The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion
The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion |
| Posted: 17 Sep 2012 05:24 PM PDT SEPT 18 — Let's see. I often wear fitted, V-necked T-shirts. I can't lay claim to having a muscular body but I am working out at the gym and lifting weights so that's a work in progress. I did have to fight it out with a girl over a really nice bag this one time. Ergo according to the Ministry of Education-endorsed (yes, despite their denials) guidelines/awareness material, I must be gay. This latest move by the Yayasan Guru Malaysia Bhd (Teachers' Foundation of Malaysia) and the Putrajaya Consultative Council of Parents and Teachers Associations is quite simply steeped in ignorance, bigotry and clearly homophobic. Lest we forget, back in April this year, the Jaringan Melayu Malaysia (JMM) had announced a nationwide campaign to 30 schools to campaign against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender minorities utilising an awareness module targetting students. They misused their positions as parent-teacher association members to gain access to schools for this purpose. Could this recent programme be an insidious reincarnation of that same movement, now clothed in the skin of the Yayasan Guru Malaysia Bhd and the Putrajaya Consultative Council of Parents and Teachers Associations? It seems like it. Quite successfully too as according to the foundation, they have managed to organise 10 seminars thus far which have reached 1,500 people. I continue to be disturbed by this misuse of our education system to channel and cultivate fear, hate, prejudice and discrimination towards others who do not conform to stereotypical norms and social expectations. Without a doubt, that will basically be the net effect of these simplistic and ignorant guidelines which have been established to create awareness, identify and single out people or, in this case, children. To what end, I wonder? What is the purpose of such a move to classify and label people? So that they can be dealt with, or in this case, to prevent them from becoming gays and lesbians? Without a doubt the so-called "symptoms" are superficial and reflect a mind-set dependent on pseudo-science, fear and ignorance to get the message across. Painting the programme as multi-religious and multi-cultural doesn't make it right either. So what happens when a group of students determine that a classmate fits these "symptoms"? When they have determined that this student is a lesbian or gay? Are they going to take matters into their hands and make him or her "straight"? In similar situations which have occurred here in Malaysia and around the world, this has resulted in mental and physical abuse, bullying, torture and even rape. What happens when that child, depressed and facing abuse, decides to commit suicide or dies because of the physical abuse by self-anointed moral vigilantes? This is why the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development has deemed such actions which single out children for discrimination to be in violation of the 2001 Child Act. This is why we need to put a stop to such programmes which target our students, our children because they bring harm and cultivate prejudice and bigotry. These programmes are also illegal under Malaysian laws which protect children. Who is going to be responsible if a child dies or is abused as a direct result of this awareness raising/prevention programme? Make no mistake, it will happen. Will the Yayasan Guru Malaysia, Putrajaya Consultative Council of Parents and Teachers Associations and Ministry of Education be there to take responsibility? Or will they wash their hands like Pontius Pilate? This denial of responsibility is already happening. The Ministry of Education is already wiggling around like a worm on a stick trying to escape the maelstrom. Is this campaign being endorsed and supported by the Ministry of Education? You would be justified in thinking so. The lame denial by the ministry is precisely that, lame and unconvincing. The deputy minister of education officiated the seminar on "Parenting in addressing the issue of LGBTs (lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders)". He was quoted, in defending the "guidelines", as saying that the exposure of "symptoms" of gays and lesbians was the best approach to address the "unhealthy phenomenon" among students. Why is the Ministry of Education allowing for these people to place our teachers in a position to cultivate fear, hatred and prejudice among our children towards others? Take the time to understand and be compassionate. Do not allow our teachers to be the vehicle and medium for our children to begin their young lives by learning to marginalise, hate, discriminate and harm those who are different and do not conform. If it is true that the Ministry of Education had nothing to do with these guidelines, does not endorse or support them in any way, I call for the ministry to ban and reject such programmes from our schools. Let our schools be what they are supposed to be — places of learning and not places of discrimination and intolerance. * The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist. |
| Academic streaming in Malaysia Posted: 17 Sep 2012 04:53 PM PDT SEPT 18 — I have lived in this country for 20 years. During this time, one thing has remained constant. The country's leaders — its oligarchs and rulers — have deemed an education in mathematics and science as the hallmark of a successful individual. Let's be honest. There's no discussion about "arts and social sciences in English", there's no talk about whether art and vocational education are receiving enough emphasis. Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin hasn't said anything about training the economists and artists of the new era, and as it stands, the general consensus is that nothing will change. In Malaysia, you have an education system that streams students according to their perceived aptitudes, that systemically values science and mathematics over so-called "soft" forms of knowledge. Students who score above a certain cutoff point in the PMR exams are automatically brought into the Science stream, often despite their objections, if any, creating a divide between supposedly "elite" science students and decidedly "non-elite" arts students. So one might assume, from a qualitative description of how this works, that Malaysia would be a mover and shaker in the global scientific conversation, but it is sadly not. Have a look at how our graduates are distributed — how many of them are involved in careers of mathematics and science? And of these, how many have produced institutionally-challenging, iconoclastic research that has shaken the foundations of modern technology? The question about whether our students