This month is perhaps the most trying time in the lives of Malaysians aged 16 to 17. They are sitting for the SPM examination.
For many, the exam will determine the course of their lives. Can I be a doctor? Can I be an engineer? Or a pilot? A researcher in tropical diseases? Their dreams will be shaped by the exam, given that the next critical stage of their young lives β the path to university education β is decided by their SPM grades.
More than half a million students are going through the exam, which has been made harder this year by their having to endure studying through a pandemic that has crippled the usual modes of classroom education and social learning.
Given all this, one would think that the institutions of the state, if not society at large, would be well aware of the mental stress being imposed on these young people and their parents and thus understand they have an obligation to assist them in all ways possible.
However, these stressors are just the tip of an iceberg. The larger truth is hidden under the superficially calm yet cruel waters, in the silence of unseen forces under the waterline.
The iceberg is only getting larger with every passing year and the country is being steered towards it by an apartheid system inflicted upon even the children of this country. It is manifested at all the levels of our education policy. An example is the 90% quota for Malays for the pre-university matriculation course.
If one is a non-Malay and an aspiring doctor, one may never be able to realise oneβs dream. A creative genius will be shunted out of the system or the country. A young person with a desire to become an ambassador will be deprived of the opportunity to study liberal arts and win a government scholarship.
The bitter reality is that we have a system of racial discrimination in education that has no parallel anywhere else in the world.
The sad truth is that innocent Malay children suffer from this system too by virtue of having privileges that others do not. The disenfranchised from poor families are taught in bad schools where standards are low because it appears the system does not believe that gaining access to the best education is critical. They are thus less able to compete and they grow up believing they are entitled.
Indeed, the sense of entitlement applies across the economic spectrum. Such is the perverse nature of discriminatory policies.
What is the large-scale discrimination that everyone knows about but only whispers of? It has nothing to do with how affirmative action should be used to benefit poor Malays, but everything to do with a deep psychosis at the heart of the political and economic system. That psychosis is institutional racism.
Racism that discriminates against children who cannot fight back is a sickness, and the political architects and perpetuators of this system should be exposed and shamed. So should all the well-heeled beneficiaries of such a system, especially the members of the Malay political and business elite who remain silent over this great injustice.
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https://www.thecoverage.my/4095/non-malays-...scieb19zv0q5gl8
Non-Malays Must Attain Grades That Are 3 Times, Better Than A Malay Student To Enter U
Sep 11 2025, 01:26 PM, updated 3 months ago
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