When we were thinking of moving back to KL from the US, we spent a long time checking out schools for the girls.
In KL, our options were international schools (some v. good, v. pricey, but Chinese was definitely a side dish, not the main meal) and Chinese schools (language is front and centre, but you also get 20th century education ideas, rote learning, corporal punishment).
Neither was ideal. What we need in KL, I told anyone who would listen, is a Kinder, Gentler Chinese School.
(One person – a product of a strict Chinese primary school – almost fell off his chair laughing when I said this. Yes, you, Leslie Lau.)
Well.
I found one yesterday. Problem is it’s in Shanghai.
The YK Pao school bills itself a Chinese International School and opened in 2007. It’s pretty much one of its kind, aiming for a bilingual education that combines the best of Chinese education – academic rigor, culture, and of course, the language we all want our children to speak, with the best of US/UK education – problem-solving, sport, music, all that extra-curricular stuff.
One of the founders, Philip Sohmen, grandson of Sir YK Pao, the late shipping magnate and philanthropist, was in KL yesterday, to talk to parents. I found out about it because Philip went to Oxford with my brother TY.
Here. Here was my Kinder, Gentler Chinese School.
The primary school is in Shanghai and the secondary school is in a Shanghai suburb bizarrely called Thames Town, complete with cobblestone streets and red phone boxes. Both campuses are state-of-the-art and lovely. The fees are comparable to international schools in KL.
They also offer summer camps (two weeks in Shanghai for about RM5,000), which draw students from around the world. That seemed of the most interest to yesterday’s audience.
Time to find jobs in Shanghai.
Kidding! (Only partly.)
So why can’t we do something similar in Malaysia? You’d need lashings of two things: passion and money. But we already have international schools and we already have Chinese schools and…and… you’d think it’d be possible, no?
(For more of my pontificating on education in Malaysia, see “Fix Education, Fix the Brain Drain.”)
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