Securitization, Frankenstein's Monster and Malaysian education

Abstract

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.