslims.

Secularization of mission schools did not completely remove the fear of conversion

among non-Muslims (mostly Chinese and Indians) as well as Muslims (mostly Malays).

For example, a report tells stories about parents of non-Muslim students in a mission

school who protested against the school when it seemed to put “excessive” emphasis on

teaching Christianity (Chelliah 1947:91). A senior Taman Raya teacher, Puan Wong, who

also attended Taman Raya as a student from 1956 until she finished her secondary

education, said that even non-Christians preferred mission schools to government English

schools. According to her, people believed that mission schools were the best place to
 213
learn English, because they were the only “properly-run” schools in the city and

missionaries were the most experienced educationists and school administrators available.

Mission schools were considered schools for learning the English language (English

schools) and schools of highest quality (premier school), as much as, if not more than,

they were schools for teaching Christian values. 59

Taman Raya anniversary book highlights the inclusiveness of its education, but rarely

mentions the systematic exclusion of Malays. A phrase such as “Muslim families liberal

enough to want to educate their daughters,” implies that individual Malays were free to

decide which school to attend and the decision depended on the degree of their

enlightenment. However, the original intention of incorporating every race faced various

limitations when it was to be implemented. Mission schools were not free from the

British’s distinction between “native” and “immigrant” subjects, which contributed to the

unequal distribution of the English language between Malays and non-Malays.

The emphasis on equal opportunity regardless of social class contradicts with the

growing elitist tendency in the school as it established itself as one of the best school in

town. Despite the isolated stories about missionary education’s benefit to poor children in

the colony, there was the structural limitation of accessibility not just for Malays, but for

the majority of non-Malays children. On top of the containment policy for the

“indigenous,” access to English schools was difficult even for non-Malays because

“the[y] … were to be found only in major towns, took in limited numbers, and charged

59
Some religious activities were included in the curricula, but they were often received as new cultural
experience, not necessarily leading to conversion. Other non-Christian teachers who attended mission
schools as girls said they did not think singing a hymn or entering chapel would automatically turn them
into Christians.
 214
higher fees” (Tan 2000:245). Although mission schools charged lower fees than other

English schools, their urban location still had the effect of limiting rural students’ access

to them.

Despite the limited accessibility for the majority of children from all races, those who

got into English schools had exceptional opportunity to socialized with students of

various racial backgrounds. Whatever languages they spoke at home, once in school,

students were required to communicate only in English. 60 English was not only the

common language connecting students of various races, but also the medium of their

knowledge acquisition. Students studied British and European history and geography

with imported textbooks written in English. They read Shakespeare and Dickens and

learned needlework, singing and the knowledge of the Scripture, which were required for

well-mannered white ladies. Close to their last days in the school, they took Cambridge

Certificate exams which were to be sent to and graded in Britain (at students’ own

expenses). Conversion was not forced to mission school students, but they were

“expected to be fairly fluent in English.” 61 The knowledge and value they learned in

English were totally different from what other girls of their age group learned in

“vernacular schools” divided into Chinese-medium schools for Chinese, Malay-medium

schools for Malays, and Tamil-medium schools for Tamil-speaking Indians. Education in

“mission schools” produced an English-educated class who were linguistically and

culturally distinctive from the rest of “one’s own race.”

60
Even mission schools that started as Anglo-vernacular bilingual schools gradually phased out the use of
vernacular languages and became English-medium schools.
61
An “old girl” from a mission school recollected “[We] were expected to be fairly fluent in English. Few
of us had any trouble living up to this expectation as the punishment for carrying on in a language or dialect
other than English was an on-the-spot fine of five cents – a significant sum in those days when pocket-
money from your parents of twenty cents a day was riches beyond imagination!” (CS 1994:23)
 215
Instead of the race and class students were born into, mission schools emphasized the

transformed personality, manners and thoughts as the product of education in mission

schools. For example, an anniversary book of another mission school notes, “For decades,

[the school] churned out schoolgirls of distinction, set apart from the others by the way

they felt, thought and spoke (The Star, November 6, 1994; CS 22).” It also mentions “the

rich ... culture (CS 23),” “the … ethos (CS 24)” of its students who were taught to believe

that “punctuality was ‘the politeness of princes’” and “cleanliness was next to godliness.”

The book also shows their unreserved sense of pride: “we felt important – a cut above the

girls from other schools (CS 24),” “[our] girls are distinct from others (CS 28).”

Accordingly, they considered their leadership role in the independent state for granted.

The enthusiasm and hard work of missionaries made mission schools the best schools

in the country in a secular sense, producing the next generation of locally-born English-

educated leaders. The spirit of egalitarianism could not keep mission schools from

becoming elite institutions. The humanitarian intention fell short of fully overcoming the

colonial structure of order. In the course of mutual dependence between the colonial

government and mission schools, they became an important part of English-medium

education in the dualistic colonial school system divided between the English language

and various vernacular languages. Though the phrase, “regardless of race, religion, and

social class,” points to “civic spirit” and egalitarianism, English was the language to

deliver their educational vision “exclusively” to a small number of students from various

races. Majority were never allowed to have access to the specific version of civic spirit

inculcated in the English language. The result was the sense of linguistic, academic,

social, and moral superiority among their students to the rest of colonial subjects.
 216
How does the post-colonial history of mission schools reflect the relation between

their pre-national traditions and the nationalist educational policy imposed on them? How

did they survive “nationalization,” keeping their reputation as “premier schools” intact?

Proclaiming the right as an independent state did not necessarily mean that people shared

anti-colonial sentiment and wanted to break from colonial legacies. Political

independence itself did not automatically bring in a full scale change to mission schools.

The real challenges arrived more than a decade after independence.

Changing Taman Raya Tradition with Nationalization

The preparation for independence revealed a new form of egalitarian spirit in

education: education for all citizens. In 1952, five years before independence, the

Department of Education asked all children born between 1949 and 1952 to be registered.

The move, called “Operation Torch,” was to build one unified education system for

citizenship by enrolling every child in the new state in schools.

The emerging “national education system,” however, was not designed to break

from the educational legacy of the British but to inherit it. In the same year, two hundred

ninety nine students were being trained at the Malayan Teachers’ Training College in

Kirkby, Lancashire. According to Taman Raya’s anniversary book, the English-educated

and British-trained teachers “formed the corps of future teachers and educationists of a

country on the brink of nationhood (p. 80).” With the independence of Malaya in 1957,

mission schools – by both Roman Catholic and Protestant churches – decided to be part

of the national school system instead of going private. The inclusion did not immediately

brought changes to SMK Taman Raya and other mission schools. Rather than being a part
 217
of colonial legacy to be removed in the way of nationalization, they considered

themselves as the legitimate leaders of nation-building in their newly independent state.

[T]he most challenging task of all years in the history of the school [was] educating
girls for leadership roles … The new curriculum combined with the mission culture of
discipline and civic consciousness proved a potent brew. Many of the girls who
streamed out of Taman Raya from this era went on to participate in nation building as
teachers, doctors, lawyers, architects, corporate figures, social workers and even as a
government minister. (TR 82, emphases added)

A publication of another old mission school notes, “In 1957 with the passing of the Razak

Report, mission schools … were allowed to continue, as [they were] multiracial school[s]

with characteristic which was important for the unity of the nation” (CLS 2002:61).

Mission schools claimed that they had a special cultural tradition and civic consciousness

conducive to “national unity.” In contrast, they considered the ethnic nationalisms among

the masses as the problems to be eradicated.

The model of nation that later gained political dominance in the country, however,

was significantly different from the one imagined by the elite from mission schools. The

National Language Act of 1967 mandated a single national language (Bahasa Malaysia)

to state institutions, which until then remained a proposal. The language shift was just a

beginning of the forthcoming waves of change in mission schools. The “racial riots” in

1969 revealed the political weakness of the nascent inter-racial coalition among English-

educated elite and their “civic consciousness.” Malay-centered definition of nation

overruled the “civic” model of nation. Mission schools, that greatly contributed to the

formation of the elite class among the colonized and expected to become the foster

institution of national-leaders, had to undergo major changes under “nationalization”

projects different from their expectations.

After handing over its authority to the Ministry of Education, the mission that had
 218
established SMK Taman Raya has lost the right to manage the school. One of the major

consequences of the hand-over was the change in the school’s administrative and

teaching staffs. In 1976, the school appointed the first non-European headmistress who

was also the first non-missionary principal of the school. 62 Taman Raya, fortunately for

its founding missionaries, continued to have Christian headmistresses of Indian or

Chinese ethnicity, while some other mission schools now have Muslim headmistresses.

Missionaries who opened SMK Taman Raya gradually left the school and now none of

them can be found there.

The school also observed a great increase in the number of Malay staffs and students.

The changing racial make-up of the school owed greatly to the new language policy and

the racial quotas in education and employment. There were active government

interventions to rectify racial imbalance and urban-orientation of “premier schools.” For

example, in 1975, Yayasan Selangor (the State of Selangor Foundation) started to send

rural Malay students to premier schools in Kuala Lumpur providing dormitory,

transportation, scholarship for them.

The curricula developed for public schools emphasized the “Malay culture” and the

“Malay religion (i.e. Islam).” On Taman Raya’s side, the change meant partial removal of

the school’s Christian tradition. Since 1960, the Bible could not be taught during schools

hours. Religiously “neutral” symbols replaced the cross and the Scripture in the old

school emblem. Instead of Christian prayers, only Islamic prayers can be heard in school.

Islamic education and the history of Islamic civilization became parts of the curricula, but

62
Missionaries who actively worked for education in the Malay Peninsula (West Malaysia) were not British.
Most of them were Roman Catholic priests, nuns, and brothers from France and Ireland and Methodists
missionaries from the United States.
 219
Christian religious activities were moved to after-school hours with other non-Islamic

religious activities. SMK Taman Raya still has its old chapel, but as it is rarely used,

some teachers even suspected that it was closed down. In contrast, everyone could easily

recognize the presence of two prayer rooms (surau) for Muslim students on the first floor.

The Christian tradition of the school, instead of being completely removed, went

through an interesting development. Despite the absence of Christian missionaries and

religious activities, the school buildings and their layout still tell that it used to be a

mission school. 63 At the same time, the newly added Islamic elements to the school

complex and the increasing number of Muslims in the school indicated the co-existence

of the school’s Christian past and Islamic present. For example, one of the school

buildings had a cross on its top and a mural of a mosque on its wall. Posters explaining

the process of Muslim prayers were hanging on the walls right under a Gothic-style arch

that connected the corridor to a small enclosed garden with Christian religious statues.

The ladies walking between Gothic buildings were no more the missionaries from Europe,

but Malaysian teachers in baju kurung and tudung. 64

The current situation in the school indicates the development of its Christian tradition

into a special way of managing religious diversity: the acknowledgement of the school’s

Christian history, the emphasis on Islamic values as a part of cultural “nationalization,”

63
Most buildings have at least one cross on their tops. The Gothic-style buildings had corridors with arch-
shaped ceilings, wooden doors with metallic embroideries and hinges, and white balconies with cross-
shaped holes. When students were all gone, the details of the school complex and the peaceful silence
created an atmosphere of a cloister.
64
In some other mission schools, the religious elements in school buildings were sometime in danger of
being removed. They were often saved by introducing “secular” interpretation of the religious symbols –
seeing them not as the method of invoking religious experience but as part of the school’s “cultural
tradition.”
 220
and the incorporation of students, teachers, and parents with neither Christian nor Islamic

religious beliefs. The symbols in the school emblem have shed its exclusively Christian

identification and picked up multi-religious interpretation. 65 Portraits and pictures of

founding missionaries in the assembly hall were used as a way of remembering their

humanitarian spirit of enlightenment as educationists. Most school activities included

some Islamic elements, but seriously religious activities for Muslim students were run

separately from regular school activities. The missionaries’ emphasis on the education

“regardless of religion” has gained a new meaning – a “proper” way of managing

religious diversity and the pursuit of “moderation” in religious expressions. Later in the

chapter, I discuss how the special ways of managing religious differences became

interpreted as “good manners” among “modern” urbanite.

Even after the passage of the Language Act in 1967, the language shift happened in a

gradual manner. It started from primary schools and extended to secondary schools as the

first batch of students advanced into upper grades. The national language was first

introduced to civics and art subjects such as geography and history. Science and technical

subjects were the last to be affected. Accordingly, a full language conversion was first

completed in the art track, and much later in science and technical tracks – as late as 1982.

The change did not mean the disappearance of the English language from SMK Taman

Raya. The problem during the early period of language transition was rather that some

excellent students did not take the Malay language seriously and failed the subject in

65
About the school emblem, the anniversary book notes: “On the right is the Holy Book. To the Christians,
this is the Bible; to the Muslims, the Quran, to the Hindus the Bhagavadgita; to the Buddhists, the
Dharmapada – whatever the teachings which are the guiding principles of their faith in God.” (TR
Anniversary Book, p. 52)
 221
66
qualifying exams. Students and teachers gradually managed to maintain the school’s

fame, successfully adjusting to the new language of instruction, the national language.

At the same time, English remained as an exclusive tradition that marks the school’s

distinctive identity from other public schools. 67 Linguistic nationalization put an end to

the rapid increase of English-medium schools in Malaysia after the Second World War.

While English had already established as a language of communication in old urban

premier schools, other schools lost their opportunity to follow suit. After the language

shift, English was taught as compartmentalized knowledge about a second or a foreign

language. English-speaking senior teachers often complained that, since the shift, the

standard of English among students and teachers had been deteriorating. However, they

little doubted that they were the Malaysian owners of the prestige language.

While Taman Raya managed to compromise its characteristics in accordance with

state policies, the difference between property ownership and management authority

complicated the financial status of the school. The building of SMK Taman Raya still

belongs to the Church instead of the government or the education ministry. Unlike other

National Secondary School(SMK)s, Taman Raya does not receive a full financial

assistance from the government. Teachers’ salary comes from the government, but the

salary for non-teaching staffs and the cost of school maintenance should be arranged on

its own. 68

66
“They also learnt from their predecessors who achieved top academic marks but failed in Bahasa
Malaysia. It made the Class of 1975 realise the importance of being ‘all-rounders.’” (TR Anniversary Book,
p.23)
67
An English and economics teacher, Puan Yeo, argued that once Taman Raya’s tradition as a mission
school had almost disappeared, English was the only thing that made the school different from other public
schools.
68
Some other old mission schools in the city did not survive the financial pressure and the encroachment of
urban redevelopment projects. Some sold their land then moved to suburbs and some others were closed
 222
Puan Laili, a Taman Raya old girl and teacher, told me that, until the early 1980s, to

cope with the financial condition, the school received students from families that could

afford to make donations. To be accepted to the school, the monthly income of a student’s

household must exceed two thousand ringgits. The amount meant that, in those days, only

the parents with high-income professional jobs could afford to send their daughters to

Taman Raya. Despite the problem of unequal access to the school, she believed that the

selection process helped the school to maintain good academic performance and

discipline.

Now SMK Taman Raya charges the same fees as other public secondary schools.

Instead of screening students according to their parents’ ability to donate, the school

accepts about a half of its students from the feeder school – SK Taman Raya – and the

other half of the students from other schools. The low school fee allowed some children

of not-so-affluent families into the school by way of the feeder school. However, not all

teachers welcomed the change. They thought it meant a compromise in the quality of

education. Furthermore, the shortage of financial resource made the school dependent on

annual fund-raising, alumni network, and national recognition of its excellence. The

changing language and curricula, the new student selection process, and the exacerbating

financial condition that accompanied the “nationalization” of the school could turn its

culture and fame into nostalgic memories of the past.

Reconfirming the “Culture of Excellence”

Now that some key characteristics of the school were removed, what holds Taman

down.
 223
Raya “tradition” together and makes it a “premier school”? The underlying mission of the

school changed from the production of “English-speaking elite” to the education of

“Malaysian citizens.” SMK Taman Raya has successfully transformed itself from a

colonial elite school to a “model” national school. The school actively incorporated the

new linguistic and cultural norms into the school culture, making themselves the central

players in the production of the new normative national culture. The school’s new goal

was not just educating citizens, but educating the “model citizens.” When the ministry

acknowledged the “culture of excellence” in mission schools and promised increased

financial support for them, it argued that potential benefit would not be limited to the

schools that received the special supports. The schools were expected to serve as the

model that other national schools should emulate. According to the argument, the special

financial support for “premier schools” was a part of long term plan to better the national

school system and produce the new generation Malaysian citizens with global

competitiveness.

