(From second left) Teresa, Robert, Swee Nguong, Vincent and others cut a cake to mark the joyous occasion.
SIBU: Sacred Heart Old Students’ Association (SHOSA) and St Elizabeth Old Students’ Association (SEOSA) should pass a motion to urge the state government to take charge its own education system once again.
SHOSA president Robert Lau Hui Yew, who made the suggestion, said under the Malaysia Agreement, Sarawak was to retain autonomy over education.
However the state’s education system was handed over to the federal government in the 1970s by then Chief Minister Tun Abdul Rahman Ya’kub.
He opined that if the state administered its own education system and revert to using English as the medium of instruction, all races in the state would grow up more united.
“I can still recall how my class had a mix of all races, but we were never aware of racial polarisation.
“Sadly, nowadays each race attends their own schools. There is no opportunity to mix. Just check on the friends they have on Facebook or smartphone. Children nowadays no longer have friends of diverse backgrounds,” Robert said at the combined annual reunion dinner of SHOSA and SEOSA here on Saturday.
Present were Temenggong Vincent Lau, chairman of the re-development committee of the two schools, SMK Sacred Heart Board of Management vice chairman Lau Swee Nguong and SEOSA president Teresa Lau.
Robert believed that education should be decentralised, and schools and parents be given the freedom to have a say and choose the type of schools they wanted without having to finance it privately.
He said the government was not the best body to dictate what, where and how children should learn.
“At the last SHOSA and SEOSA combined reunion dinner, I touched on the declining standard of our education system and the poor standard of English. Things have not improved over the last year. The opposite is true.
“Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin recently said he was shocked that Malaysian students continued to lag behind its global counterpart despite Malaysia spending as much on education as some developed nations, such as the United States.
“This is telling and scary.
“For a country to fail, we just need a failed education system.”
Turning to the late Lee Kuan Yew, Robert described him as a ‘truly great leader’ whose decision to pick English as the official language in Singapore had been considered as one of the most critical decisions that contributed to the republic’s success.