SKJC Damansara: Larger Picture, Broader Concerns

by Wong Chin Huat

Imagine this situation. Your neighbour’s kids have been coming to watch TV in your house. For them and your own kids, the 16-inch TV seems too small. So, your neighbour asks, ‘Don’t you think a bigger TV would be more comfortable for all? Why don’t we trade in this 16 inch TV for a 29-inch TV to be kept at my house?’

Would you say ‘yes’ to your neighbour’s suggestion? Most probably not.

Yet many people wonder why some parents at the SJKC Damansara have been so ‘stubborn’ as to insist on preserving the old school at Kg Baru Damansara when they have been offered a new and bigger school at Tropicana which has been accepted by other parents who controlled the Parents Teachers Association and the Board of Governors.

The true situation is analagous to the TV example posed above. The parents involved come from different neighbourhoods and have different, though legitimate and justifiable, interests.

Origins

SJKC Damansara, founded in the 1930s, was meant to be a community school for the villagers who settled in the area later known as Kg Baru Damansara. Then, most of what is now Petaling Jaya was either jungle or agricultural land. Gradually, however, the neighbouring land was developed into new townships and residential estates such as Section 17, SS2, Damansara Utama, Damansara Jaya, Taman Tun Dr Ismail and Bandar Utama. These areas have substantial Chinese-speaking population.

Now SJKC Damansara was one of only six National Type Chinese Schools (SJKC) in the MPPJ area and naturally recieved an influx of students from the neigbourhoods. SJKC Damansara had only a 0.8-acre compound which, by prevailing standards, could only accommodate 400 students. By 1999, however, SJKC Damansara had 1,422 students.

The students and parents of SJKC Damansara come from different geographical communities and different socio-economic backgrounds. About 75 % of them come from more distant communities.

Is it surprising then to find that the so-called ‘minority parents’ disagree with the relocation of the school – from its original walking-distance location to Tropicana, about 4 km away. To return to our TV analogy, is it surprising that these ‘minority parents’ refuse to trade in their own TV for something new and bigger placed in the home of their ‘neighbours’?

Unfit Original School?

Many people who have not seen the original SJKC Damansara mistakenly imagine an old wooden school when they hear about a school which the Ministry of Education wants closed. They will be surprised to know that the original school has a 3-storey building, 16 classrooms, a basketball court, and a multipurpose hall which was completed in 1998 at a cost of RM 270,000.

Is anything ‘wrong’ with this school?

Supporters of the Ministry of Education’s decision cite such reasons as ‘overcrowded conditions’, ‘absence of a football field’, ‘noise, pollution and traffic probems caused by the SPRINT Highway’, and ‘an inadequate sewage system’.

Let’s examine these ‘reasons’ in turn.

It is true that the school is overcrowded. It has a density of 1,778 students per acre, or three times the national average. The school does not have a football field. But it has a big basketball court and a new multipurpose hall. The sewage system did create some problems in the past.

Yet, do these ‘shortcomings’ justify closing the original school and dismissing the alternative of retaining the original school while building the new one? Wouldn’t the problem of overcrowdedness be better solved by having two schools rather than merely shifting to a bigger one?

Must a school be abandoned because it doesn’t have a football field? Wouldn’t most students much prefer not having to wake up very early to catch schoolbuses than play football in a far-away school?

Shouldn’t they, their parents and their community have the right to retain their neighbourhood school that is fine in other respects? Is it normal for someone to abandon his house if its toilet is not working ?

Noise and Pollution

Consider, too, the noise and pollution. During the highway construction period the noise and pollution are at their worst. But the highway EIA Report, released on June 1997, noted that ‘the impact of noise level along Jalan Damansara from the WKLTDS project is considered to be minimal’ while the ‘impacts to the existing air quality is not expected to be significant.

Hardly anyone among those who cite the negative impacts of the highway has asked: if the noise and pollution are expected to be so bad, why was the project approved at all? And if the situation is thereby unsafe for students who typically spend six hours a day at school, can it safe for the residents who stay there all day long?