The definition of “excellence,” however, presupposes the existence of “others” to be

excelled. It depends on the particularistic claim that they have a special quality that other

do not have. A closer look at the “culture of excellence” and the various elements that

compose the “culture” reveal that what they call the special personality or “ethos” is the

product of the long investment in linguistic, academic, cultural, and social skills among a

small number of the urban affluent. Only by arguing the special “culture” resembles

“global personality” that the state needs for its development and progress, the “culture”

becomes a universal model for others to follow.

The headmistress of SMK Taman Raya did not consider the new spotlight as a
 224
guarantee of the school’s special status. In morning assemblies, she constantly

emphasized to the students that the production of the school’s tradition was still under

way and the new chance could not be made their own without hard work. She warned

students not to take the special status of SMK Taman Raya for granted, just because it

had a famous alumni and powerful connections in the government. Emphasizing the

importance of constant efforts, she pointed out unorganized notice boards in some classes.

She argued that, though the problem seemed trivial, they should do everything

meticulously to demonstrate their academic, cultural, and disciplinary excellence, the

quality expected for a “premier school.” According to her, students should always be

vigilant not to make their “tradition” the memory of the past but the fame of the present.

4. Exclusiveness of Civic Consciousness and the Taman Raya “Culture”

Racial Categories and Blurred Boundaries

The official version of multiracialism – that Malaysia is made up of three major racial

groups and minorities and Malays have special rights as the “natives” of the country –

greatly influenced the way students experience racial differences in schools. The channels

of influence ranged from the general framing of educational policies to the detailed

guidelines in circulation letters and discipline booklets. In chapter four, I discussed how

the supposed racial differences almost matched the visible and audible forms of inter-

racial divisions among students of SMK Jalan Limau. Does the match prove the effective

imposition of multiracialism by the government? Despite the two schools’ technically

equal status in the education system and the similar racial make-ups of their student

bodies, in Taman Raya, the racial difference was not as recognizable as it was in Jalan
 225
Limau,

In SMK Taman Raya, I often found it extremely hard to tell the “race” of students just

by looking at them. Was the difficulty due to the strong presence of students with mixed

ancestry? Could their complexions and physiognomy become reliable indicators of the

race, anyway? Even in my first school SMK Jalan Limau, my guesses were primarily

based on students’ dress and hairstyle, as well as those of their friends. The guesses

usually turned out to be correct, because of the strong correspondence between racial

divisions and different dress codes in the inner-city school. However, in SMK Taman

Raya, where many non-Malay students wore baju-kurung uniforms and only a minority

of Muslim students put on religious headscarves, the correspondence did not seem as

clear.

Despite the difficulty of racial categorization by seeing, students were familiar with

the widely used racial categories of “Malay, Chinese, Indian, and Others” and the very

term of “race.” Once I asked students to write down the “ethnic group” they belonged to.

My question differed from the conventional survey format in two ways. I avoided the

commonly used word “race,” and instead used the term “ethnic group.” I did not give the

widely-used options of “Malay/ Chinese/ Indian/ Others,” and, instead, asked them to

give their own answers. My intention was to see various ways of self identifications and

how they differed from the conventional racial identifications. In several classes I visited,

students raised questions upon receiving my questionnaire. Many of them did not feel

sure about what the term “ethnic” meant. They wanted to know if it was synonymous

with “race,” thus they were expected to write whether they were Indians, Malays,

Chinese or Others.
 226
Some students did not answer the question and some gave conventional racial

identifications, but I also found unconventional self-categorizations. Some answers

combined typical racial identification with sub-identification (e.g. Chinese/Hokkian,

Chinese/Hainanese, Chinese/Cantonese, Indian/Ceylonese), some had only religious

identification (e.g. Hindu, Muslim), some combined racial and religious identifications

(e.g. Chinese/Buddha, Punjabi/Muslim, Punjabi/Sikh, Malay/Muslim, Indian/Muslim),

and some other answers had information about their multiracial ancestry (e.g.

Indian/mixed, Malay/Pakistani, Malay/mixed, Malay/ mixed Chinese, Malay+ Indian +

Chinese, “I am Malay, but my grandmother was Chinese”)

At a lunch table, I asked teachers what the answers might indicate about the

characteristics of their students. They confirmed that the answers, especially the last ones,

reflected the strong presence of children from mixed marriages in the school. Inter-racial

marriages were not uncommon especially in big cities like Kuala Lumpur. However, they

also argued that many of the unconventional identifications were “not correct” or

impossible to exist. According to them, racial identification was supposed to follow that

of one’s father. Therefore, for a girl to be Malay, her father should be Malay, which also

means her grandfather was Malay. Because the very definition of “Malay” includes being

“Muslim,” the Malay identification also meant that both her father and grandfather were

Muslims. The tricky part was that for her grandmother to get married to a Malay-Muslim

man, she first had to convert to Islam, which usually means a (partial) replacement of her

Chinese identity with a new Malay identity and being unable to pass her Chinese identity

to her offspring. The case shows that in Malaysia race is considered as a matter of lineage

and blood, on the one hand, and as a matter of religion, on the other. Becoming Muslim
 227
69
enabled many “non-Malays” to claim Malay identity. The official recognition of the

identity often depended on whether the person behind the registration desk bought the

parents’ declaration of their children’s race.

Despite the complexity behind, students managed to settle down with a single racial

identification. In other words, in school documents, they were counted as Malays, Indians,

Chinese, or Others. However, there were some characteristics to their names, speeches,

and dresses that made racial categorization not so visible. Furthermore, teachers

encouraged students to be blind to racial difference when making friends, as they

believed it was the desirable way of socialization. When teachers emphasized the

importance of race-blind socialization, they often had a specific model in their mind – the

socializing pattern in “English schools” of the pre-nationalization period. A senior teacher,

Puan Salbiah, compared current state of inter-racial socialization with that of her school

days, when secondary schools were all “English stream” and when students learned

everything in English. She emphasized that during her days, teachers strongly forced

students to make friends with classmates from various racial, linguistic, and cultural

backgrounds. She lamented that nowadays, even in Taman Raya, she often observed

students sitting in groups according to race.

Does the change have anything to do with the expulsion of English from national

schools or the disappearance of “English-stream” schools? If racial division is a less

serious problem in Taman Raya than in other schools, is it due to persisting presence of

the English language in the school? The supporters of the English language argue that the

69
“Malays” are not the only people who are “traditionally Muslim.” Some “Indian” were Muslims even
before their migration into the Malay Peninsula. However, due to the strong identification of Islam as a
“Malay religion,” Indian Muslims often hesitate to admit that they are “Indians” as it may imply that they
are Hindus like the majority of “Indians” in Malaysia.
 228
use of English, which is a language exempt from exclusive ownership claims by any

racial group in Malaysia, was the primary reason for the blurred racial boundaries in both

colonial elite schools and current premier schools. In other words, they believed that the

“political neutrality” of English makes it the best medium of cosmopolitanism. I argue

that, despite the racial distinction behind the promotion of the national language and

culture, nationalization has created a new form of cosmopolitanism in Taman Raya. At

the same time, English still plays an important role in both racial (the persisting

identification of English with non-Malays and their affluence) and non-racial politics (the

formation of economic and social inequalities in the past and the present).

Who were the girls that internalized the school’s special “ethos” of cosmopolitanism

by blurring racial boundaries? Who were the girls who cliqued with students of the same

race and language, thus made Puan Salbiah and other teachers concerned about waning

“tradition” of the “premier school”? Teachers commonly admitted that their students had

a high level of proficiency in the national language. Otherwise they could not have

achieved the current academic excellence. However, they also pointed out that students

who socialized across racial boundaries tended to use English among themselves, which

officially stopped being a language of instruction more than two decades ago. In contrast,

those who tended to socialize within their races were Malays from Malay-speaking

families, especially those from rural schools, and a small number of non-Malay students

from Chinese-speaking or Tamil-speaking families. Some teachers called them “gangs,”

showing their disapproval of intra-racial grouping.

In the following, I discuss the process of blurring racial boundaries among the

members of SMK Taman Raya and the meanings given to their practice of blurred racial
 229
boundaries. The blurredness is considered as a proof of their “urban modernity,”

distinguishing them from the “masses” with “traditional” minds – those who stubbornly

stick to their racial identities and stay loyal to the people of the same race. In other words,

Taman Raya people are still Malays, Chinese, Indians and Others, but they claim that

they are the “modern” breeds among them. They believe that they are open-minded

(berfikiran buka) thanks to their long exposure to “urban” ways of life and, in contrast,

“rural” people tend to be close-minded (berfikiran tutup) due to their lack of exposure to

cosmopolitan environment. Instead of the inter-racial division marked by appearance,

language and religion, the division between “insiders” (modern, open-minded,

cosmopolitan, talented, disciplined, and English-speaking) and “outsiders” (traditional,

close-minded, parochial, mediocre, undisciplined, and vernacular-speaking) become

central to their belief that they are a “cut above the girls from other schools.” Their

alleged “excellence” over “girls in other schools” is explained by “ethos,” “culture” and

“tradition” – a profound quality in their personality that their outsiders cannot easily

acquire. Does English have any causal relationship to the blurred racial boundaries and

the “tradition of excellence”? The definitions of the “common culture” among the

school’s insiders and the practice of “integration” and “unity” among the members from

different races reveal the exclusiveness of the civic consciousness formed in the former

English-medium elite school. The English language is a symbol of institutional

segregation that allowed them to produce the special cosmopolitan culture during the

colonial period. It is also a symbol of the negotiating power that allowed them to navigate

around the racializing tendency in the nationalization project.

 230
Defining Integration

Every year, schools are required to have an Integration Day (Hari Integrasi), a day

designated to the promotion of integration among Malaysians of diverse races. On the day,

SMK Taman Raya students usually prepare a drama presenting the spirit of integration. In

the integration drama that I observed, students experimented with a new definition of

“integration” by replacing racial difference with the difference between physically

challenged students and healthy ones. The drama and the controversy it aroused show

some important aspects of the special Taman Raya “culture” that the school sought to

establish and maintain.

The drama was played in Malay and the storyline went as follows: A girl is walking

alone in the street. Her body is twisted and her steps are staggering, which implies that

she might have suffered from polio. A group of girls, wearing jeans, bandanas and

baseball caps, appear and surround the girl. The street girls bully her, kick her school bag,

make fun of her twisted body and inarticulate speech, and attempt to snatch her wallet.

When the “bad girls” are about to leave the scene, two new girls appear. One rushes to

the disabled girl for help, while the other challenges the street girls, accuses them of their

wrongdoings, and tries to take the wallet back. The righteous intervention of the two girls

not only saves the victim but also moves the mind of the street girls. After apologies and

their acceptance, all girls leave the place together smiling. The message was clear: you

should not discriminate others because they look different, especially when the person is

disadvantaged.

Several times during the play, some comic scripts broke out laughter among students.

However, none of the teacher laughed or even slightly smiled. The headmistress pointed
 231
out several problems right after the drama. The first problem pointed out was that the

drama contained no message about “integration.” One teacher explained to me that in

Malaysia when people think of “integration” or “integrasi,” they think of Malays, Indians,

and Chinese wearing their own “traditional” dresses sit around a table and share Malay,

Indian, and Chinese “traditional” dishes. The content of the integration drama had little to

do with the conventional rendition of the theme “integration” that highlights the

multiracial element of Malaysian society.

Although the students successfully avoided a stereotypical depiction of multiracial

integration, they fell into another trap. Every role, except the last two girls who helped

the poor girl out, was played by Malay students. The Malay girls, except for the bullied

girl, dressed, behaved, and talked like street girls. In contrast, the two good girls on the

last scene were played by a Chinese and an Indian student. Not only they were depicted

as righteous, they wore proper school uniforms, and used refined language. I suspected

only Malay students could play the roles of “bad streed girls” because they knew how to

speak Malay slangs while the others did not.

The most serious problem, as headmistress and other teachers pointed out, was the

rough language and attitude in the drama. Headmistress stressed to the entire students that

the drama had too much rough speech and behavior. She expecially emphasized that

students of Taman Raya should not use the kind of language, because it contradicted with

the “culture of our school.” Malay language teachers lamented that they have never

taught students to speak such a rough language but televisions spoilt their language uses.

The language and behavior in the drama was far from what the school sought to enculcate

among students. Instead, they reflected street culture and vulgar language often seen and
 232
heard from the mass media.

What is exactly the kind of “integration” sought by the school? Although several

students’ attempt to give an alternative definition of integration failed, the very failure

revealed some core values for integration in Taman Raya: the refined language, dress,

attitude, and behavior. It was not enough for the school members to mingle across racial

boundaries; they had to define and maintain a “proper” way of coexistance. Otherwise,

they would fail to live upto the expectation for a “premier school.” The members were

expected to be integrated among themselves in ways reflecting the special Taman Raya

culture. At the same time, they were expected to maintain characteristics distinct from

those of their social and cultural “others” in most public schools.

“Modern” Names of Taman Raya Girls

In Malaysian society, the format of a person’s name is one of the most reliable marker

of one’s race (and religion). Among female students, a name with “bt (binti)” in the

middle means she is Malay (or non-Malay Muslim), “a/p (anak perempuan)” indicates

she is (non-Muslim) “Indian,” and “a/k (anak)” means being one of “Others.” Chinese

students usually have three-syllable names – one-syllable last names and two-syllable

first names. In addition to the racial difference in names, there is a distinction between

conventional names and “modern” and “glamorous” ones. From the second kind of

division, people often read non-racial information about other persons, such as their

family educational histories, linguistic backgrounds, religious orientations, and the degree

of exposure to urban ways of life. 70

70
Cheong Vivian, a girl I met during a short visit to a private Chinese-medium secondary school, could not
 233
Soon after I moved from Jalan Limau to Taman Raya, I recognized different patterns

of names between the two schools. When I asked Taman Raya teachers about similarities

among their students’ names, one of them told me that they just reflected common

patterns of naming among urban people in Kuala Lumpur. However, I rarely came across

similar names among Jalan Limau students, although it was also located in Kuala Lumpur.

I kept asking other teachers, and one of them, Puan Aminah, asked me back if I was

talking about “modern names.”

Puan Aminah, a history teacher, told me about various kinds of “Malay names” and

how changing patterns of names reflect religious, geographical and social distinctions

among “Malays.” According to her, before the introduction of Islam, many Malay names

bore Hindu influence. 71 The second kind of “Malay names” was what she called “original

Malay names,” often appearing in old Malay movies from the 1950s and 1960s. 72 Neither

the names with Hindu element nor the “original Malay names” appeared among “Malay”

students in Taman Raya. Most of them had the third type of names – Arabic names.

Arabic names were first adopted by the royalties of Malacca Sultanate and only

recently gained its current dominance. She explained that, with the influence Islamic

resurgence movement in the 1970s, more Malays started to show strong preference for

Arabic names. According to her, Malay parents selected Arabic words with good

speak English confidently despite of her English name. Introducing herself, she advised me not to be
confused by her name, that is, to assume she was Christian. Her friend believed that Vivian’s name – that
seemingly contradicts with her being a Mandarin-speaker with a Chinese way of life – came from Vivian’s
mother who once attended mission schools.
71
Examples include “- wati” in names like “Suriawati” and “Megawati” and the name of one of Malacca’s
early kings, Paramesuara. Only after the thirteenth century, Islamic names such as Sultan Mansur Shah
appeared. The names she mentioned are now considered “Indonesian names” by many Malaysians.
72
For example, melati (jasmine), kenanga (ylang-ylang), sireh (betel), keledek (sweet potato), kesuma
(flower or beautiful woman), mawar (rose) were often used for women’s names. For men, words like putih
(white), bujang (bachelor), hitam (black) were frequently used.
 234
meanings (instead of Malay words), such as “mohamad” (praiseworthy in English; terpuji

in Malay) and “nor” (light; cahaya), for their children’s names. However, the language of

their religious practice was Jawi (Arabic-based Malay script), not Arabic, and few people

had enough knowledge about the “foreign” language. While having an Arabic name

marked a person’s Muslim (and often Malay) identity, it was not uncommon that people

forgot the meaning of Arabic words after naming their children in Arabic. Therefore, she

advised that I would rather ask religious teachers (ustazah) or look up guidebooks for

Arabic names if I wanted more information.

