Revisiting Kuen Cheng High School dispute: contestation between gender equality and ethnic nationalism discourses

Abstract

During those years of colonial and imperial expansion in the 19th and 20th centuries, single sex school used to be a symbol of modernity. Almost at the same time, it was adopted by some Asian ethnic nations, in response to the oppression of Western colonialism and imperialism, to elevate the education level of women as woman's social status and woman's role as a modern educator and mother in each family were both taken as indicators of modernity of each ethnic nation respectively. The concept of gender equality and nationalism were thus intertwined. Kuen Cheng High School, a Chinese girl school founded in Kuala Lumpur in 1908, is one of the products of the Chinese nationalism which spread world-widely during the years of anti-imperialism and anti-Ching Dynasty rebellion.Those (female) rebels were not only against Ching Dynasty and Western Imperialists; they were also founder of the single-sex education and pioneer of the first wave of women's movement in the dawn of modern Asian countries. They wanted women to improve so that people of their ethnic will improve. However, before the century-old girl school celebrates its 100th birthday, the Board of Director (BOD), mostly males, of the school told the media that they were going to turn it into a sex-mixed or co-ed school. Reasons given include single-sex education environment "is backward", "discriminates males", "breeds homosexuality or lesbians", "makes only half of the potential high school market" etc. The announcement instantly drew opposition from the Kuen Cheng Old Pupils Association (KCOPA).