Securitization, Frankenstein's Monster and Malaysian education

In 2002 the Malaysian government announced it would reintroduce English as a medium of instruction in all Malaysian primary schools. The reaction of the Tamil, Malay and Chinese educationalists was damning, with the latter referring to the decision as the 'final solution' for mandarin education in Malaysia's national education system. The furore created in 2002 led the Malaysian government to threaten Chinese educationalists with its draconian Internal Security Act (ISA); this was not an insignific threat, as the government had detained Chinese educationalists previously under the ISA in 1987. In this article I use the Copenhagen School's notions of societal security and securitization to reveal why the medium of instruction used in Chinese National-type primary schools is regarded as a matter of security by Chinese educationalists. I reveal that while the Chinese educationalists engage in securitization discourse, their aim is to keep the issue at the politicized end of the securitization spectrum. However, when this discourse coincides with the government feeling weak, the governing elite use the language to securitize the situation and crush their opponents – this reveals the appropriateness of Kyle Grayson's analogy between securitization and Frankenstein's Monster. The article therefore both operationalizes securitization and also reveals the perilous state of Mandarin education in Malaysia's national education system. Keywords: SecuritizationMalaysian educationDong Jiao Zong (DJZ)societal securityInternal Security Act (ISA)Operation Lalang. Acknowledgements The author would like to thank the following people for their time during the fieldwork for this project: Dr Lee Hock Guan, Dr Kua Kia Soong, Dr Ng Kwei Kuen, Mr Sim Kwang Yang and Professor Khoo Kay Kim. I am grateful for the comments on earlier drafts from Dr Joseph Liow, Dr Ralf Emmers, Dr Helen Brocklehurst and two anonymous reviewers. Finally, I would like to thank the British Academy for their financial support and the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, Singapore for the use of their facilities while I was conducting the research. Dr Alan Collins is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Wales Swansea. He is the author of The Security Dilemmas of Southeast Asia (Palgrave 2000) and Security & Southeast Asia: Domestic, Regional and Global Issues (Lynne Rienner 2003). Notes The BN is the coalition government comprising fourteen political parties representing Malaysia's multiethnic society. For details see www.bn.org.my/cgi-bin/index.asp Mahathir won by a margin of only forty-three votes; 761 against 718.