Puan Aminah said typical Arabic names already became slightly out of fashion and an

increasing number of Malay students had “modern” names. With the list of students’

names I brought to her, she explained me how to tell “modern” names from conventional

ones. One example was “Aainna,” which, according to her guess, was built upon an

Arabic work “ain” by adding “a” and “na.” She said the variation made it sound modern

and look like an English name. Another example was “Ameera,” which she thought was

chosen instead of the common Arabic name “Amira.” She said that she went through a

similar process to choose her daughter’s name. The daughter’s name came from an

Arabic word “Aishah,” but as the teacher thought the name was too common, she

modified it by adding “e” to become “Aieshah.” She said that by changing the common

name into “Aieshah,” her daughter’s name would stand out among countless “Aishah”s.

“Modern names” were also found among Chinese students. As Malays did, they kept

the format of conventional Chinese names, but played with sound and spelling. Some

changed the typical spelling of their family names: for example, “Soo” became “Sue” and

“Lin” became “Lynn.” Another pattern was observed in names like Lim Car Men, Leong
 235
Vi Ki, and Wong Vie Vien. Within the format of one-syllable last name and two- syllable

first name (each syllable corresponds to one Chinese character), those names were made

to be pronounced as English names.

“Modern” names show the tendency of “Anglicization” by modifying racially and

religiously marked conventional names to have English-looking spellings and English-

sounding pronunciations. However, only a small number of students used English names

for official purposes. Several students had English names such as Cashryn, Naomi and

Sherry on their official documents. Some others combined English names with

conventional or “modern” Muslim, Chinese, Indian names, making their full names

longer than those of other students. Some others had racially and religiously marked non-

English names for official uses and English names for informal interactions with families

and friends.

What does the frequency of “modern” names in SMK Taman Raya indicate, when

compared to the predominance of conventional names in SMK Jalan Limau? I showed

the same list of names to a teacher in SMK Jalan Limau. Cik Aida, an English teacher in

her early thirties, also called them “modern names.” She argued that because Muslims

usually chose their children’s name among a limited number of Arabic words with good

meanings, it was hard to find a name that not only had good meanings but also sounded

special and “glamorous.” She found that some names in the list were similar to what she

and her friends would create for their future daughters when she was attending a mission

school. According to her, few students in the inner-city school had “glamorous names.”

The partly Anglicized “modern” names among the students of SMK Taman Raya still

maintained markers of racial and religious differences. But, unlike the conventional
 236
names, they were identified with the influence of education in mission schools, exposure

to urban ways of life, and the expectations for glamorous personalities. In other words,

the “modern” names indicated that the students of SMK Taman Raya were still Malays,

Chinese, Indians, and Others, but the “urban” and “glamorous” kind among them.

Dressing Themselves Proper

In chapter four, I discussed how the assumed correspondence between people’s race,

religion, physical appearance acquired a natural look in the social setting of an inner-city

school. The case shows that uniforms for public schools, though originally designed to

impose national-level homogeneity among their students, can be adopted to give visible

forms to otherwise illusive racial boundaries. Both being “National Secondary Schools,”

students of SMK Jalan Limau and SMK Taman Raya wore the same uniforms. However,

the uniforms of the “premier school” did not bear as much clue about a student’s race or

religion as they did in the first school. The difference reflects the role of dress as a

medium of social distinction rather than reflecting the mindset individuals.

Before the introduction of the universal uniform in the early 1970s, each school had

its own uniform. According to Puan Wong, a senior teacher who attended Taman Raya

primary and secondary schools as a young girl, in the past, people could tell the school of

students when they saw them on streets. By wearing the distinctive Taman Raya uniform,

students carried the proud name of the school on their bodies. Now only the small school

emblem attached to the universal uniform tells people on the street that the girls are

students of the renowned SMK Taman Raya. 73 The introduction of the national school

73
One exception is the prefect uniform, which provides a useful way to mark the school’s “special” identity.
 237
uniform also meant loosing a part of the school’s distinctive identity as a missionary

school and incorporating the national culture with a Malay-Muslim orientation. Before

the introduction of the universal uniform, according to Puan Wong, students of Taman

Raya were not allowed to wear baju-kurung. Even after the change, some were reluctant

to adopt the Malay-style uniform, because they believed that it was only for students of

“Malay schools” (i.e. Malay-medium schools attended only by Malay students, which

existed before the division between English and vernacular schools was officially

abolished), once considered inferior to English schools. The currently popular adoption of

baju-kurung among both Malay and non-Malay students in Taman Raya, however,

indicates that the Malay-Muslim identification of the “national dress” is weakening in the

premier school. Instead, it now represents the spirit of national unity or “patriotism”

among non-Malays who dress across racial boundaries (Ong 1995:185).

As I have emphasized earlier (Chapter 4), the expression of national unity and

patriotism in the national dress does not necessarily represent the principle of “inclusion.”

Although students of SMK Taman Raya wear the same uniform as students in other

public secondary schools, the school has its own discipline booklet, which contains dress

codes slightly different from those directed by the City Educational Bureau. The school

booklet describes in detail how student should be dressed and behave in school, but it

contains little race- or religion-specific directions whether in writing or in pictures. For

example, it does not have explicit directions for the dress of Muslim students. None of its

content prevents Muslim girls from wearing knee-length skirts. Despite the differences

Taman Raya prefect uniform is a set of blazer, shirts, necktie, knee-length skirt, school socks, and black
shoes. Only a small number of prefect girls, screened by teachers and elected by students, may have the
honor of wearing the special uniform that belongs exclusively to Taman Raya.
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neither the discipline booklet by the City Educational Bureau nor the one by SMK Taman

Raya conflicts with the government guideline for promoting national culture in schools.

The provision of “exclusive” dress code for SMK Taman Raya is made possible by the

ambiguity in the official definition of “national culture” and the inconclusive of

government guidelines for schools.

According to the ministry’s guideline, tudung is recommended but not mandatory for

Muslim female students. The final decision is up to the top administrators of individual

schools. While my first school (SMK Jalan Limau) made it mandatory, SMK Taman

Raya left it to the choice of the students and their parents. Just as the teachers of SMK

Jalan Limau who provided different interpretations for the “lack of choice,” the teachers

of SMK Taman Rayahad different ways of rationalizing the “freedom of choice.” One

teacher told me that young girls before puberty were exempt from the obligation of

Muslim women to cover themselves. Another teacher believed that women’s age did not

matter as much as their “way of life (gaya hidup or cara hidup).” The practice in the

school just reflected the predominant way of life among its students. Still another teacher

said whether to adopt tudung was completely up to their parents’ choice or their “family

backgrounds.” Despite their slightly different explanations, they agreed that usually those

who cared little about religious dress were called “modern (moden)” and those who cared

much about it were called “traditional (tradisi).” 74 In rural schools where “traditional”

way of life predominated, the school administration could make the religious headscarf

obligatory. In contrast, in “urban” schools, especially in premier schools where most

74
Though it is identified with the “traditional” way of life, the current form of “covering” among Muslim
women is a “modern” phenomenon in Malaysia that emerged with the strong influence of modern Islamic
movement in Egypt on Malaysia’s Islamic resurgence movement in the 1970s.
 239
people led a “modern” way of life, the imposition of religious headscarf seemed almost

impossible.

SMK Jalan Limau did not and could not force religious headscarf to its Muslim

students. Despite its general emphasis on Islamic values, the government sought to

distinguish their “moderate” Islam from the “extremist” Islam of the oppositional

political party. Some parents worked in the ministry, therefore if the school forced

religious dress, it would be directly reported to the ministry. Furthermore, if the school

force it, parents who themselves had “modern” approach to religion would immediately

file complaints. According to a teacher, contrary to parents in other schools who were

“not that noisy (tak berapa bising)” or inclined not to dispute the decisions made by their

children’s schools, the parents of Taman Raya students got actively involved with the

school’s decision making process.

In my first school, where wearing tudung was mandatory for Muslim female students,

it served as the marker of division between Muslim and non-Muslim students. The

mandatory headscarf de-emphasized difference among Muslim students while

highlighting racial/religious differences. In SMK Taman Raya, where students had

“freedom” to decide whether to wear headscarf, it marked differences among Muslim

students: the divisions between “urban” and “rural” students and between “modern” and

“traditional” ones. The number of Muslim students wearing headscarves almost matched

the number of rural students or FELDA students. The association of headscarves with

“rural” and “traditional” values and the rough (but not exact) correspondence between the

number of rural students and the number of tudung-wearing students sometimes

determined what teachers expect for girls with headscarves: they were expected not to
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speak English as fluently as other girls in the school and not to perform as well as other

students in their classes. Though the expectations did not always match the actual

abilities of students, teachers considered the cases of mismatch as exceptions rather than

the proof of their erroneous presuppositions. 75

One Malay-Muslim teacher believed that non-Malay students’ adoption of the Malay-

style dress demonstrated that they were “open-minded (berfikiran terbuka),” thus did not

care (tak kisah) much about dressing themselves across racial boundaries. For example, a

girl named Lim Car Men (a “modern” name as I discussed), although Chinese, always

wore baju-kurung, except when she had to put on a special uniform to perform her prefect

duty. Her dress had little difference from those of her Muslim classmates who wore baju-

kurung without religious headscarves or tudung. When students were in baju-kurung

uniforms, it was hard to tell Muslims from non-Muslims. In contrast, if students chose

jumper uniforms, it indicated that they were most probably non-Muslims. Because the

jumper was not as sharable as the baju-kurung, when an entire class had to wear the same

uniform (in various inter-class or inter-school competitions), they chose the baju-kurung.

If, in the past, the uniformity of Taman Raya students was expressed in the school’s

distinctive jumper, nowadays, it is better achieved in the baju-kurung uniform. Instead of

visualizing the division between Malays and non-Malays, in SMK Taman Raya, the

“national dress” marks the difference between non-Malays who are “open-minded” and

who are not.

Girls in SMK Taman Raya gave a little variation to their monotonous uniform with

75
One teacher told me that some girls wrote great English essays and had excellent exam scores even
though they wore tudung. She added that they were mostly from urban primary schools.
 241
pretty wrist watches, small accessories, and nicely-styled hair. According to a discipline

teacher, Taman Raya girls had little discipline problem, but they had the “problem” of

being “too fashionable.” The school was not very strict about students’ hairstyles or

accessories as far as students abided by several basic rules. Teachers left them up to

students’ self-discipline and their parents’ monitoring. The “inner-circle” students from

SK Taman Raya and other missionary primary schools in the city were already familiar

with the special fashion style. However, some students from “outside” experienced a

“cultural shock” when they first met the stylish girls upon joining the school. Teachers

said that, as young girls sensitive to peer culture, most students soon got used to the

dominant style in the school. However, FELDA students had extremely hard time in the

new cultural setting. The rural students, staying in dormitories and socializing among

themselves, had little chance to learn the fashion style of Taman Raya’s urban girls. The

addition of fashionable edge to the “modern, urban, and cosmopolitan ways” of putting

on the universal uniform further emphasized the marginality of the “traditional and rural

styles” in the school’s cultural environment.

Sensitivity to Religious Differences

The special status of Islam as a “national religion” and the phrase of “obeisance to

God (kepatuhan kepada tuhan)” in the National Education Philosophy are important parts

of the ongoing political debate about the relationship between the Islamic religion and the

state. The debate has a long history of its own and does not provide any prospect of

immanent conclusion. In the condition of uncertainty, individual schools were left to

practice the “national religion” and the value of “obeisance to God” based on their own
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interpretations of the phrases. In SMK Taman Raya, Islam was taught as a part of

“national culture” in a secular sense and the “obeisance to God” as the general emphasis

on the benefit of religion for inculcating moral values. The Islamic resurgence movement,

that sought to provide moral solutions to the social problems among the underprivileged

Malays in the rapidly modernizing cities, did not pose serious challenge to the members

of the premier school who had never considered the social problems as theirs. Despite the

changing focus from Christian values to Islamic ones, the influence of state-led

Islamization blended well with the school’s semi-secular tradition as a mission school in

a British colony and its emphasis on “character building.” The practice of “national

religion” in SMK Taman Raya shows that the school effectively diluted the racial

exclusivity in the use of Islam as a symbol of “Malay agenda” in the nationalization

project. It also shows that the school adapted the national emphasis on Islamic values to

the school’s emphasis on civic consciousness.

As in other public schools, the teaching of Islamic religion became a part of regular

curricula in SMK Taman Raya while non-Islamic religious activities were moved to after-

school hours. However, unlike other schools, SMK Taman Raya separated Islamic

religious activities from other school activities, especially when they were beyond the

required general acknowledgement of Islam’s special status. In morning assemblies, non-

Muslim teachers greeted students in either Malay or English, while Muslim teachers

always started their speeches with Arabic greetings. But the Islamic greeting used in

SMK Taman Raya was a short one that added a simple Arabic greeting

(assalamualiakum) to one in Bahasa Malaysia. Regardless of one’s linguistic and

religious training, all members of the school easily understood the meaning. In contrast,
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the longer versions of Islamic greeting (for example, Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi

wabarakatu dan selamat sejatera) used in SMK Jalan Limau (also in government

circulation letters and official events of government-related institutions) emphasized

Arabic elements, thus could not be easily understood by people who were not exposed to

the Arabic language or Islamic religious training.

To avoid problems that might come from the acknowledgement of Islam’s special

status as a “national religion” in the presence of non-Muslim students and teachers, the

school events of SMK Taman Raya toned down the Islamic aspect in its emphasis on the

“obeisance to God.” The call to prayer during morning assemblies was conducted by a

prefect student on duty who was not necessarily a Muslim. Without mentioning any

specific religion, the prefect just said “Let’s pray” or “Sila baca doa” according to the

language used in the assembly of the day. At the signal, students and teachers started their

own quiet prayers to the God they believed in. The format of prayer session implied that

the practice of religion was a private issue, just as the adoption of religious headscarf was

up to the choice of individual Muslim students and their parents. The school

distinguished the “private” practice of religion from the “public” concerns about

“national culture” and “moral values.”

For non-Muslim students, who would otherwise have no opportunity to learn about

Islam, teachings about the “national religion” delivered in “moderate” ways meant an

addition to their cultural repertoire. In contrast, religious teachers of SMK Taman Raya

did not have the authority to impose their beliefs about the true teaching of Islam even on

Muslim students. The majority of Muslim students in the school came from “modern”

Muslim families of urban professionals. They maintained a style of religious practice

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different from those of their religious teachers and their Muslim classmates from rural

areas. As indicated by its dress code, the school emphasized the importance of “self-

imposed discipline” while being cautious about imposing “religious discipline.”

Every year, the school held a “motivation course” to prepare students for upcoming

public exams. The course was supposed to deliver useful tips for exam preparation and

stress management. As most schools did, teachers organizing the program invited outside

speakers who were lecturers in various Islamic institutions. The speakers, influenced by

the Islamic resurgent movement, believed that secularist approach to success is the cause

of anxiety in modernizing society. Therefore, instead of talking about practical tips and

strategies, they introduced “Islamic approach” to knowledge and mind control to the

student audience of various religious backgrounds. When Muslim teachers were not

present, some non-Muslim teachers exchanged their discontent with the course. Their

complaints were focused on the “uselessness” of the messages delivered in the course

rather than the infringement of non-Muslim students’ right to have their religious faiths

appreciated. Teachers argued that it was a “waste” of students’ precious time that they

should spend on studying to prove their “academic excellence” in the upcoming public

exams.

Self-Discipline and Cultural Versatility

The school administration constantly emphasized to the students that excellence in

exams alone does not make SMK Taman Raya a truly “best school.” The headmistress

argued that, only by internalizing all the virtues including “sahsiah (good character)”

“nilai murni (purity),” “cleanliness” and “charm,” students could properly follow the
 245
grand and benevolent wills of the first missionaries who opened the school. It was the full

“character building” that mattered.

In Malaysian national schools, prefects serve as the student guardian of discipline.

Especially in premier schools with long history, being elected as a prefect is a great honor.

They represent the personality and character that the school seeks to inculcate in its

students. They can wear special prefect uniforms when they are on duty. One of the

prefect duties in SMK Taman Raya was to manage school bells. Instead of using an

automated system, a prefect came down to the staff room at the end of every class hour

and rang the bell. Bells did not merely signal the beginning and the end of classes. In the

morning, with the first bell at 7:20am, students started reading story books in the cafeteria

area. At the second bell in ten minutes, students gathered in the assembly hall. The third

bell signaled the beginning of morning assemblies. At the end of morning session, four

bells controlled the movement of students. They started cleaning up at the second bell and

left the building only after the fourth bell. The strict organization of students’ movements

by bells had the practical benefit of efficiently managing the limited class hours, thus

maximizing their use for teaching. But it was not the automated system or teachers that

managed the organized movements, but prefects selected from students. The “ritual” of

self-discipline was an important part of the school’s “tradition of excellence.”