have been successfully educated isn't a question about how well our graduates can regurgitate information in exams, but rather about how well they can perform. If we gauge the standard of our education system in terms of the quality of research that our national varsities produce, then it is easy to note that we do not do well. I use the example of one of the most commonly cited university rankings in this country, namely the THES-QS world university rankings. In its methodology, THES-QS cites Academic Peer Review (40 per cent) and Citations Per Faculty (20 per cent) [1] as main factors that determine the position of a university within the ranking system — Universiti Malaya registers in the 156th place [2] this year. The former factor rewards original and thoughtful research by international evaluation, whereas the latter rewards the saliency of these discoveries towards the international community. Whether it is in the sciences that Malaysian schools have taught us to value so much, or in the social sciences that the ministry of education has such an aversion towards Malaysia's performance does not measure up to the 9 per cent of GDP that it spends on our varsities. It would appear that overall, research has reached a bottleneck in the Malaysian scientific conversation, and this should not be the case. It is sad that the highest in terms of ranking that Universiti Malaya has held in recent years is 156, to the applause of our politicians, and to the obvious yet commonly unacknowledged discontent of our local academics and research faculties. In this country, higher education is a game that produces students, but laughably enough does not produce thinkers. Research citations from our faculties are few and far between, and the science so valued by our politicians — as it stands — has yet to progress past the nascent stage of underdevelopment, into the era of strength that transfixed our forefathers. This isn't the case because our students are weak, or they can't study the syllabi adequately. I am a part of this system, and I note firsthand that it has produced individuals who are qualified to stand amongst the elite as citizens of the world, who can think for themselves. Are we simply, by design, less capable of producing? I don't think so. Malaysian students are uncreative or that they lack the means to be creative — rather than conveniently blaming ourselves for creativity by design, particularly when it comes to research and innovation. I believe that the entire incentive allocation system by the Malaysian government has been sadly misinformed, and I hope that the focus of the recently announced Malaysian Education Blueprint will serve to address the issues inherent to the system. I do not presume to be able to pinpoint the issues with Malaysian education, and I do not think that it is a failure, despite the opinions of some interest groups. However, I do feel that there appears to be a massive abdication of responsibility when our education minister can sit back and say that we have a better education system in Malaysia than the United States and Germany despite our mediocre PISA scores, and our relative lack of productive research in recent years compared to other countries. I feel that it is senseless politicking not to acknowledge the problems with education in this country, then to reveal an educational "road map" to replace that which has been "so successful" all these years. Look at how the entire system of incentives works within this country. Look at our high achievers. There's a very strong chance that our top students have been involved in science education after their SPM years, for the simple reason that it's perceived to be easier for university admissions. After all, when some knowledge is considered more equal than others at this juncture of our lives, when parents tell their children to do science "just because they can switch over to arts later", there doesn't need to be real interest in maths and science — or indeed, a desire to discover more about the world — for students to gain good results. But this all falls apart, as our students call themselves "engineers by training" while working in banks. Perhaps this is just how society works — how the whole system of incentives is structured, such that the so-called empiricists and engineers-by-training are systematically compensated more than their art history counterparts. I go by anecdotal evidence, but for many students, it seems that science and mathematics are not ends in and of themselves, for they have become the means by which university applications are accepted. Yet, as numerous studies have recorded, the students of generation Y have increasingly tended towards an education that means something, that reflects meaning in shades more adequate than that which the world has imposed upon them. And doesn't it make sense for government to provide that meaning? To contextualise it? To make it more relevant to society? To make it available, and not decide who should be able to choose a life of science? To me, the government shouldn't be trying to expose students to mathematics and science education in an effort to increase participation. It should make it an option for all, because it doesn't make sense to conclude that students shouldn't be able to choose a life path simply because they perform poorly at such an early stage of their lives. Equally, I disagree with the notion that academic "high achievers" should be funnelled into science education blindly, for the simple reason that it is considered better by a single educational board. Passion can be discovered at any age, and the government should be trying to educate students better as a whole, attempting to create better people and better thinkers who take a genuine interest in their education, rather than systemic regurgitators of information gunning simply for university admissions and a place in the corporate world. Education doesn't have to purely be a rite of passage. The worth of a field of knowledge lies not only in its capacity to contribute to the world, but also the beauty that it represents. Let our children discover what they truly love. Let them find out what their hearts burn for, not mislead them from the start with arbitrary guidelines, and don't restrict them from exploring. This is idealistic, but this is what I believe. As we come to the third quarter of 2012, I think the world isn't going to end in December, and that we have a way to go. There's no excuse for an education system that will create a generation of second-handers, for our world is a tyranny of the innovators, and we must not be left behind. [2] http://www.topuniversities.com/institution/universiti-malaya-um * The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist. |
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