Especially in Medan they prefer to speak Chinese. On the other hand, people of Chinese descent tend to view indigenous Indonesians as lazy and dishonest, demanding bribes from the Chinese for administrative services from identity cards to taxes. Sofyan Tan's idea has been to establish a model of integrated education in which children of various ethnic groups are brought together and learn to see each other as individuals and to carry mutual respect throughout their lives. Essential to his idea has been a focus on providing quality education for the poor and marginalized. The poor have few options in education and are limited in their ability to compete in the job market, thus perpetuating a cycle of poverty.
Poverty combined with a lack of education can fuel the fires of ethnic distrust and hatred.
Sofyan Tan supported himself through medical school by teaching high school and tutoring fellow students. He became a skilled teacher and eagerly accepted the opportunity to serve as headmaster of a school in Sunggal that his father, together with several other Chinese concerned about education, had helped to found. With Sofyan Tan as headmaster, the number of students increased steadily because of the quality of education and because he opened the school to indigenous Inonesians as well as Chinese students. Yet he was forced out by the school's governing board, whose members disagreed with his social mission and wanted the school to be run as a profitable business. Rather than being discouraged, Sofyan Tan took this as a challenge to prove he could succeed with his ideas, though in this initial stage, he was isolated even by the wealthy Chinese community, which saw him as a traitor to his heritage.