The prefects also conducted daily inspection of cleanliness in classrooms. The result

of the inspection was calculated into points and the class with the least point received the

disgraceful title of the “dirtiest, undisciplined, and the worst” class in front of all students

in the morning assembly. If the practice was originally started as an education of hygiene

and self-management, many of current students from affluent urban families did not need
 246
to take care of their own cleanliness while they were at home. One of discipline teachers

complained that students nowadays did not know how to keep their surroundings clean,

because many of their families hired live-in maids who did cleaning-ups for them. She

argued that the tradition of cleanliness could be maintained only under the strict

monitoring of prefects and teachers. It had to be maintained not just for the practical need

to clean the school, but to inculcate the self-discipline of cleanliness among students.

According to Puan Laili, who spent more than twenty years in Taman Raya as a

student and as a teacher, the most important tradition of the school is that in every

competition its students participate, they must win. For example, if they play in a sports

game, they must play until they reach the top. Students have to become “all-rounders”

and the living proof of the school’s “wholesome education.” Puan Loke told me that

SMK Taman Raya’s emphasis on being “all-rounders” was exactly why many parents

wanted to sent their daughters to the school and why she chose the school for her own

daughters. With various extra-curricular programs provided by the school, students had

plenty of opportunities to learn what they were good at.

How could the student handle all the activities and outperform the students from other

schools in all of them? Due to the limited facilities and staffs, SMK Taman Raya was run

as two session school just as other public schools were. Furthermore, the school had a

special financial problem due to its ambiguous status in the state education funding

system. Instead, they had veteran teachers with decades’ experience in premier schools

and special know-how in various (often exclusive) extra-curricular activities. But, for

Taman Raya students, their school was not a place to learn things from scratch. Students’

achievement in various fields was standing upon their training at home and in primary
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schools. Teachers would say that some of their students could do everything well without

any help from the school.

For example, the school had a famous band that was always among the tops in the

yearly inter-school competition. In addition to having a designated teacher who facilitated

its practice sessions and trips to events, the school invited an outside instructor to train

the band. From the outside instructor and from workshops they participated as a group,

students learned how to play and manage musical instruments. But, in most cases, their

musical training started well before entering the school. Some had received private piano

lessons since their early childhood and some of them were still having lessons for other

instruments. Due to the great amount of investment required for both the school and the

students, only a limited number of schools could afford to have school bands.

The “choral speaking,” in which an entire class spoke about a topic in chorus,

provided a great opportunity for SMK Taman Raya to showcase the self-discipline and

versatility that exclusively belonged to premier schools. It was a “speech” in which

students showed off their collective articulation in English. It was also a “story telling”

and “drama” – it almost sounded like an “a cappella” version of a radio drama enacted

live on stage. 76 The orchestrated movements and facial expressions, in addition to the

recitation of memorized scripts, required many hours of practice before staging. Because

of the repetitive practice required to achieve a perfect synchronization, some students

even found the preparation process “torturous.” The genre was practiced exclusively by a

small number of urban schools (sekolah bandar) with strong background in the English
76
Although choral speaking was an established genre in SMK Taman Raya, few people knew how it started.
According to the teacher who managed all extra-curricular activities in SMK Taman Raya, choral speaking
was started in the 1980s by one premier school in Kuala Lumpur, then quickly spread to other premier
schools in the city. Later the Ministry of Education, noticing its popularity among premier schools and its
potential educational benefit, developed it into an annual nation-wide inter-school competition.
 248
language. In principle, rural schools (sekolah kampung) could participate in the

competition, but, in practice, teachers in rural schools had little experience in the genre,

let alone having the special know-how related to its preparation and performance. In

contrast, SMK Taman Raya students, especially those from SK Taman Raya and other

primary schools with similar background, had several years’ of exposure to choral

speaking even before entering the school. Until they could actually participate in a choral

speaking after entering Standard Four (the fourth year in primary school), they spent their

recess observing practice session of school representatives and having fun mimicking

gestures and facial expressions of their seniors. Through the long time they spent in

premier schools and their feeder schools, they gradually acquired the articulate speech in

English, confident attitude, and disciplined body movements required for the speech in

unison.

On Hari Anugerah Cemerlang (the prize-giving day or speech day), the school staged

its “culture of excellence” in a series of performances. In addition to acknowledging

students great achievement in curricular and extra-curricular activities, the event

showcased the meticulous and effective administration of the school, the proper dress,

speech and etiquette required for its members, and the students’ talents in various artistic

genres. In front of the invited parents and special guests, students showed off their

academic excellence, discipline, cultural versatility that could hardly be achieved by

children of poor families in inner-city schools due to the dearth of linguistic, cultural,

social, and economic resources.

In the early Saturday morning, students lined up in front of the school gate and waited

for the guests to arrive. Upon the arrival of the guest of honor and previous
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headmistresses, a group of students playing gombak (a Malay hand drum) and holding

manggar (a glittering decoration in a palm tree shape) escorted them to the assembly hall.

The former headmistresses, all of whom were Indian Christians, were dressed in elegant

and colorful saris. The current headmistress, a Chinese Christian lady, matched a

Chinese-style blouse with a long black skirt. All other teachers put on batik clothes of

various designs that all employees in government institutions were required to wear on

Saturdays. 77 The headmistress delivered the opening speech in Bahasa Malaysia, which

was prepared to satisfy the highest standard of elegance and sophistication in the use of

the language. She moved on the stage with great formalities in Malay-style: when guest

speakers walked to the podium to give speeches, she escorted them with her upper body

lowered and her hands guiding their foot steps. In the prize giving ceremony, students

with excellent performance in their school subjects, extra-curricular activities, and inter-

school sports games were called up to the stage to receive their prizes. Once on stage, the

girls, neatly dressed in uniforms, followed their training in ladylike etiquette. Receiving

their prizes, they slightly bent their knees, smiled at the headmistress, and exchanged

small talks with her – just as the competitors in a beauty pageant would do.

The entire program was accompanied by the music of the school’s own gamelan

orchestra playing instruments with the Taman Raya logo engraved. The stage for the

gamelan orchestra was decorated with fresh flowers and plants instead of cheap faux

plants. The artistic performances after the prize-giving ceremony included traditional

dances of Malay, Chinese and Indian styles (which expressed the school’s appreciation of

the multiculturalism in Malaysian society), a drama in Bahasa Malaysia (In the comedy

77
The rule was introduced to promote the textile industry in Malaysia, especially the production of
“traditional” textile.
 250
that depicted a Malay princess’s search for her spouse, students staged the language and

costumes of a Malay royal court. It was performed by the students of one class who also

prepared the script and costumes), and a choral speaking in English. The finale of the

entire event was celebrated by the famous SMK Taman Raya brass band.

The event presented the “culture” and “tradition” that, on the one hand, integrate the

members of SMK Taman Raya and, on the other, distinguish them from students in other

public schools. To be among the “insiders” of SMK Taman Raya, students had to acquire

the personality, character and ethos as guided by the school’s “tradition.” At the same

time, the “insiders” believed that it was hard, if not impossible, for the students of other

schools to follow their model of the glamorous, modern, and urban girls with academic

excellence, open mind, self discipline, and cultural versatility. Despite its relative

blindness to racial differences and the emphasis on civic consciousness, the “tradition of

excellence” symbolized the social distinctions between the “model citizens” and the

masses, rather than a principle of inclusion and unity of all citizens.

5. Elitist Imagination of Nation and the Moral Politics of Class

The different experiences of “nation” between the inner-city school (SMK Jalan

Limau) and the elite school (SMK Taman Raya) suggest that nationalization does not

homogenize the citizens of a state but produces structured distinctions and

discriminations among them. The ambiguity in the government definition of nation,

containing both inclusive and exclusive principles, allowed multiple imaginations of

nation that are compatible with the definition. However, the multiple imaginations,

originating from people’s different historical and social experiences, do not have the same
 251
moral authority. The elite version of nationalist imagination in so-called “premier

schools,” once suppressed by the populist imagination focusing on the interest of the

Malay race, gains new moral authority by connecting with ideologies of globalization.

While criticizing the ethnic division, poor academic achievement, and discipline

problems in regular public schools for the masses (or “Malay schools”) the government

argues that special public schools for the elite (or “premier schools”) provide the model

that all public schools should follow. The recent promotion of English does not define the

language just as the tool of communication and knowledge acquisition required by

globalization. It also defines the language as the medium of academic excellence, civic

consciousness, and cosmopolitanism. The moral politics of class operates through

English, when the voice of promoting English valorizes the virtues that it allegedly stands

for, while ignoring its historical role in the formation of exclusive elite class in colonial

and postcolonial Malaysia.

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Chapter Seven

Normative Bilingualism: Unity in the National Language, Distinction in English

1. Linguistic Nationalization in a “Premier School”

In chapter six, I discussed that the alleged “excellence” of the premier schools over

others is often explained in terms of ambiguous concepts such as “culture” and

“tradition” as well as a relatively clear category of academic excellence. I also showed

that the reproduction of the culture and tradition involved careful reinterpretation of

nationalist education policies to mediate between the school’s pre-national past and

national present. Comparison of the premier school (SMK Taman Raya) with my first

school (SMK Jalan Limau) demonstrates that nationalization of education did not bring

cultural homogeneity to the people, but produced complicated sense of differences among

them.

In this chapter, I discuss how the production and maintenance of “normative

bilingualism” in SMK Taman Raya reflects the school’s constant struggle to defend its

“tradition of excellence” in the middle of linguistic nationalization. Since 1968, the

Malay language was the single official language and the national language of Malaysia.

However, two senior teachers in SMK Taman Raya said that their school had always been

bilingual, adopting both English and Malay as its official languages. The norm was

applied to teachers, students and staffs of the school, regardless of the languages they

spoke at home. They were required to communicate either in Bahasa Malaysia or English

once they came to school, which I call “normative bilingualism.” Though some of them

spoke more than the two required languages, they were discouraged from speaking other

languages including their “ethnic dialects.”

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The linguistic norm exclusive to urban professionals and their children makes their

attitudes toward the revived role of English in schools significantly different from that of

their social and cultural “others.” When English becomes a symbol of cultural and

linguistic distinctions internal to the society, the framework of national vs. global, that

often applies to the studies of English as a “global language,” obtains ideological

functions. Instead of illuminating the politics of race, ethnicity and class related to the

transformation of a colonial language into the “global language,” the framework

emphasizes the discontinuity among the colonial, the national and the global.

Furthermore, when it defines the national and the global as antithetical forces that belong

to different times (i.e. the period of nationalism as the past and the era of globalization as

the present and future), the framework easily combines with moralist claims about

modernization and human progress. The identification of English with globalization (as

opposed to nationalization) ignores the fact that the definition of nation and its legitimate

language and culture have been subject to unsettled debates in Malaysia. The normative

bilingualism and the enthusiasm for the return of English observed in SMK Taman Raya

reflect nationalist imaginations and practices of the English-educated colonial elite and

their descendents.

Why didn’t they let go of English but maintained it, despite their successful

compliance with the norm of the new state language, Bahasa Malaysia? How did English

become included in the short list of socially acceptable languages, despite its historical

identification with British colonization, privilege of colonial elite, and colonial social

inequalities? Where did the people of this school learn to speak English for everyday

conversations, when Malay-medium public schools had been teaching it only as

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compartmentalized knowledge about a foreign language? Considering that English has no

official status in Malaysia, its de facto official-language status in SMK Taman Raya

requires much explanation.

The normative bilingualism in SMK Taman Raya was exceptional rather than normal,

something viable only in a limited number of schools. The exceptional nature of SMK

Taman Raya’s normative bilingualism becomes obvious when compared to the case of an

inner-city school, SMK Jalan Limau. In the school, I could always hear students speaking

various languages such as Tamil, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Malay. Students had different

levels of proficiency in the national language. Among the various “dialect-speaking”

students of the urban poor, teachers could not conveniently assume that students shared

basic proficiency in the national language, let alone using it properly. Furthermore,

teachers found it almost impossible to communicate with students in English. Bahasa

Malaysia was barely shared by students, but still it was the only common language

among them. The situation indicated “normative monolingualism” where only Malay was

considered fully acceptable language, though the norm was often transgressed and

violated by students. 78

What was the position of the government between normative bilingualism and

monolingualism? Contrary to the widespread assumption that governments of

independent states tend to defend their nationalist values against the influence coming

from outside, the Malaysian government maintained ambiguous position regarding the

language issue. Even during the peak of linguistic nationalism, leaders in the government

urged its citizens not to neglect the English language. Furthermore, in the wake of

78
As an exception, English language teachers allowed their students to speak English to them.
 255
reintroducing English into public schools, the Prime Minister proclaimed that the

government’s exclusive support of the national language had failed the young generation

of Malaysians. The ambiguity is related to functional dualism in the elite’s approach to

language, i.e. the idea that the Malay language is the symbol of national identity while the

English language is the tool for national development.

In SMK Taman Raya, a former English-medium elite girls’ school, there was always

pressure to favor English despite the Malay language’s status as the single official

language after the late 1960s. They conformed to the nationalist language policy, but it

did not mean that the importance of English in the school had completely faded away. If

the national language was something that they had to master as responsible citizens,

English gave them an edge over the rest of population by promising social success that

the national language could not. English has served as the symbol of the elite’s social and

cultural superiorities to the masses. Now, with the expectation for the globalizing era

officially promoted by the government, the Malay/English bilingual Malaysians are

lauded as globally competitive “model citizens” who would most contribute to the

country’s future development. In contrast, the normative monolingualism that had been

applied to most non-elite schools got relegated to the value of the past.

The English language’s role for maintaining elite excellence over the rest of

population, however, does not fully explain current predicaments of the national language.

It is also related to the ambiguous role of the national language. Despite its establishment

as the official language of administration and education for Malaysians of diverse ethnic

backgrounds, the Malay language is not considered politically neutral. In the nationalist

language policy, the Malay language was defined primarily as the language of the (once)
 256
disadvantaged “natives.” Meanwhile, most of the urban families who established the

“tradition” of SMK Taman Raya during the colonial period belonged to the category of

the (once) privileged “immigrants.”

The new national language was expected to play a key role in eradicating social and

economic inequalities, but inequalities were defined primarily in terms of

native/immigrant or Malay/non-Malay division. People of both categories were required

to master the national language, but the people of the latter categories had to face the fact

that they could not claim to own the language despite their mastery of it. At the same time,

when both equality and inequality in education were defined in terms of inter-racial

difference or natives/immigrants difference, there was little room for recognizing

inequalities cutting across racial boundaries. The national language was reserved

primarily for the development of “Malays” rather than targeting all those who had been

excluded from the colonial education system. The national language, in the context, was

both the language of common citizenship encompassing both natives and immigrants, and

the language of the native’s customary right in the state.

After nationalization, the number of Malay teachers and students increased in SMK

Taman Raya, that had been previously predominated by non-Malays. The school’s

curricula were revised to better reflect the emphasis on the national language and culture.

The changes in the racial make-up of its students and teachers and in its curricula,

however, did not fundamentally change the role of English in the school. English – which

once marked the linguistic, educational and cultural divisions between colonial elites and

the rest of colonial subjects – now marks the division between urban premier schools and

their “others.” The language also marks the linguistic and cultural gaps between “inner-
 257
circles” and “new-comers” within the premier school and between its non-Malay

members and Malay ones.

To return to the issue of English and the reproduction of social status, can we safely

assume that the Malay/English bilingual students in SMK Taman Raya would benefit

from the recent reinstatement of English? With little doubt, in the face of the abrupt

language shift, people of SMK Taman Raya are in an advantageous position vis-à-vis

those in other schools. However, the high expectation systematically underestimates the

linguistic changes that have occurred in the school over the last three decades. It also

underestimates cultural and social changes that the school has gone through during the

period. In 2005, SMK Taman Raya was neither a mission school with English-speaking

white teachers nor an elite school serving mostly English-speaking urban non-Malay

students. In other words, SMK Taman Raya was no more the English-medium school in

the memories of the old generation elites. In the face of the rising failure rate, teachers

were struggling to maintain the academic standard befitting the school’s fame. Despite

the school’s endeavor to maintain its tradition as an English-medium elite school, during

the period of nationalization, English had turned into a colloquial language, handing a

great part of its educational function over to the national language. Furthermore, despite

the school’s normative bilingualism, some of its new members were yet to become

Malay/English bilinguals.

