YOURSAY | Everything starts with education

YOURSAY | 'In 1960s, we believed BM introduced to unite the races.'

COMMENT | When propaganda is presented as education

Kilimanjaro: Many think the rot started with former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad. Yes, Mahathir took this rot to a different level, but it all started with second prime minister Abdul Razak Hussein.

While he was pushing everything Malay, he sent his children for education overseas. It can also be unmistakably acknowledged that Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim is the main architect of the mess we are in now.

Why do you think Anwar, then a firebrand Malay Muslim leader and an activist with the Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia (Abim) was brought into the government by Mahathir?

I have been voting for Anwar since he was "punched" in his face, but before that, my hatred for him was so much that I had to resign from my senior job in a government agency because of his Malay-centric policies that alienated me.

I preferred to resign rather than pander to his obstinate policies. Do you know that he was the first one to carve this "exclusivity" for Malays then?

Until Anwar came onto the political scene, it was just about the Malays, but since he came onto the scene, it was then that this twist of the government departing from a "religiously neutral" government took hold.

This permeated into every field and section and what was unimaginable until then started becoming the norm. Adding fuel to this was the Iranian Revolution which Anwar used to speak so fondly of then.

There was this Malay friend of mine, a former classmate, who used to visit me with his wife some evenings. She was not in the hijab then and she used to be so friendly with my mother. Then one day they came to the house and there she was now donning the hijab and, sadly, she refused to have the tea my mother had prepared for her.

She had always enjoyed my mother's tea before. Her husband (my friend) felt embarrassed and persuaded her to have the tea but to no avail. My mother cryptically told me then that we may have to start preparing ourselves to face a divided Malaysia. How prophetic.

The major blame for the failure of our education system should be borne by Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP). It is a colossal failure that if I had a choice, I would fire all of them who helmed it.

I will write another time on this, but suffice it to say for now that, contrary to what many may think, Malay is a language, just like English, Japanese, and Korean. Failure to turn that into a language of knowledge is the colossal failure of DBP.

Perhaps in the 1960s, we would have believed that Bahasa Malaysia was introduced as the medium of instruction to unite the races, but looking at how we have become a fractured nation and seemingly the greed of some Malays in power to grab everything that they want has dented that belief that it is anything about unity.

It has generated a country of extremists and some bordering on the lunacy that it is a right that a non-Malay can become the vice chancellor of a public university. That is just scratching the surface.

Like it or not, until race and religion are out of politics and single-race/religious parties are banned, this battle for religious supremacy will continue and, worse, will continue to divide the country or may even ruin it.

This talk of "moderate" Islam is all hogwash and for leaders like Anwar, PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang, and Perikatan Nasional leader Muhyiddin Yassin, the continued insistence on their versions of Islam will continue to confuse the people and the country.

Where is former prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's Islam Hadhari now? What happened to former religious minister Mujahid Yusof Rawa’s version? Slogans and more slogans and political posturing. And the non-Malays will continue to pay a heavy price for something that they were never part of.

I don't know whether Umno has learnt its lessons. Rather late in the day, it started talking about multiculturalism. Simply put, it has lost in a "religious" war it started.

That Mahathir had lost his deposit in the election made me feel a lot better. In the end, he was chucked out by the Malays. I thought maybe this was nature's way of teaching some useful lessons. It is for him to take the cue and see the damage he has done to a once beautiful country that once prompted our first prime minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman, to say that he was the happiest prime minister in the world.

What have they achieved with this race and religion thing? Maybe this time around we still have hope. Would we be this lucky the next time around? Reap what you sow.

MS: Abdul Razak Hussein and former education minister Rahman Talib sowed the seeds for the steady putrefaction of Malaysia's education system. Mahathir and Anwar made doubly sure that it would continue to rot. The collective result of their many machinations is now on full display.

What is worse than the deplorable quality of the rotten system's output is the general acceptance of the holy mess by the majority and its inability to recognise the rot for what it is.

Anwar‘s personal choice last week of an Abim-leaning functionary, Fadhlina Sidek, as education minister means that the rot will continue unabated. There is no way in hell that things will improve.

And as karma would have it, Razak's eldest son who was sent to study in British public schools is now a convicted felon, sent to prison for 12 years.

Mazilamani: Selfish political agenda has damaged our education system disastrously. Knowing that some of the changes were initiated by Anwar may surprise many, myself included.

What nobody took notice of, is when another political party quietly exploited the loopholes created, to the fullest advantage, through a separate schooling system with boarding facilities.

These schools caused many to pursue degree courses in India, Bangladesh, and Middle East Countries. On returning to Malaysia, many had to be absorbed as teachers, for not all can become preachers.

Today, the 20-year agenda is converted as a vote bank for PAS. For Anwar to change the system would be time-consuming, because of the conditioning they have already gone through.

Cogito Ergo Sum: I hate to be a pessimist, but I think it’s too late to change the education system. It is a wilful act to dumb down education to prevent critical thinking and the ability to question questionable policies.

The rotten system is now entrenched in the curriculum and reinforced by the last prime minister, Ismail Sabri Yaakob, who insisted on speaking in Bahasa Malaysia at the UN General Assembly.

He and the rest of the administration did not bother or care if his message was understood. What was important was the fact that he appeared to be a ‘nationalist’.

We have had the misfortune of leaders who were unfit to lead a multicultural, multi-ethnic nation. And a beautiful nation that had so much potential, was destroyed from within by a few.

Clever voter: The original aim is to instil a sense of nationalism, and ensure history is part of that process. It was then in the 1908s that someone wanted to go further than this.

More so, it is to bring in line religious education consistent with the state ideology. Decades of uninterrupted growth have given rise to this idea of using education as an influence.

This includes ensuring the way people behave, involving indoctrination at the expense of desired outcomes of education. When education is used to serve political propaganda, the nation will enter into reverse gear.

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