Nor can the argument of traffic safety hold water. Over the past 70 years, there has never been any serious traffic accident involving parents or students. The original school is properly linked to a tarred road in the village, next to the highway. In fact, the SPRINT Highway improves the situation by diverting traffic away from the lane that passes by the school. (That lane is 140 feet away from the nearest classroom.)

A close and careful examination of the ‘SJKC Damansara controversy’ suggests two important things.

First, the original school is fit to serve the community. If anyone wants to help, all the school needs is some physcial improvement. Second, a new school is needed to accommodate some of the students, especially those who prefer facilities to convenience.

But there is no satisfactory reason why the original school must be closed down – to be ‘traded in’ for a new school? What is so sacred about this political or bureaucratic ‘one school for one school’ formula? Why can’t there be two separate schools to serve different neighbourhoods?

Community-friendly Education Policy

There are immense advantages for local communities to have schools of their choice.

First, children don’t have to travel far to school; they can sleep longer each morning and run less risk on the road. Second, parents can save on transport costs. Third, parents can have closer interaction with the schools and a better understanding on their children’s activities.

Fourth, students can receive more attention from teachers in community schools which normally have fewer students. Fifth, the schools can avoid the problems of pollution, noise, time loss and mental pressure caused by the heavy traffic associated with schoolbuses and parents’ cars in the case of urban or cross-neighbourhood schools.

And, finally, the original SJKC Damansara holds historic and sentimental value for the Kg Baru Damansara community which built the school and its facilities with mainly public donations since the time of the grandparents of the present generation of students.

Every community should have its own school just as every kampung has its mosque or surau. The authorities have guidelines and standards which require kindergartens, primary schools and sceondary schools to be built in housing estates (2,500 residents), neighbourhoods (7,500 residents) and communities (15,000 – 22,500 residents) to serve residents’ educational needs. There are planning standards which take into account walking distances of 5 minutes (0.2-0.4 km), 10 minutes (0.4-0.8 km) and 20 minutes (0.8-1.6 km).

Now, while children from other areas can have a school in Tropicana close to their home, why can’t the children from Kg Baru Damansara and the nearby Section 17 have the benefit of attending school within a walking distance of 0.8 km? Why must they be compelled to travel five times as far, or 4 km away?

Application Rejected

In fact, the school’s Board of Governors first applied for a branch school in the early 1990s. The application was turned down again and again by the Education Department until the Board was pursuaded to accept relocation.

Why must the Ministry of Education insist on a ‘one school for one school’ relocation formula? It is well known that SJKC Damansara is not an isolated case. SJKCs should be built wherever they fulfill a genuine need.

The real answer has little to do with the reasons given for relocating the original school. The real answer is simple: the Ministry of Education has an unwritten policy that the total number of national type school – both SJKCs and SJKTs – can only be decreased, never increased.

By the logic of this unwritten policy, national type schools may be closed down if the students are too few, but may not be built when there are excess students. Students, parents and communities are expected to count their blessings when a school is relocated from a less heavily populated area to a more heavily populated one, or, in the case of SJKC Damansara, if they are relocated from a smaller compound to a larger one to accommodate more students. Consequently, despite an increase in student enrolment, the number of national type schools has declined.

In a sense, the policy may have been successful. Some parents do give up on sending their children for mother tongue education, and send them instread to nearby national schools. But many more parents prefer to send their children to distant schools and contribute to traffic jams.

An unofficial estimate suggests that about 10,000 students in Johor Bahru travel as far as 10 km to go to SJKCs. Place these students in school buses that can take 40 passengers each and the result is 250 buses on the road. Place them in cars carrying an average of two students each and there are 5,000 cars.

Does anyone truly gain from these situations which arise out of current policy towards national type schools? Does anyone believe that making it difficult for children to have access to mother tongue education helps promote national unity?

What we really need is community-friendly education policy and planning which respects and consults local communities. About 150,000 Malaysians (about 15 per cent of whom are non-Chinese) have petitioned to support the movement to retain the old SJKC Damansara school. What a contrast this stands against the Ministry of Education’s rigid attitude towards reopening the original school for the local community. Isn’t it time to celebrate and not curb multiculturalism and multilingualism?