Before further examining the roles of the two normative languages (Malay and

English) as the markers of social, cultural, and racial differences, I want to discuss the

role of “ethnic dialects” or “mother tongues” that are left out of the school’s linguistic

norm. The near absence of ethnic dialects in SMK Taman Raya shows a contrast to the
 258
case of the inner-city school, SMK Jalan Limau. In the latter, various languages related to

the ethnic backgrounds of students and teachers and the “mother tongues” of different

races played a key role in social networking. Most people in SMK Jalan Limau

considered their “mother tongues” as the essential part of their identities as Chinese,

Indians and Others. In contrast, in SMK Taman Raya, people interpreted the lack of

knowledge in mother tongues or the unwillingness to use them in a multiracial

environment as the characteristic of the “de-racialized” minority who are socially and

culturally superior to the “racialized” masses.

Compared to ethnic dialects and mother tongues presumed to be divisive, the national

language and English, the two components of the linguistic norm in SMK Taman Raya,

seem to serve better for national unity. With the government’s recent promotion of

Bangsa Malaysia as the model for the future of the nation prospering in unity, English

that has little racial identification seems to have advantage as a language of national unity

over the national language that maintains its Malay identification. Furthermore, the

functional dualism in the elite approach to language makes English look indispensable for

the nation’s prosperity in the future. However, the changes that people of both the inner-

city school (SMK Jalan Limau) and the premier school (SMK Taman Raya) were going

through indicate that English is not a magic bullet that promises the unity and prosperity

of the nation in the globalizing world. The reintroduction of English reflects the old

generation elite’s nostalgia for the colonial education as much as the demand of the

globalizing world. The gap between nostalgic memories and the present situations in

schools challenges the urban Malay/English bilinguals who now speak a “deteriorated”

colloquial pidgin English, as well as most Malaysians who are yet to learn to speak
 259
English. Notwithstanding the unexpected results of its reintroduction, English still stands

for the cultural and social differences of the urban elite from the rest of people as it did

during the colonial period.

2. People who do not speak their “mother tongues”

In SMK Taman Raya, I could rarely hear students or teachers speaking languages

related to their various ethnic backgrounds. The near absence of ethnic dialects was partly

because of the school’s normative bilingualism that discouraged students from speaking

them in school. The ban on the use of ethnic dialects goes back to the colonial period

when SMK Taman Raya was an English-medium elite school. School administrators

regarded linguistic diversity among students as an obstacle to students’ progress in school

(Macaulay 1999[1835]:57; Chapter 2). To guarantee the effectiveness of the ban, some

English-medium schools fined or punished students who spoke dialects in school (wa

Thiongo 2003[1981]:72-4; Chapter 6). After independence, when English-medium elite

schools became nationalized and turned into Malay-medium public schools, the Malay

language lost part of its ethnic identification and became the official language. With

linguistic nationalization, languages with non-Malay identifications were officially

removed from curricula. English, which colonial elite believed to be an “a-national

language” or a language without ethnic or racial identification, continued to be used in

former English-medium schools together with the national language.

The school’s proscription, however, was not the only reason behind the near absence

of ethnic dialects in SMK Taman Raya. The majority of non-Malay students in the school

did not have good knowledge in their ethnic dialects. Though some non-Malay students
 260
managed to acquire basics proficiency in their dialects while conversing with their

grandparents at home, most of them were unable to read or write in the language that they

spoke with their grandparents. Did they interpret the loss of ethnic dialect or “mother

tongues” as a loss of their ethnic identities? The concept of mother tongue is confusing,

especially among urban students from English-speaking families. Though one’s mother

tongue is supposed to reflect one’s ethnic background, in reality, the language that those

students used at home with their mothers differed from their supposed mother tongues. 79

The non-Malay students’ lack of proficiency and literacy in their ethnic dialects

bewildered some Malay teachers whose everyday lives were saturated with the Malay

language. Malay students and teachers were not allowed to forget their language, because

it was the national language. Unlike Malays, a Malay teacher said, many non-Malay

students in the school did not know how to speak their “mother tongues.” Non-Malay

students from English-speaking families were also aware of the gap between the language

they were supposed to use as members of ethnic groups and the language they actually

spoke. The linguistic dilemma experienced by Puan Shanti, an English-speaking Indian

teacher, and her son provides a good example of how people deal with the gap. According

to the teacher, her son once asked whether he could be considered a real “Indian.”

Despite his Indian ancestry, his spoken Tamil was fluent only enough to have simple

conversation with his grandparents. He could neither read nor write in Tamil. He took his

lack of knowledge in Tamil, the presumed mother tongue of his family, as a partial denial

of his Indian-ness. However, the awareness was not followed by attempts to “recover” his

79
Despite ethnic and linguistic diversities, Mandarin is often dubbed as the “mother tongue” of the Chinese
race and Tamil as the mother tongue of the Indians race in Malaysia. The belief in the correspondence
between a race and a language also applies to the Malay language when people argue that it primarily
belongs to the Malay race.
 261
mother tongue and his Indian-ness. For many non-Malay students, parents, and teachers

of SMK Taman Raya, the loss was not to be bitterly lamented, though not to be proud of

either.

Neither parents nor students found strong motivations to “re-acquire” their mother

tongues. According to Puan Shanti, because her son lived with his grandma, he roughly

understood what she said in Tamil. The teacher suspected that if her son really wanted to

learn Tamil, he could easily learn it. But she told me that she had never really tried to

teach him Tamil. Surrounded by English-speaking urban professional families, they did

not have much chance to use the language. Neither did they experience severe social

isolation or moral accusation that English-speaking students and teachers in the inner-city

school experienced. Some English-speaking non-Malay teachers would say that if they

ever decide to teach their children how to speak, read, and write in their mother tongues,

they would make their children learn its standard forms, not its colloquial versions widely

used in Malaysia. For them, their mother tongues existed in “degraded” non-standard

forms in a country where they lived as “immigrants.” The limited use of their ancestors’

languages in Malaysian society primarily for intra-ethnic socialization did not seem to

attract urban professionals to actively claim the “rights” to their mother tongues.

The normative bilingualism or the ban on the use of ethnic dialects, therefore, was

practiced in SMK Taman Raya as a “linguistic etiquette” rather than as an oppressive rule.

The principle of normative bilingualism was rarely articulated by teachers. No one really

told students to speak some languages and not to speak others, but everybody in the

school was expected to know the principle and follow it. On the rare cases when it was

articulated, as done by the former headmistress several years ago in an assembly, the
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emphasis was given to the idea that ethnic dialects are languages not understood by all

members of the school. But if the norm was only to guarantee the transparency of

speeches in the multi-ethnic environment of the school, why did many of its students stop

trying to speak their “mother tongues” even when they were away from the school? How

could they assume that English, which is not an official language of the state, was

understood by all, while other non-official languages were not?

The near absence of ethnic dialects in the school did not just serve the practical goal

of facilitating communication in the multi-ethnic school. Taman Raya students’ weak

loyalty to their mother tongues, together with the blurred racial boundaries revealed in

their dresses, religious practices and patterns of socialization, shows how they make

linguistic and cultural distinctions from their social “others.” The normative bilingualism

is a sign that shows what kind of persons they are. It is a part of their cosmopolitanism,

their emphasis on unity, and their “culture of excellence.” The “culture” should be

examined within the social and historical conditions that allowed them to go without their

“mother tongues.” Why some people consider the unwillingness to speak one’s “mother

tongue” as a cosmopolitan virtue, while others interpreted it as a proof of

presumptuousness, arrogance, and the denial of one’s ethnic identity? Is the difference

merely a reflection of cosmopolitanism vs. ethnic nationalism in their minds?

The different attitudes toward “mother tongues” in the two schools –a premier school

for urban professionals and an inner-city school for the urban poor – show the problems

with the current discussions regarding “language rights” (Phillipson 1992). Language

rights are often considered as owned by ethnic groups, thus “language becomes an

allegory of ethnic identity” (Whiteley 2003:712). But, how can we understand the
 263
existence of Indian- and Chinese- (and very rarely Malay-) Malaysians with little

knowledge of their mother tongues? Do the English-speaking Indians, Chinese, and

Malays voluntarily surrender their “rights” to maintain their mother tongues? To begin

with, do they consider the use of their mother tongues as an indispensable part of their

rights as human beings?

The defense of “language rights” can have different implications depending on the

political, social, and historical contexts of articulating the idea. In other words, “different

kinds of ‘rights’ to language respond to different sociocultural formations” (Haviland

2003:765). Consider, for example, the racialization of mother tongues in the containment

policy of the British colonial administration that forced colonized people (with a few

exceptions) to live in the social boundary of “their own languages” (Chapter 2).

Assuming a patronizing attitude, colonial officers rationalized their containment policy

by arguing that it reflected their respect for the “language rights” of their subjects

(Mamdani 1996:5). Contrary to the assumed colonial endeavor to widely spread English

in its colonies (cf. Macaulay’s Minute), the oppressive power was wielded in Colonial

Malaya by keeping English within the small circle of colonial functionaries. Despite the

Anglist vision of making “white men” out of natives, not so many natives were actually

allowed to become like “white men.” In the context, language rights, at least for some,

meant the right to learn the language of the British and incorporating it as a marker of

their privilege; a symbol of their superiority over other colonized people; and a badge of

their identity as de-racialized urban subjects.

Even nowadays, instead of being a lamentable loss, the lack of knowledge in one’s

mother tongue is often interpreted as the characteristic of people with high economic
 264
status and social privilege. The elite’s preference for English is partly due to their

personal and family inclinations as affluent urban residents who seek their occupational

niche in the English-speaking sections of the city. However, the meaning they attach to

the intra-ethnic language division – between the Malay/English-bilinguals and the

dialect-speakers – moves beyond the usefulness of each language in society. 80 Though

the bilinguals do not seek to deny their ethnic backgrounds, they believe that they are

“persons of a different kind” from the dialect-speaking masses with the same ethnic

background.

For example, in SMK Taman Raya, there was a girl with an Indian father and a

Chinese mother. She spoke neither Tamil (presumably her father’s mother tongue) nor

Chinese (presumably her mother’s mother tongue), but always used English. Another girl

in the class, whose father was the president of a car-import company, spoke English most

of the time in school. Though both of her parents were Chinese, neither the student nor

her parents knew how to speak Chinese. The two students’ homeroom teacher, Puan Laili,

attributed the “loss” of their mother tongues to the common educational background of

their parents. Students’ heavy dependence on English, according to the teacher, was a

good indicator that their parents had probably been educated in foreign countries. Even

after returning to Malaysia, the foreign-educated were inclined to communicate in

English instead of switching back to their “mother tongues.”

Puan Laili, a Malay teacher who was a Taman Raya “old girl” and spoke fluent

English, made further generalization about the background of students and the language

they spoke. She argued that there were two types of students: “middle-class” students

80
The division reflects a spectrum of different linguistic repertoire rather than representing two distinctive
groups.
 265
who speak English and socialize with students from different ethnic backgrounds; and

“poor” students who speak mother tongue and clique. According to her, for example,

parents who sent their children to schools in new upper-middle-class residential areas in

the suburb, such as Petaling Jaya and Hartamas, were mostly high-income professionals

speaking primarily in English. The dichotomy of the rich (middle class) and the poor also

emerged in my conversation with Puan Khoo who taught a “remove class” in the inner-

city school – a class for non-Malay-speaking students who failed Bahasa Malaysia in

UPSR (Ujian Pencapaian Sekolah Rendah: Primary School Achievement Test). The

multilingual teacher, proficient and literate in Malay, English, and Mandarin, was

struggling to bridge the gap between the school’s linguistic norm and the linguistic

repertoire of her students who were mostly Chinese students from Mandarin-medium

primary schools. She asked me whether the students of SMK Taman Raya also

experienced difficulties adapting to the national language. When I told her about non-

Malay students in SMK Taman Raya who were good at both Malay and English, she

immediately concluded that the tendency was related to their families’ “high socio-

economic status.” In contrast, the students of her remove class in the inner-city school

were on the bottom side of the socio-economic spectrum.

On top of being used as an indicator of parents’ job, economic status, and socializing

pattern, the dependency on one’s “mother tongue” or the distance from it was also

interpreted in terms of two oppositional themes: “traditional” vs. “modern.” In Malaysia,

I often had uncomfortable encounters with Chinese-speaking taxi drivers and

shopkeepers. They often took me as a Chinese-Malaysian and expected me to speak

either in Mandarin or Cantonese (which is widely spoken in Kuala Lumpur area).

 266
Because I understood neither of them, I had to ask them to speak Malay or English.

Though most of them had at least minimal proficiency in Malay, if not in English, they

would get upset about me, a Chinese-looking patron who did not understand Chinese but

spoke Malay. When I expressed frustration about the situation, Puan Parnjit, an English-

speaking Punjabi teacher, tried to relieve my concerns saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay. You

look modern. You don’t look traditional.” But is it really okay for a “modern-” looking

Chinese-Malaysian being unable to speak Chinese? If a “mother tongue” or an ethnic

language is an indispensable part of one’s identity and human right, how could it be

“okay” not being able to speak one’s mother tongue? Furthermore, what makes the

distance from “one’s own language” the indicator of a person’s high socio-economic

status, professional job, and “modern” mindset?

The series of dichotomies reflected neither a mere description of their observation nor

universal categories of evaluation shared by all members of society. They reflected the

assumptions of Malay/English bilinguals regarding those who had to or inclined to

depend on their “mother tongues.” They did not link the dependency to the concept of

“right” but that of “stigma,” especially when it does not come with the mastery of both

the national language and English.

3. The National Language: Bahasa Malaysia or Bahasa Melayu?

The current students and teachers of this former English-medium elite school have a

good mastery of the national language regardless of their “races.” The fact seems to

demonstrate that the national language successfully transformed itself from the language

of Malays to the language of Malaysians. While the use of non-Malay “ethnic dialects” or
 267
“mother tongues” was discouraged by the school, a proper use of the Malay language

formed an important part of the school’s normative bilingualism. However, the status and

the role of the national language were subject to different interpretations in the school as

well as in society. Both Malays and non-Malays in the school still bear and practice the

belief that the national language primarily belongs to Malays.

The ambiguous and contested status of the Malay language shows some important

difference from the assumed dominance of state languages discussed in many studies

(Anderson 1983; Bourdieu 1991; Blommaert 1999). In the following, I argue that the

contradictions within the definition of the national language, as well as the persisting

importance of English, contributed to its ambiguous status. Linguistic nationalization did

not mean the replacement of a colonial language with a national language, but

superimposition of a new linguistic discipline to the existing one. The unity and

cosmopolitanism among the students and teachers of post-independence generation in

SMK Taman Raya was practiced in the national language as well as English, and the

school’s normative bilingualism became part of its “tradition of excellence.” English,

however, still stands for unity within unity, separating the inner-circle from the rest of the

school members.

Bahasa Malaysia: the Language of Citizenship

In SMK Taman Raya, “non-Malays” spoke the Malay language as fluently as

“Malays.” Furthermore, in the language, they produced academic achievements as good

as, or even better than those of Malays. The amazing degree of its shared-ness in the

former English-medium elite school may seem to exemplify a successful postcolonial

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linguistic nationalization: the success of the national language as the language of

citizenship and national unity. However, does the share-ness really mean that the

independent state finally succeeded in overcoming the racial categorization of the

colonial subjects and creating linguistic homogeneity within the territorial boundaries?

During the colonial period, the high social status of the urban elites came from their

exposure to English-medium education. As a result, around the time of independence,

some intellectuals lamented the broken Malay used by the English-educated Malays and

non-Malays (Fernando 1970:5). The post-independence generation of Malaysians with

good education can now speak the Malay language properly. For the new generation,

whether they are Malays or non-Malays, mastering the standardized Malay language is an

important part of discipline as citizens. The connection people make between a good

mastery of the national language and a high socio-economic status demonstrates that the

language has successfully penetrated into urban professionals. It is no more a language of

rudimentary education for rural Malays. A Malay language teacher, Puan Azizah,

acknowledged that students of SMK Taman Raya used Malay of a good standard. For a

primary reason, she pointed out that the school catered to students mostly from families

of “high SES” or high socio-economic standard, including girls from royal families and

daughters of high-rank government officials and corporate managers. 81

One teacher said it is natural for the students to have a high level proficiency in Malay,

because they had to use it almost all their time in school. Because students had been

learning most subjects in Malay, she said, even an English-speaking student sometimes

81
Though the term “socio-economic standard” sounds like a technical term for social scientists, it was
widely used by teachers to describe family backgrounds of their students. Instead of the full term, teachers
often used its acronym.
 269
had to switch from English to Malay in the middle of speech to accurately express their

thoughts. However, if it is an expected consequence of enforcing the use of one official

language, why should people attribute mastery of the language to a high socio-economic

status? While appreciating the success in SMK Taman Raya, it should not be ignored that

linguistic nationalization was not equally successful everywhere. The success depended

on many exceptional conditions that the school did not share with other schools. The

conditions cannot be reduced to the excellent linguistic adaptability of students, the

effectiveness of administration and instruction by staffs and teachers, or the “culture of

excellence” that is supposed to encompass all the good qualities.

