Darshenn, a KL school boy, compared his new mathematics and science marks to his old marks. He felt utterly betrayed and horrified. For a person who scored Straight A’s for UPSR, he had done very badly for his first test in high school because it was in Malay. “How could the government to this to me?!” He thought.
Rui ying, a student in a Chinese vernacular school who, as a norm, always scored straight A’s and never had any trouble during exams was struggling to answer her midterm science exams questions. She had not done well in the previous exam and had been scolded and caned.
Huda, is the daughter of a fisherman who is quite frankly speaking very annoyed by the change of language in her school syllabus and also annoyed at her very insular community. University syllabus is going to be in English. By right, math and science, especially secondary school, should be taught in English. She ignores her previous thought and starts learning History. Her thoughts are filled with Hitler and the Boston tea party then, she snaps back to reality. They are not a part of her history syllabus. She frets and tries to concentrate.
Hitam, a young teen living in the forest of Borneo who travels 3 miles a day on foot to get to school doesn’t understand why his mathematics changed to another language after he took all the trouble to learn the English language. He is about to give up.
Miranda, a Chindian mother who is worried about her children they do not know evens the slightest bit of general World History. She reminiscence her school days when they learnt about the hanging gardens of Babylon and fears her children will never know about these ancient wonders and history.
Education in the largest sense is any act or experience that has a formative effect on the mind, character, or physical ability of an individual. In its technical sense, education is the process by which society deliberately transmits its accumulated knowledge, skills, and values from one generation to another. As defined by Wikipedia.
Defined as a process by which groups of people make collective decisions or as a term that generally applies to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs by Wikipedia, Politics has a vast influence on the education in our beloved country. One can perceive that the word “politics” is, in fact, a very dirty word in Malaysia. Mention it and the look of disdain would be etched on most people’s faces. Mention it to your parents that you are interested to be a politician and I would guarantee that there would not be any family hugs and tears of happiness flowing.
What does politics has to do with education? Well, politics play the dominant influence in shaping the education policies of the country. Apparently when it comes to structural policy implementation, the interest of politicians comes first and interest of student comes last. Given the examples above, today I stress on the constant changing of mathematics and science in English to Malay and vice versa and the horrible history syllabus we have today.
Have you noticed, during every election, some politician will either promise to keep the education system in English or change it to Malay depending on the state? Well, I have. My feelings towards it are of despise and disgust. It shows that they make empty promises just to win the election and be done with it. They don’t care about us, about innocent students who have their minds and lives messed up with continual policy changes in education.
For havens sake, these politicians should make up their mind. Should they be willing to take the risk of losing some voters to make the education system better? In universities, Mathematics and science is taught in English. That’s why in 2002, Educationist at large breathed a sigh of relief when a glimmer of hope was seen in the introduction of English in the teaching of Mathematics and Science in English but that quickly disappeared when the policy was scrapped in 2009 and both critical subjects will be taught in Malay in 2012. What was alarming was that pressure from political extremist groups and language purists and NGO’s from both sides of the divide was successful in influencing the government in disbanding this policy. It is disheartening is that these groups seem to know more about language policies than educationists and reformists in the field. These insular people are actually the catalyst of the change.
On the other hand we have the History syllabus.
On the 15th of May 2011 a group of scholars and non-governmental organisations (NGO) pushing for greater accuracy in history textbooks for secondary school students gathered for the first time.
-The Malaysian Insider-
The term ‘greater accuracy’ amuses me here. Does that mean that we have been learning History that is not accurate or more importantly true?! Here is another bad effect about politics in education. The government will try to brainwash us into thinking that they are such saints and that they have saved us from injustice. When they themselves were the cause of all the chaos in the first place. In our history syllabus there are terms referencing to instil patriotism. These terms should been in our textbooks if they had wanted us to learn factual and truthful history or are they afraid of letting us know the truth.
If we are to compare the History syllabus of our beloved country and other developed countries, we can see that the other countries actually teach the students there not only their countries history but also general world history. This means that the other nation students are better equipped with facing the world as a whole than us. Before our past education minister, whose name I will not mention to avoid any controversy, changed our History syllabus, we were just like the other nations. We learnt about Hitler, the hanging gardens of Babylon etc. but that was all in the past. During my 46 year old mothers time I’d say. Now the only History we’re learning is how miserable we were before Independence. In my point of view, we actually must thank the British for what we have today. People who dare to Speak out.
The influence of politics in our education system can be seen as pathetic or disgraceful! The education body of our country should be an entirely different body from politics so as it would not be used for the ease of winning elections. Think about the students. Think about the future. Education is no flimsy matter.
Written by
Hanida Hayani Ishan
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