Playing race card trumps integration

More and more, in local schools, English is spoken less and less. As our English shrivels, we shrink as a world city. Which is why words by the Permanent Secretary for Education, Fanny Law Fan Chiu-fun, came like manna from heaven.

Mrs Law has pleaded with local elite schools to take in non-Chinese-speaking students, up to five per class. But why the half measure? In my day, a quarter of our class was non-Chinese. This ethnic mix guaranteed an authentic English-speaking environment.

Local schools, ironically, are straining to create an artificial English language environment. Meaningful language learning is organically interactive.

The issue goes to the heart of what is missing in our schools.

Imagine, if you can, my surprise when I visited a local school only to be met by scores of students, all wide-eyed and full of beans, and all Indo-Pakistanis. But what struck me most was their energy and eagerness. A question drew a forest of hands. Local students were too shy or jaded to bother.

I learned later that South Asians make up 60 per cent of the school's population. But I was dumbfounded to find out that locals are kept rigidly apart for all subjects. According to the principal, government policy has dictated this separation. Walled off from each other, they remain unconnected strangers.

Racial segregation, in this day and age, is immoral if not borderline illegal.What's more, it is educationally backward. How have we tolerated this for so long?