The similarities in students’ economic, social and education backgrounds indicate that

significant part of their unity and common “culture” came from their experience before

joining SMK Taman Raya. The school screened applicants based on complicated criteria

that included academic performance. Not surprisingly, the highly motivated students from

urban professional families were serious about doing well in school and following school

norms. Furthermore, the majority of students came from a few Malay/ English bilingual

primary schools including the feeder school, SK Taman Raya.

As the case of the integration day showed (Chapter 6), SMK Taman Raya put a

special emphasis on the proper use of the national language. The school did not allow the

use of colloquial Malay in public spaces and occasions, because the administrators and

teachers believed that it contradicted with the school’s “tradition of excellence” and its

unique “culture.” In contrast with the inner-city school where many students were yet to

acquire basic communication skills in the national language, SMK Taman Raya’s

students were encouraged to excel others in the national language, as they did in
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academic performance, sports games, drama competitions, and English. If, in the past,

English mediated the common culture among the members of Taman Raya, now, the

national language also plays a similar role.

The current success in SMK Taman Raya, however, contradicts with one of the post-

independence government’s initial objectives to adopt Malay as the national language:

defining Malaysia as a Malay nation-state and establishing Malay predominance in the

state. In addition to symbolizing the Malay identity of the country, the language was

supposed to serve as a tool for socially and economically advancing the underdeveloped

“Malay race.” Little expected at the beginning of the linguistic nationalization was that

English-educated urban Malays and non-Malays, not the Malay-speaking rural Malays,

would have the highest degree of mastery in the new “national literacy.” 82

In the state system of “ethnically differentiated citizenship” (Hefner 2001:28),

mastering the national language and making a great academic achievement in the

language could not make “non-Malays” equally legitimate citizens as “Malays.” Within

the racial quota system adopted by the government to boost the effect of pro-Malay social

restructuring, the educational qualifications in the national language were

disproportionately connected to college admission and government hiring according to

“race.” 83 The assumption of natural relationship between the Malay language and the

Malay race left little room for fully recognizing linguistic assimilation by non-Malays.

Despite the increased importance of the national language for the lives of most

82
Heller (2003) points out the dilemma in linguistic policies based on the idea of “nation-state.” The
dilemma comes from the discrepancy between the boundaries of a “nation” defined in terms of ethnicity
and language and the territorial boundaries of a “state.” For example, the official promotion of the French
language in Quebec could not prevent non-French Anglophones from acquiring English/French
bilingualism.
83
Every year, after public universities give admissions, newspapers report multiple cases about non-Malay
students who received perfect scores in the national exam but could not save spots in public universities.
 271
Malaysians, at the end of their school days, non-Malays had to depend on other languages

as well as the national language. If non-Malays in inner-city schools turned to their

mother tongues, non-Malays in urban premier school turned to English. The people on

each side of the division saw different educational and job opportunities awaiting them.

In the circumstance that public universities and government jobs were primarily reserved

for Malays, the mother-tongue-speaking section of ethnic minorities depended on intra-

ethnic connections and small business opportunities. To the contrary, the English/Malay

bilingual among ethnic minorities sought their opportunities in foreign or private

universities and major private enterprises prospering in the city center. 84 Between the

split, the national language partly remained reserved for the recognition and improvement

of “Malays.”

Bahasa Melayu: the Language of Malays

The unprecedented shared-ness of the national language among people of diverse

ethnic backgrounds in SMK Taman Raya does not mean that it lost its meaning as a

marker of differences between Malays and non-Malay and between “natives” and

“immigrants.” The racially defined limitations to linguistic assimilation (that Chinese and

Indians, however fluently they speak the national language, cannot become equal

Malaysians as Malays) exemplifies the conflict between the model of nation-state

84
The establishment of private colleges in the early 1990s opened doors to English-medium higher
education for Malaysian students. Those colleges became especially popular among urban non-Malays who
had limited access to public universities and were not affluent enough to seek college education overseas.
Some of the private colleges are owned by Malaysian conglomerates (e.g. Sunway) and some others are
branches of foreign universities from Australia and Britain (e.g. Monash). Popularity of private colleges in
urban bilingual schools is attested by the presence of posters and boards advertising special programs of
private colleges. SMK Taman Raya had several advertising boards hanging close to the entrance to the staff
room.
 272
(Malaysia as the state for the “Malay nation”) and the model of multiracial state

(Malaysia as the state encompassing several different races). The continued debates about

the proper name of the national language show that the conflict is far from being resolved

after thirty years of linguistic nationalization.

Malay language teachers that I interviewed in both schools commonly insisted that

Bahasa Melayu should be the official name of the national language. One of them, Puan

Azizah, even suspected that people who preferred the term Bahasa Malaysia had an

ulterior motive of denying Malay ownership of the national language. According to her,

the Constitution (Article 152) stipulates the Malay ownership of the language and the

constitutional principle cannot be changed. She argued that when the Ministry of

Education once tried to perpetuate the term Bahasa Malaysia, “many people did not

accept (ramai orang tak terima)” the idea, thus the name was changed back to Bahasa

Melayu in three or four years. Contrary to her belief, in fact, the term Bahasa Malaysia

was officially used for eighteen years between 1969 and 1986 and reinstated in 2007.

The persistent preference of one term over the other could also be found on the other

side. Many publications, including newspaper articles and reference books, kept using the

term Bahasa Malaysia even after 1986 when Bahasa Melayu was the official term. Puan

Azizah tried to debunk the continued use of Bahasa Malaysia, arguing that the term’s

wide use merely reflected its users’ ignorance as non-specialist in educational and

linguistic issues. She tried to strengthen her argument by contrasting Malaysian case to

Indonesian situation. According to her, the Indonesian language (Bahasa Indonesia)

cannot be called Bahasa Melayu, because the majority of people speaking the language
 273
85
are not “Malays.” For her, Bahasa Melayu is the right term in Malaysia, just because

the majority of its speakers are “Malays.” After her remarks, she cautioned me that she

did not mean to imply any racial discrimination by her racial identification of the national

language. She maintained that it was “natural” for her to support the term Bahasa Melayu,

because similar decisions were made by many European countries, including Germany

where the majority of population is German and their language is also called German.

If the national language is still identified with the “Malays,” what is the language of

“non-Malays”? In SMK Taman Raya, where most non-Malays did not speak their mother

tongues, English was often identified as the language of non-Malays. The rules that

students applied to their language choices show how they practice the linguistic

distinction of race. The followings are some of the answers that students gave when I

asked them to write about how they distinguish the use of different languages.

Mostly I will choose to speak in English with my friends because my closest friends are
non-Malay. (A Malay girl from the feeder school, SK Taman Raya)
I speak Malay to my Malay friends and English to the others.
(A Malay girl from SK TR)
I will speak in Malay with most of my Malay friends and English with most of my
Chinese and Indian friends. (A Malay girl who did not identify her primary school)

With non-Malays I speak English and with Malays I speak Malay.

(An Indian girl from a Tamil primary school)
I only speak Malay during Malay lessons and to Malay speaking friends.
(A mixed Indian girl from SK TR)
I am more comfortable speaking English to Chinese and Indian friends. I choose to
speak Malay to my Malay friends because I feel [it] is more suitable for both of us.
(A Chinese girl who did not identify her primary school)

The answers from both Malay and non-Malay students show the identification of the

Malay language with Malays and English with non-Malays. However, the racial

85
For more information about Indonesia’s linguistic nationalization, see Errington 1998, 2000, 2008.
 274
identification of Malay and English does not mean that the distinction is interpreted as the

relationship between two races (Malays and non-Malays) and two languages with equal

status. The implication of the racial identification gets even more complicated by

incorporating the sense of hierarchy. The following two examples show that some

students connect the use of the Malay language to a “deficiency” in English. The second

example also reflects the idea that it is mostly Malays who suffer from the “deficiency.”

I speak English to most of my friends and Malay to those who are not fluent in
English. (A Chinese girl from SK TR)

[It] depend[s] on my friends. If I talk to Chinese or Indian (and sometimes Malays [if
they] really know [how to] speak English) I speak more in English. If I talk to Malay, I
speak in Malay then. (A Malay girl from SK TR)

The rules that SMK Taman Raya students apply to decide a “more suitable” language for

each conversation reflect the different implications of incorporating the national language

for Malays and non-Malays. Among urban non-Malays professionals, the acceptance of

the official linguistic norm despite its Malay identification is considered as the proof that

they are “modern” and “de-racialized” Chinese or Indians who are exposed to the

multicultural environment of the urban center. Allegedly, they are different from the

“traditional” Chinese or Indians in the rural areas who socialize within the racial

boundaries and speak exclusively in their own dialects. They are also different from non-

Malays in the inner-city areas who are slow to acquire the national language. The urban

non-Malay professionals, well-versed in both the national language and English,

represent themselves as responsible “model citizens” who take the norms of state

institutions seriously, have the willingness to transcend their racial parochialism, and

have successfully mastered the linguistic etiquette of a multilingual society.

For Malays, their mastery of the national language is taken for granted. Although they
 275
have to work hard to master the standardized Malay language, it is considered something

already within them. Being the symbol of Malay identity, the national language does not

enable them to transcend their racial identification and become model citizens with

cosmopolitan values. Rather, their hard work to master the language becomes a

confirmation of race-language link. The identification of the national language as the

mother tongue of Malays neglects the gap between the standard Malay (the national

language) and various styles of colloquial Malay. Despite the widespread idea that Malay

is an easy language, even native Malay-speaking teachers had to ask the help of Malay

language teachers to assist their children’s homework for Bahasa Malaysia classes.

The episode of the integration day (Chapter 6) shows that Malay students’ relative

familiarity to colloquial Malay may work against them. In the integration drama played in

Malay, the roles of villains were acted by Malay students who could manage stylized

Malay language. Although the stylization was to add reality to the drama, SMK Taman

Raya’s administrators and teachers accused their use of colloquial Malay as a threat to the

school’s “tradition of excellence.” 86 Malay language teachers perceived the wide use of

the “corrupted and coarse speech” in Malay-language television programs as a major

obstacle to their duty as the agents of linguistic regulation (cf. Bourdieu 1991:45-6). The

school’s goal of outperforming other schools in linguistic discipline, as they aspire to

outperform them in every field they engage in, gave an extra burden to the Malay

language teachers. Malay students’ extensive exposure to colloquial Malay did not

necessarily made them better in the national language classes, but often made them the
86
Did the stylization involve “an artistic image of another’s language” as in Bakhtin’s (1981:362)
discussion, or reflect the everyday language of students as some teachers suspected? Whatever the answer
is, the headmistress interpreted the “rough” language and the students who use such language as a “threat”
to the “tradition of excellence.” For more discussion about the importance of stylization for linguistic
studies of class differences, see Rampton (2006:224-7).
 276
target of linguistic corrections.

The obstacle to successful linguistic discipline, however, was not limited to the

influence of colloquial Malay spoken on streets and in television programs. The challenge

also came from Malay-language newspapers that contained plenty of ungrammatical

sentences, and from the old generation elite who spoke broken Malay (with frequent

switches between Malay and English). Malay teachers complained that, rather than

providing good example for student to learn good essay-writing skills, Malay newspapers

had many sentences with grammatical errors that students should avoid making in their

public exams. The speeches of powerful politicians broadcasted on TV often revealed

their lack of strict discipline in the national language. When the topic of conversation

turned into the widespread neglect of the national language by elites, teachers lamented

that ultimately their students might not be fully responsible for their broken Malay, but

they were just learning from its rampant neglect in society.

The success of the national language as the language of citizenship was only a partial

one in limited contexts. Furthermore, the success did not stop the national language being

the language of Malays. Even among Malays, the language’s authority was challenged by

educational, economic, social, and generational gaps among them. The authority of the

national language was far from being “domination,” the power that some sociolinguists

wrongly assign to the national languages that are standing on shaky political and social

grounds (Bourdieu 1991; Blommaert 1999; For criticism about the general tendency of

assuming domination of the state power, cf. Abrams 1988). The urban professionals

insisted on being Malay/English bilinguals rather than turning completely to the national

language.
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4. The Questionable Shared-ness of English

I have discussed the argument that English is politically neutral and free from racial

or ethnic identifications, which is commonly made by Malaysian elites and the scholars

of “global English(es).” The non-Malay identification of English in SMK Taman Raya,

however, reflects the influence of both the colonial education policy based on the racial

distinction between “natives” and “immigrants” and the post-independence education

policy based on the idea of Malaysia as a Malay nation-state. But who are the non-

Malays identified with English? The situation in SMK Jalan Limau clearly shows that

most non-Malay students in the inner-city school do not identify themselves with English.

Contrary to the argument that English is free from ethnic or racial identification, thus

politically neutral and beneficial for national unity, the language mediates both racial and

class divisions within post-independence Malaysia.

The normative bilingualism in SMK Taman Raya, that the members are expected to

speak both Malay and English fluently and speak only the two languages in school, is

based on the assumption that both languages are shared by all members of the school. As

teachers point out, the bilingual norm is uniquely owned by SMK Taman Raya and other

small number of schools that cater to the children of highly-educated professionals in

urban areas. How could they maintain the exclusive normative bilingualism, while other

public schools could expect its members to share only one language, the national

language?

The de facto bilingualism of SMK Taman Raya helped students to maintain and

improve their proficiency in English, but did not create it from scratch. The school’s
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curricula was basically common with national curricula adopted by all public secondary

schools and it was designed to teach English as a language subject rather than to use it as

a medium language of delivering thoughts and knowledge. It was ultimately an individual

responsibility to learn how to communicate in English. Many SMK Taman Raya students

were exposed to English-speaking environments even before their enrollment in the

school. They acquired English first from their families, kindergartens, and pre-schools.

For parents, especially those who do not speak English as the first language, it is a costly

enterprise to teach their children how to communicate in English. To provide their

children with an exposure to English-speaking environment, some parents send their

children to English-medium private pre-schools and kindergarten. What characterizes the

English-medium private institutions of early education is not just its medium language of

instruction. They charge high fees and promise a premium service with individual care

and attention. 87 On top of some students’ early childhood education in English, more than

half of the students in SMK Taman Raya came from the feeder school (SK Taman Raya)

or other de facto bilingual primary schools in the urban area.

The influx of students who had been already exposed to English-speaking

environments helped SMK Taman Raya to maintain its “tradition” as a former English-

medium elite school. However, as I have discussed earlier, nationalization not only

changed the school’s curricula, dress code, and religious practice, but also its members’

relationship to the English language. Though SMK Taman Raya considered English as a

de facto official language, in fact, it had neither the status of an official language nor that

87
The English-medium kindergarten where one of the teachers enrolled her daughter charged the basic
monthly tuition of RM 190 with extra charges for after-hour classes and shuttle buses. It is more than forty
times more expensive than the tuition for a public secondary school (RM 27 per semester).
 279
of the national language in Malaysia. Some significant number of people still speak

English, but (1) the elite school no more provide the environment of immersion in

English, (2) English’s role as a medium of delivering knowledge has decreased, and (3)

there are increasing number of students and teachers who are not familiar with English.

Making Divisions through English

Most students in SMK Taman Raya had a high level of proficiency in the national

language. A relatively smaller, but still significant number of students were good at

reading and writing in English, which is an important subject in the national exam.

Attending a school run in both the national language and English, most students had the

ability to exchange simple conversations in English, but not all of them felt comfortable

with their spoken English. The unequal distribution of proficiency in English (despite of

the school’s normative bilingualism) produced a language etiquette specific to a

Malay/English bilingual environment. By avoiding the use of English in front of persons

who may not fully understand it, people prevented possible communication breakdowns

that could embarrass others. The etiquette, however, was not always practiced based on

the accurate knowledge about the linguistic repertoire of others but assumptions about it,

often reproducing stereotypical connections among people’s appearances, life patterns,

and their languages. The practice of the etiquette was also the process of locating the

social “others” among the members of the premier school that used to be an English-

medium elite school.

