Schooling as a dead end: education for the poor especially the estate children

Abstract

This paper will focus on the educational problems faced by the children of the plantation workers in Peninsular Malaysia. It will be argued that inspite of the progress achieved in the democratisation of education since Independence, the plantation workers' children have become an educationally disadvantaged group, with the highest drop-out rates, lowest achievement levels and attending the "poorest and smallest" schools. Since the only available school in the plantation is the Tamil medium primary school, the characteristics and the educational climate of these schools will also be discussed. These plantation schools perform a custodial function rather than an instrumental function of facilitating social mobility. They serve as an agent of social control, insuring that the majority of the children of plantation workers will remain plantation workers. The observation by Thompson (1943)¹ that education during the colonial period was 'designed to make hewers of wood and drawers of water better hewers of wood and drawers of water' sums up the educational situation in the plantations today.