The Politics of Chinese Education in Malaya, 1945-1961 (review)

The formulation of education policy is, in all societies, a politically sensitive matter. When the society in question is a multiethnic one and is making a transition from British colonial administration to independent nationhood, education policy is inextricably linked to broader issues of cultural and political identity and the distribution of power and opportunity in the postcolonial period. Tan Liok Ee's excellent historical study investigates the politics of Chinese education in Malaya in the period before and after it gained independence from Britain in 1957.

In a useful historical overview, Tan shows how an extensive system of Chinese primary and secondary schools developed in Malaya from the middle of the nineteenth century through the middle of the twentieth. This occurred through the efforts of Chinese migrant communities themselves with virtually no assistance from the British colonial authorities. By the early decades of the twentieth century, the British began to view the Chinese schools in Malaya as potentially—and sometimes actually—subversive because they reflected much of the political tumult in China, with its anticolonial implications. The colonial government therefore repeatedly sought to bring the Chinese schools under tighter supervision—without, it should be noted, being willing to shoulder the financial responsibility for them. In the years after World War II the Chinese schools experienced considerable expansion, despite the misgivings of the colonial government, due to demographic pressures and increased social demand for education.

The 1950s were a period of intense debate over the creation of a national education system for postcolonial Malaya. The British pushed policies favoring the creation of a unitary system of multiethnic schools using English as their medium of instruction. The leaders of the ethnic Malay majority, expecting to occupy pride of place in the political order of the new nation after independence, wanted a unitary system in which the Malay language would become the main medium of instruction (even if, as a practical matter, English continued to play a prominent role during a transition period of uncertain duration). Leaders of the Chinese community (Malaya's second largest ethnic group) preferred a pluralistic system in which the students' mother-tongue—whether Malay, Chinese, or, in the case of the Indian community, Tamil—would be used as the medium of instruction.

Tan is adept in analyzing the complexities of the political situation in Malaya in the lead-up to independence from Britain. Competition between various leaders and political parties within the Malay majority led to the formation of alliances with parties based in the Chinese and Indian communities. Of particular importance was the alliance between the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and the Malay Chinese Association (MCA). During the early 1950s the MCA was the major political party attempting to represent the interests of the Chinese community as a whole. It was therefore eager to champion the cause of the Chinese schools, which were perceived to be under threat from changes in British colonial education policy. The MCA entered into a coalition with the main organizations representing, respectively, the teachers and the management committees of the Chinese schools. Together, these organizations formed the core of the "Chinese Education Movement" in Malaya during the 1950s. The central chapters of Tan's book trace the emergence, development, and eventual dissolution of this coalition as it sought to win a secure and legitimate place for the Chinese schools within the emerging national education system of an independent Malaya.

In this historical context, the Chinese schools faced a fundamental dilemma. In order to be accepted as legitimate parts of a national education system, especially from the point of view of the Malay majority, the schools needed to contribute to the nation-building project by inculcating political identification with and political loyalty to the new Malayan state. Yet most of the teachers in the Chinese schools were fairly recent émigrés from China, and the textbooks they...