When I joined SMK Taman Raya, I conveniently assumed that students and teachers

should speak fluent English. It was what I heard about the school before arriving there.
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Also, it was what several teachers I first met in SMK Taman Raya (headmistress, senior

school administrators, and English teachers) told me to expect. However, it did not take

long before I realized how insensitive it was to assume that English was safely shared by

all members of the premier school. Though the school claims to own the English

language, there was a significant gap between the normative Malay/English bilingualism

and the reality among its members.

On my first day in school, I went to the teacher’s cafeteria to get something to eat. I

did not know how to order foods and pay for them. At that time, two teachers, talking

over foods and drinks, came into my sight. I did not hesitate to approach one of them and

ask her questions in English. The teacher did not reply to my questions, but just turned

her face toward the other teacher. When the second teacher started to speak in English, I

immediately realized what I had done – I had unintentionally forced the first teacher to

reveal her lack of proficiency in English. I switched to Malay to correct my mistake, but

it was already too late.

In teachers’ cafeteria, tables were often divided into English-speaking groups and

Malay-speaking groups. Teachers left or joined tables according to their respective class

schedules and the language of conversations changed according to the shifting

participants. 88 Linguistic transitions were usually smooth, because teachers joined groups

with their close colleagues. During the busiest time in the cafeteria, however, teachers did

not have many choices of seats. The dynamically changing seat arrangements during the

88
Actual divisions were more complicated than this. Bilingual Malay teachers spoke Malay in the presence
of other Malay teachers, but switched to English when they talked with non-Malay teachers. Some Malay
teachers kept silence when they were with a group of English-speaking teachers. Non-Malay teachers,
usually proficient in both Malay and English, spoke English with both Malay and non-Malay teachers who
speak fluent English and Malay with Malay-speaking Malay teachers. Rarely, some Chinese teachers
exchanged short, private, and quiet conversations in Chinese when no non-Chinese teacher was around.
 281
peak time created some awkward moments among them. One day, a group of six people,

five teachers and me, was having a conversation in English. Two of them, sitting in the

middle of the group, left the table to enter classes, causing a pause to the conversation for

a moment. Shortly, two teachers sat on the vacant seats in the middle, not knowing about

the previous conversation. When the talk resumed among the remaining four of the

original group in English, the newly seated teachers neither said anything nor had eye

contacts with others. They quickly and quietly finished their food and left.

What incurred the silence of the teachers? Psychological explanations for the silence

note that it usually involves the sense of shame and anxiety (Chapter 3). A renowned

Malaysian sociolinguist argues that the silence demonstrates the remnant of colonial

“stigma” that should have dissipated after independence. According to former Prime

Minister Mahathir, the silence reflects the “weak personality” of individuals who fear

challenges. He also suggests that the silence mirrors the collective psychological problem

of the “Malay race.” The psychological and racial explanations are also reproduced

among people. For example, one Malay student in the inner-city school told me that the

lack of English proficiency among most Malays was caused by their “strong sense of

shame (perasaan malu tebal).”

Does the cause of the silence, however, really exist in the mind and psychology of

individuals or a “race”? The psychological/racial explanation ignores the gap between the

linguistic requirement for elite membership and the official linguistic norm of the state. It

also neglects the fact that, due to the colonial policy, most urban Malays were relatively

late to join the urban scene and the bilingual environment of former English-medium

urban elite schools. By including a non-official language, the normative bilingualism of

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SMK Taman Raya highlights the difference between the Malay/English bilingualism

among its “inner circle” and the Malay-medium education and training among its “new

members.” Malay-educated teachers and students were expected to do what they were not

trained to do, thus, subject to humiliation. In a morning assembly, one Malay-speaking

teacher had to make an announcement in English in front of students gathered in the hall.

She failed to finish the announcement because of her faltering English and, after the

occasion, she never stepped forward in any school events conducted in English. The

ability to speak the national language was never sufficient to comply with the linguistic

norm of SMK Taman Raya.

One day I was having lunch with a teacher, conversing in Malay. In the middle of the

conversation, another teacher from afternoon session joined our table. Because I spent

most of the time with morning session teachers, some afternoon-session teachers did not

know whether I could speak Malay. Expressing her surprise to find me talking in Malay,

she told me that she had wanted to talk to me for some time, but could not dare to do so.

She suspected that I would not understand her if she spoke Malay, but if she spoke

English, then other people might admonish (tegur) her for her poor English.

Unfamiliarity with English was considered “linguistic deficiency” running against the

“culture” and “tradition” of the school. In contrast, being able to speak good English was

a source of pride. If the linguistic nationalization made Bahasa Malaysia soundly shared

by all members of SMK Taman Raya despite its remaining racial identification, English

became the most important resource for cultural and social distinction among school

members.

The distinction worked most effectively in the area of “spoken English.” According to
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Puan Shanti, an English teacher, getting high scores in English exams was not a big deal

for most Taman Raya students whether they were Malays or non-Malays. SMK Taman

Raya was a “controlled school,” meaning that students had already proved their academic

excellence to secure admissions to the school. Public primary schools taught English as a

subject, but they adopted only one official language (Bahasa Malaysia) as a medium of

instruction and school activities. English exams tested how well students mastered the

materials they learned in English classrooms, not their ability to speak in English.

Therefore, the level of students’ spoken English did not necessarily reflect whether they

worked hard in English classes. Teachers often connected the different levels of spoken

English among students to their social surroundings and personal attitudes.

Teachers depended on some indices to decide their levels of expectation for students

in terms of their spoken English. The items of reference included their socializing pattern,

dress style, current residence, and the location of their hometown. For example, many

teachers had a generalized theory that Malay students who got along with Chinese or

Indian students tended to speak good English. In contrast, they believed that Malay

students who socialized among themselves could not speak English well. Several

bilingual teachers complained that the latter group insisted on speaking Malay all the

time, although they badly needed to practice speaking English to overcome their

“handicap.” One English teacher even suspected that the same group of students might

experience “inferiority complex,” because in English classes (and science and

mathematics classes now conducted in English) they had to remain silent amidst fluent

speakers of English.

According to Puan Shanti, an English teacher, the reluctance to speak English was
 284
widespread among Malay students in general. Some Malay students wrote in their answer

sheets to national exams, in which the teacher would participate as a grader, that they

were not interested in English, they did not want to write in English, or “English is not

my language,” instead of actually answering the questions in English as the exams asked

them to do. She interpreted the examples as the proof of strong anti-English sentiment

among Malays, especially those in Malay-dominant rural schools. Though the tendency

was believed to be less obvious in SMK Taman Raya and a small number of urban

bilingual schools, the Malay students from rural FELDA districts, who usually remained

quite during English classes, were suspected to share the sentiment. Because the same

group of students was also marked by their religious headscarves (tudung), teachers often

assumed that tudung-wearing students, if not always but usually, could not speak English

well. Through the circular references, teachers made connections between the social

environment that taught students to wear headscarf and socialize within racial boundaries

and their unwillingness to speak English.

Does the connection between the proficiency in English and the dichotomies such as

Malays/ non-Malays, rural/ urban, and traditional/ modern (dress) merely reflect the

exiting cultural and social divisions in Malaysian society? The circular references turn the

unequal distribution of spoken English into a matter of cultural traits among certain

groups of people: their mindsets, attitudes, ways of life coming from their earlier

linguistic, social, religious trainings at their homes, in their primary schools, and in their

dormitories. In other words, the varying degree of proficiency in spoken English becomes

an index of some students’ predisposed affinity to the school’s “culture” and “tradition”

and other students’ distance from them.

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Despite the normative bilingualism of SMK Taman Raya that includes English, the

school did not force students to speak English as it forced them to speak the national

language. Instead of challenging the students who would not speak English, teachers

chose to follow the linguistic etiquette of the school – not speaking English to Malays

who might not understand the language. An English teacher said that because the Malay

students from rural areas did not say anything in English classes, she did not know if they

could pronounce English correctly words or finish in-class assignments within the limited

time. To prevent awkward situations that might happen when those students could not

properly respond to her (or could not respond at all), the teacher avoided making them to

read out texts or answer questions. The problem was not just English, but students’

attitudes and ways of life, something that could not be changed by challenging them at

the risk of public humiliation.

During the colonial period, English-medium schools taught students how to speak

English. To guarantee the effectiveness of the teaching, they punished students who failed

to use English in school. After being nationalized, the former English-medium schools

stopped teaching their students how to speak English. However, they still expect their

members to speak the language with little difficulty. Though every student in the country

learns English as an academic subject, they are no more “forced” to use English as a

language of communication in school. Does the change indicate that individuals now

have the freedom to decide whether they would speak English or not? If so, who defines

the tendency of not speaking English as a “linguistic deficiency” or the psychological and

attitudinal problems with individuals or a race and what are the social and political

implications of the definition?

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The definition reflects the “moral politics of class” in which the different linguistic

repertoires among citizens are addressed from the elite’s viewpoint. Premier schools,

such as SMK Taman Raya, used to be the foster institution of the English-educated elite.

They are now receiving new spotlights as the potential foster institution of “model

citizens” with “global competitiveness.” However, despite their claims to own the

English language as a part of their “tradition of excellence,” they are no more responsible

for guaranteeing students to speak English. The change has subjected premier schools to

the charge of “deterioration” and the loss of its past “eminence” and “grandeur.” With the

assumption of English’s share-ness among its members still in place, the blame for the

“deterioration” and “loss” is directed to the “new comers” (or the social “others”) who

made their ways into the former elite institution after its nationalization, but are yet to

incorporate the “tradition of excellence.” Would the new “enforcement” of English, that

started with the reintroduction of English as a medium of instruction, help premier

schools to regain their past eminence and grandeur? The developing situation in SMK

Taman Raya after the reintroduction of English demonstrates the difficulty of undoing the

changes that the nationalization project has introduced to the former English-medium

elite school. It also reveals the blind spots of the colonial nostalgia and global

expectations among the English-educated elite.

5. The Blind Spots of Colonial Nostalgia and Global Expectations

As I have discussed in chapter five, the reaction of people in SMK Jalan Limau to the

introduction of English was characterized by frustration and anxiety. The frustration and

anxiety, however, were not about losing one’s ethnic and national identities as much as
 287
about the difficulty of adapting to the language of their social “others.” In contrast, SMK

Taman Raya welcomed the language shift with excitement and expectations. The

expectation did not come from the “newness” of English to the school, but its connection

to the school’s “tradition.” The school has never considered English as a language of the

social “others” – it was the language that defined its distinctive identity as a former

English-medium elite school. Therefore, the fear of losing their ethnic or national

identities was not a primary issue for them when they had to comply with the language

shift. For the children of affluent urban professionals, ethnic dialects did not account for

an important part of their identities. They have successfully mastered the national

language, but due to the ambiguous status the national language as the symbol of the

native’s customary right and the requirement for citizenship, not all members of the

school considered it as “their language.”

SMK Taman Raya saw the “reintroduction” of English as a key to undoing the

deterioration and loss and revitalizing what they once had. The new policy recognized the

special qualification of its members for the leadership role. They were the first candidates

among the new generation to grow up into “globally competitive citizens,” who would

guarantee the country’s future membership in the “English-speaking world” that includes

most of “developed countries.” Contrary to the widespread assumption that globalization

poses a challenge to local identities, the introduction of “global language” seemed to

reconfirm the school’s special identity.

The belief that SMK Taman Raya is pretty much the same school as it was fifty years

ago, however, reflects the blind spot of colonial nostalgia: a mystified sense of continuity,

constantly denying the changes made to the “tradition of excellence.” The reintroduction
 288
of English only highlights the changes that happened to the English-speaking urban

professionals and their English/Malay bilingual offspring. Students no more learn English

from white men and women, but from their English-speaking parents and locally-

educated English teachers. The new generation is not as much exposed to English as the

old generation. Premier schools as currently experienced by the children of urban

professionals were different from those in the nostalgic memories of the “old boys and

girls.” What was going on with Taman Raya teachers and students in 2005, three years

after the reintroduction of English as a medium of instruction, did not exactly match what

the nostalgic “oldies” expected to happen in their alma mater. Was the gap just another

proof of the “deterioration” and “loss” that the school went through during the period of

nationalization?

SMK Taman Raya, as a premier school, actively incorporated the new policy to teach

science and mathematics in English. As of January 30, 2004 (according to the note at the

left bottom corner of each chart), the old charts in science labs, which were in the

national language, got replaced by the new ones in English. While the new charts were

displayed on the front walls of the labs, the old ones were bundled up and placed at

oblique corners. Chemical storage bottles also gained new white labels in English in

addition to the old labels in the national language that had already discolored. The

language shift among students and teachers, however, was not as simple as displaying

new charts in science labs and putting new labels on chemical storage bottles.

Undoubtedly, Taman Raya students’ early exposure to English-speaking environments

put them in an advantageous position vis-à-vis other students of their ages in other public

schools. Teachers believed that their students were “lucky” as they were already familiar
 289
with the use of English. They felt sure that the students in rural schools would experience

lots of difficulty adjusting to the language shift. Only “premier school” would be able to

comply with the new policy, while “rural schools” would have no option but to continue

teaching in Malay.

Despite the emphasis on its difference from other schools, as a public secondary

school, SMK Taman Raya shared some conditions with them. Most teachers up to their

mid-forties had received their education and training in the national language. For the last

twenty years, Bahasa Malaysia had been the language of teaching science and

mathematics. Though some students were English-speakers at home and even in school,

they had been learning science and mathematics in Bahasa Malaysia from the day they

entered primary schools. The knowledge that they had accumulated in the fields of

science and mathematics was in the national language. While trying to master the

national language and acquire knowledge in the language, English spoken by SMK

Taman Raya students had become significantly colloquialized.

Furthermore, the new textbooks in English, which Taman Raya shared with other

public schools, carried a smaller amount of knowledge than the previous ones in Bahasa

Malaysia. Teachers estimated up to forty percent decrease in the material covered in

textbooks. It meant the “loss” of scientific knowledge among students, instead of the

“gain” that the proponent of the language shift expected English to provide. In addition,

due to the shortage of time for preparation, the new textbooks had editing problems.

Some picture demonstrations did not match the written contents and some explanations

for concepts were not accurate. One teacher also complained that the voice in the

compact discs provided with the new textbooks adopted American English instead of
 290
British English which she thought was more suitable for Malaysian students. However,

the difference between American and British English was a minor issue to students and

teachers who were struggling through the process of language shift from Malay to

English.

In the midst of the shift, neither students nor teachers could settle down with either

English or Malay. Each class required constant switches between the two languages,

though the degree varied according to subjects, teachers, and the composition of students

in class. Even English-speaking students sometimes had to depend on Bahasa Malaysia,

because what they had learned about science and mathematics during their six years in

primary schools was in the national language. Puan Siti Norah, a Malay teacher who

taught mathematics, spoke fluent English. However, she had two different concerns when

teaching in English. One was that students preferred to ask her questions in Malay

because she was a Malay teacher. She feared that if she forced students to ask questions

only in English, some students would rather remain silent than revealing their

“deficiency” in English. But she could not completely resort to Malay either, because

textbooks were already in English and students had to take exams in English. The parents

would also complain if she used too much Malay in class. 89 Both teachers and students

were caught up between the two languages, though the exact contents of their dilemma

were different according to their ethnic backgrounds and their individual positions in

relation to the two languages.

In one morning assembly, the headmistress announced the result of the latest

mathematics exam taken by Form Three students. To the surprise of students and teachers,

89
She spoke mostly in English when I entered her class. She admitted that she felt some pressure to do so
because of my presence, telling me that students might also have felt a little uncomfortable with the change.
 291
as many as 110 students failed the exam, compared to 140 passes. She said it was very

disappointing result, even after considering that Taman Raya’s internal exams were much

tougher that those of other schools. The result was definitely not up to the school’s high

reputation. She harshly scolded the students, asking them to leave the school if they did

not want to work hard. At the moment, an English teacher whispered to me that the high

failure rate was related to the language shift. Form Three students of the year were the

first cohort to have mathematics classes and exams in English.

