Lanterna Rally

Author: M Bakri Musa

Publisher:

Published: 2020-05-26

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13:

These essays document the continued decline of Malaysian education at all levels. This has been going on for decades. This collection updates the author's earlier book, An Education System Worthy Of Malaysia (2003). Despite successive Administrations professing to transform the system, the rot continues. The challenges today are as monumental as they are obvious. The remedies offered by the Government are nothing but repeated assurances and earnest statements, coupled with endless expensive Blueprints and White Papers. The greatest indictment of the system is that Malays are abandoning the national stream. The rich opt for international schools; the poor, Chinese schools, much to the embarrassment of Malay nationalists. The former, which offers other than the Malaysian curriculum and pedagogy, are mushrooming. Malaysian high school students perform poorly in comparative international assessments like TIMMS and PISA. No surprise that Malaysians are now a rare species on elite campuses. Employers shun local graduates, and the teaching profession no longer attracts the best. The Ministry of Education, the largest in terms of budget and personnel, is blighted by inept management and bloated bureaucracy intent on pursuing narrow nationalistic and Islamist agendas. Each successive Minister is consumed with exploiting the prestige of the office to further his political agenda. Even when the rare, enlightened policies were instituted, as with opening up higher education to the private sector in the mid 1990s by then Education Minister Najib Razak, the process was exploited to become lucrative conduits for corruption. Najib granted nearly 600 permits in a space of about two years! More than half of those new institutions went out of business within a few years, stranding their students and crushing their dreams, quite apart from literally robbing them and their parents. The 2018 elections saw a new government with a Minster of Education who for the first time was not from the dominant United Malay National Organization (UMNO) party. An Islamic Studies graduate, his first order of business was to change the color of school children's shoes from white to black! The only saving grace was that he was canned just over a year later. In January 2020, the Ministry was back under Prime Minister Mahathir. By February 2020, his government too was out, and with that, the Ministry was split into two, one for K-11 and another for Higher Education. As an unnecessary reminder, it was Mahathir, as Minister of Education back in the 1970s, who started the decline. Today Malaysian education has been taken over by the language nationalists and jihadist Islamists with their sole agenda of making not only education but the whole of Malaysia "Malay" and "Islamic." The nationalists add their chauvinistic and very "un-Islamic" Ketuanan Melayu (Malay hegemony) aspirations to the mix. As a result, the school curriculum is heavy on ritualistic religion and strident nationalism, with indoctrination masquerading as education. This glaring disconnect between the Ministry's agenda and reality is obvious to all but those bureaucrats and policymakers. While Malaysia is in desperate need of teachers of English, not one of her public universities have a Department of English. Meanwhile four core subjects of Malay, English, science, and mathematics are neglected. Recognizing the establishment's inertia as well as incompetence, the writer advocates liberalizing the system at all levels by opening it up to the private sector via the voucher system a la Chile, and encouraging charter schools as per America. Provide parents and students with choice, and reward those schools that succeed in preparing their students for the modern interconnected world, as well as being the pivotal instrument for integrating young Malaysians.