Puan Laili, a science teacher, was concerned that the situation might get worse when

Form Three students would turn Form Four. Up to Form Three, students learned only

three subjects in English (science, math, and English). The exams they took were mostly

made up of structured questions asking students to select the right answer among multiple

choices, fill up blanks or, at most, writing an answer in one full sentence. From Form

Four on, students would learn seven subjects in English (math, additional math, biology,

physics, chemistry, English for science and technology, and English) and exams would

ask them to write essays more than a paragraph long explaining concepts or describing

biological and experimental processes. The exams in essay forms would test students’

writing ability in English as much as their knowledge the subjects.

The Malay identification of the national language, and the non-Malay identification

of English, and the theme of the competition between Malays and non-Malays also

influenced how people experienced and interpreted the language shift. If Puan Siti Norah,

as a Malay teacher, sympathized with some Malay students who expected her to use

Bahasa Malaysia in class, Puan Laili was concerned that whether Malay students would

fall behind non-Malays in the process of the shift. According to her, even though Malay
 292
students could master English grammar and reading skills if they worked hard, it would

be difficult for them to catch up Indians and Chinese in spoken English. Furthermore, the

latest trend of putting more emphasis on the “presentation” skills in English than on the

ability to read and understand in the language would probably work against Malay

students.

However, Malays were not the only people who received education in the national

language. Even for non-Malays, public schools in Bahasa Malaysia had been much more

accessible than Chinese-medium private schools and the English-medium education in

and outside of the country. The language shift had the effect of disqualifying teachers

educated and trained in the national language and it did not matter whether they were

Malays or non-Malays. The introduction of English, though it is still not an official

language of the state, had the power to endanger the status of people who had made

social advancement in the national language.

A poignant confession by Puan Yong, a Malay-educated Chinese who taught

mathematics, tells how difficult it was for most Malay-educated teachers to make the

language transition. With surprising honesty, she told several English-educated and

English-speaking teachers about the struggles she was going through. When she attended

school, most classes were in the national language. Although she managed to learn how

to communicate in English and even used English in classes, most of her knowledge in

mathematics and her experience of teaching were in Bahasa Malaysia. She admitted that,

without the help of English-educated senior teachers, it would be really hard to for her to

teach in English. Every morning, she had to ask English teachers how to pronounce new

English words. But when she used English terms such as “subtraction” and “parallel
 293
equation,” she still felt her tongue was tangled and twisted.

Puan Yong asked the English-educated teachers whether they expected the situation

would ultimately get better. None of the teachers present there gave positive answers to

the question. An English teacher cautiously added that trying hard to learn English might

not be enough to do good speeches and writings in English. It required a complete change

in the pattern of language use – speaking, reading, writing, and doing almost everything

in English. Even in SMK Taman Raya that claimed to own English, not all of its

members could live their everyday lives primarily in English. Did the situation indicate a

proof of “deterioration” in the “tradition of excellence”? It would be anachronistic to say

so, considering that the very survival of SMK Taman Raya as a premier school owed to

its successful adaptation to nationalization.

 294
Chapter Eight

Conclusion: Race, Class, and the Imaginations of Nation in the Era of Globalization

1. Imagining Nation in a “Global Language”

In this dissertation, I have discussed how the locally produced ideologies of

“globalization” and “global language” in Malaysia merge with the nostalgia of the elite

for the English-medium colonial schools and for the exclusive linguistic and cultural

experiences that they once provided. When the ideologies turn into government policies,

they stop being “ideas” in the mind of elites and become the “rules” that people have to

live with. Defining schools as one of the key institutions where the ideas of political

leaders transform into the power to regulate people’s everyday lives, I showed how the

changes in the politically dominant imaginations of nation influenced the lives of people

in two public schools located in Kuala Lumpur.

The promotion of English, allegedly a “global language,” by the government of an

independent state seems to be in contradiction with the dominant idea of nation-state and

its assumed relationship to global forces. The national language has been defined as a

central element in maintaining the functional integrity of a state, imagining homogeneity

among its citizens, and marking its distinctive identity as an independent country. Also, it

is often assumed that the government of a state wants to defend the national language

against the influence of foreign languages. Therefore, when the political leaders of some

countries volunteered to become the advocate of the “global language,” social scientists

and sociolinguistics had to introduce new theories to explain the seeming “dissociation”

between the nation-state and the national language.

The theories of linguistic globalization, that I labeled (1) the theory of linguistic
 295
imperialism, (2) rational choice theory, and (3) globalization theory, however, have some

common problems. While seeking to provide universal explanations for the spread of

English all over the world, the scholars those theories neglect to see that the fate of

English is contingent on the historical and political situations specific to each state. Also,

they assume that the dominance of English is an inevitable condition of the globalizing

era while ignoring the linguistic, cultural, social, and economic diversities within a state

and the different meanings that people from diverse backgrounds assign to the language.

In fact, the identification of English as a “global language” makes it difficult to study the

diverse routes and contexts in which the language enters the nationalist imaginations of

political leaders in different countries.

Contrary to the commonsense identification of English with the time and condition of

globalization, it is an old element in the imagination of nation in Malaysia. The English-

educated colonial elite, a linguistically and culturally distinctive class that the British

colonial policy of “institutional segregation” between the “westernized elite” and the rest

of colonial subject produced, did not dream of an independent state in the national

language. They acknowledged the role of the national language in the new state as its

identity marker, but simultaneously believed that English would be the optimal language

for pursuing the modernization and progress of the new state and achieving unity and

solidarity among citizens from diverse ethnic and linguistic backgrounds.

The exclusiveness of the English-medium education, which allowed its beneficiaries

the status of elite, however, also contributed to their political weakness. With the

increasing influence of ethnic nationalisms among the vernacular-educated masses, the

elitist imagination of nation in English gave way to the populist imagination of nation in
 296
the language of the “natives” or the Malay language. In the process, English lost its status

as one of the two official languages in the new state. The current promotion of English by

the government, therefore, should not be interpreted as its response to the influence of

globalization. Instead of identifying English as a “global language,” I ask how the elitist

imagination of nation in English, that has already experienced its political failure in the

early years of Malaysia’s nationhood, comes back to the central ground of politics and

gains the power to change people’s everyday lives.

Would the government’s recent promotion of English as a “global language” and the

reintroduction of English as a medium of instruction in public schools make its citizens

share the revived imagination of nation in English? The theories of linguistic

globalization, that identify the dominance of English with the current conditions of the

world characterized as “globalization,” expect the political victory of the English-

speaking elite all over the world. However, the mixed responses to the implementation of

“globalist” linguistic and educational policies in schools and the escalating controversies

over the status of English in the education system indicate that the victory cannot easily

be assumed even in the era of globalization.

2. Racial and Class Identifications of the English Language

My discussion emphasized that the current role of the English language in Malaysia

cannot be studied in separation from its place in the linguistic and educational policies of

both the colonial and the post-independence periods and its changing relationships to

other languages in the country including the national language. I also suggested that the

ways that the colonial administration and the post-independence government deployed
 297
the English language and the Malay language in their policies significantly limited the

potential of both languages as a medium of inclusion and homogenization of citizens.

In Malaysia, the English language is not only identified with the elite class, but also

with the economically successful “non-Malays” in the modernized urban areas. In

addition to its identification with “Malays,” the Malay language symbolizes the social

and economic “backwardness” of rural Malays. The “racialization” of social and

economic inequalities and the use of languages as the symbols of the inequalities make it

hard to investigate the linguistic similarities and differences among people that cut across

the boundaries of racial categories.

The political process that abolished the status of English an official language and

made Malay the national language of the new state cannot be explained by the diffusion

of the “nation-state” model that the boundaries of a “state” should correspond to the

boundaries of a “nation” and the idea that a common language is the key to producing the

correspondence. The role of English in the imagination of a national community was

limited by its exclusive connection to the colonial elite (from both Malay and non-Malay

backgrounds) and their distinctive culture. The imagination of nation in the Malay

language could be only imperfectly shared by the multi-ethnic citizens due to its

connection to the cultural identity and interests of Malays.

My ethnographic research in an inner-city school (SMK Jalan Limau) and a former

English-medium elite school (SMK Taman Raya) focused on analyzing the cumulative

effect of the two languages’ changing status in linguistic and educational policies on the

lives of people from diverse ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. Both schools had

proportionate ethnic make-ups of student populations that roughly reflected that of the
 298
whole Malaysian population. The two public schools with different historical, social and

economic backgrounds, however, developed different ways of coping with the conflict

and ambiguity integral to the project of nation-building in a multiethnic state.

Despite the emphasis on the Malay language and culture in nationalist policies, the

difference between compliance and non-compliance to the nationalist norms and

regulations did not correspond to the boundaries between Malays and non-Malays. The

difference also depended on whether students expected their compliance with the

linguistic and cultural norms to bring meaningful changes in their lives. The visible and

audible inter-racial divisions in the inner-city school and the blurred racial boundaries in

the premier school did not necessarily reflect the strength and weakness of the students’

ethnic identities or their attachment to the linguistic and cultural traditions of respective

ethnic groups. They also indicated the social distance between the students of the inner-

city school and those of the premier school.

Many students in SMK Jalan Limau, who came from ethnically divided urban low-

income residential areas, did not find it necessary to incorporate the linguistic and

cultural discipline of the state. Especially for non-Malay students from families of urban

poor, their chances of making social advancement through the Malay-medium public

education were restricted by the poor access to educational resources, the extra burden of

mastering multiple languages, and the different educational and career opportunities

given to “native” and “immigrant” citizens.

In contrast, most of the students in SMK Taman Raya, who came from the families of

affluent urban professionals, believed that their success in education was crucial for

reproducing their social and economic status. However, due to the measures to make the
 299
national language the tool of “selectively modernizing” the “backward” rural Malays,

non-Malay students in the school had to complement their success in the national

language by mastering English.

Ironically, SMK Taman Raya’s successful adjustment to the nationalization project

has changed the former English-medium colonial elite school into a model national

school. Furthermore, the government acknowledged the civic consciousness, the

“tradition of excellence,” and the normative Malay/English bilingualism in SMK Taman

Raya and other premier schools as the virtues that the country needs to inculcate among

all Malaysian students in the era of globalization. The government plans to prepare its

citizens for the globalizing era did not find the models in the “developed countries”

dominating the global economy. The English-medium colonial elite schools became the

standard of evaluating the mass education in the national language. According to the

standard, the rapid expansion of education in the national language only meant

“deterioration” in the quality of education. Against the cosmopolitanism developed in

multi-ethnic colonial elite schools, the considerable (though ambiguous) achievement of

unity in Malay-medium public schools among different “races” only indicated the

“exacerbation” of racial divisions in the country.

The state ideologies of globalization and global language present the Malay/English

bilingual urban elite as future-oriented model citizens while depicting their social and

cultural “others” as captives of the outdated nationalist values. The moralizing argument

is based on the assumption that English is good for the future well-being of the country

and its people. If some people fail to see the benefit of English and neglect to incorporate

the language as theirs, they should take responsibility for their own educational and
 300
economic failures caused by their defectives minds. But can the moralizing argument by

the elite be interpreted as ideological cover-up for their pursuit of self-interests as the

critics of “linguistic imperialism” argues?

In chapter one, I discussed how the critics of linguistic imperialism distinguish the

“ethnocentrism” of the western imperialist from the pursuit of “self-interests” by the elite

and “aspiring bourgeois” in developing countries. I argued that ethnocentrism should not

be defined as the prejudice of imperialist westerners against their ethnic others. The

elite’s moralization of linguistic and cultural difference among citizens also constitutes

“ethnocentrism” when they use their own particularistic experience as the criteria for

judging other people’s potentials and capabilities. I also suggested that the policies based

on the elite’s ethnocentrism or their partial understanding of the society they live in may

not always guarantee their self-interests.

Though the members of SMK Taman Raya believed that they owned the English

language thus would benefit most from the new policy of teaching science and

mathematics in English, the developing situation after the introduction of the new policy

satisfied neither the old generation elite’s nostalgia for colonial schools nor the globalist

expectations propagated by the government. The difficulties that the members of the elite

school experienced coping with the language shift demonstrate that they are equally

delimited by their own experience as other Malaysians that they call “rural, traditional,

and parochial.” Their sense of entitlement for the global citizenship is legitimized only in

relative terms or by emphasizing their academic, linguistic, and cultural excellence over

their social “others.”

 301
3. Reversing Policy and Undoing History

If the elitist imagination of nation in the wake of the independent nationhood failed to

gain political dominance in the new state, would the new version with the global

emphasis successfully secure the political power? Even in 2002, when the government

first proposed the plan to reintroduce English as a medium of instruction in public

schools, the proposal was vehemently opposed by some groups of people. Some

government leaders’ argued that the oppositional movement was orchestrated by

linguistic “jingoists” and “chauvinists” including the followers of “parochial” Malay

nationalism. They also insisted that Malaysians with pragmatic and rational mindsets

would not oppose the government’s promotion of the “global language.”

The defense of ethnic and national identities against the threat of a “global language,”

however, was only one of many different arguments made by individuals and groups who

opposed the reintroduction of English. Some people acknowledged the importance of

English but claimed that the new policy was not likely to succeed because of its hasty

implementation without enough preparation. Some language specialists criticized the

absence of professional insights in the policy. Still others expressed the concern that the

reintroduction of English into public schools would exacerbate the educational inequality

between the elite and the masses that was yet to be resolved by the expansion of public

education in the national language.

In 2003, the government managed to implement the new policy against all

oppositions, but the controversy over the policy was escalating while students and

teachers in public schools were struggling to accommodate the new linguistic norm. In

the early 2009, the opposition to the new policy and the growing frustrations about the
 302
result of its implementation was expressed in mass demonstrations on the street of Kuala

Lumpur. Finally, in July 2009, the Minister of Education announced that the government

would scrap the policy of teaching science and mathematics in English and, in 2012,

schools would start teaching them in the national language.

It is still too early to tell whether the newly proposed policy will overturn some of the

ideological assumptions in the previous one. Instead of adopting English as a language of

teaching other subjects, the ministry promises to provide a separate program to strengthen

the teaching of English and make Malaysian student proficient in both Bahasa Malaysia

and English. It is clear, however, that although the government can fix its policies, it

cannot rewind the clock and undo what has been done to students and teachers during last

several years.

With the reintroduction of English in public schools, the qualification and competence

of Malay and non-Malay teachers educated and trained in the national language were

seriously challenged. The policy silenced the majority of students, including most

students in rural and inner-city schools and some in premier schools. Due to the language

barrier and the reduced contents in the new textbooks in English, students were exposed

to less amount of knowledge in scientific and mathematic than before. At the same time,

students had lost their opportunity to accumulate knowledge in the national language. In

addition to the disadvantages they experienced, they were accused of being the captives

of backward and parochial mindset and the victims of outdated ethnic nationalism and

traditionalism.

While the political pressure forced the government to reverse its policy, the reversal is

not welcomed by all Malaysians. As I have pointed out earlier, even some of the inner-
 303
city school students felt ambivalent about the idea of “going back” to the old policy.

According to them, “going back” would only prove that they had been doing pointless

struggle adapting to a haphazardly designed policy with errors. The most vocal

oppositions to the reversal of the policy, however, came from English-speaking

professionals and intellectuals and the parents of de facto Malay/English bilingual

schools in upper-middle class suburban areas. The parents who supported the policy of

teaching science and mathematics in English are now asking the government to give them

a choice to continue in English while allowing rural and inner-city schools to go back to

Bahasa Malaysia.

If the imagination of national unity, economic development, and social progress in

English failed to produce the sense of community among citizens during the period of

nation-building, what would be the political fate of the imagination in the era of

globalization? The oscillating policies on the status and role of English in the education

system and the ever escalating controversy over the issue of language in education

highlight the contending imaginations of nation among the citizens of Malaysia. The

recent political development also demonstrates that English is still an effective symbol of

racial differences and class inequalities after fifty years of Malaysia’s independent

nationhood.
 304
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Reports and News Articles

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FM. 1960. Report of the Education Review Committee; the Rahman Talib Report
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Economic Planning Unit, Prime Minister’s Department, Malaysia. 2001. The Third
Outline Perspective Plan 2001-2010.

International Herald Tribune. September 22, 1997. “Soros calls Mahathir a 'menace' to
Malaysia”
The New York Times. September 22, 1997. “Premier of Malaysia spars with currency
dealer”
Fortune, April 26, 1999, “Want growth? Speak English That Certain Je Ne Sais Quoi of
Les Anglophones”
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The Independent. September 1999. “Why Anglo-Saxon nations have the fastest growing
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The New Strait Times. May 7, 2002. “Looking back to English”