COMMENT | Setiawangsa MP Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad said,
“Ultimately, education is the great equaliser… If education is
discriminatory in gender or race, then you are killing off the power of
education to equalise society”.
See this is the problem right
here. How can anyone talk about improving the education system in a
country where the rights and special privileges of one race trump
anything else?
If the state is worried about how the school system is becoming
mono-ethnic, then perhaps this has to do with the birth rate of the
majority race here in Malaysia and how the state and religious
bureaucracy discourages family planning because demographic is destiny,
right?
But really, how exactly are young people going to forget
their differences and forge any kind of "Malaysian" identity when they
are constantly reminded that they are either the masters of this land
(and their position is under siege) or they are pendatang?
How
exactly is an education ministry headed by anyone believing in Malay
special rights going to formulate an education policy which creates
citizens who may be able to get employment but who will never think of
themselves as equal citizens of this country?
Beyond that, the
Arabisation and Islamisation processes with the aid of propaganda
institutions like Biro Tata Negara (BTN) have created a generation of
civil servants who believe that race and religion are first principles
and therefore their role in government is to facilitate those
principles.
A couple of years back, Pahang Umno objected
to people politicising the fact that a school in Kuantan forced
non-Muslim students to stay in school until after Muslim prayers were
carried out. All this was justified on the grounds that non-Muslim
students could learn about Islam. This was just an overt way to demand
compliance.
And forget about the urban-educated opposition polities. When it comes to education, in the ketuanan system, it is more about class than race.
Mainstream Malaysian politics is predicated on sustaining a jingoistic, nationalist but permanently underprivileged Malay base.
When politicos talk of rural folks, you have to understand that these are rural folks by design.
While
rich and middle-income Malays ensure that their children receive an
education that would make them competitive in this fast-changing
geopolitical landscape, the system is designed to keep “rural” Malays
and working-class Malays bereft of the opportunities available to that
class of Malays who control or who serve a political system that enables
their privilege.
Of course, the kind of class that this system of
education engineers makes them perfect as petty mid-level bureaucrats
or working-class drones, steeped in religion and racial grievances,
using the system at the behest of their political masters always hoping
to jump to the next level using corrupt means. A new serf class created
post-May 1969.
Then, of course, we can talk about how non-Malays
are marginalised in state institutions and then demonised for not
wanting to participate in the system, preferring the private sectors
riddled with racialism and bigotry of its own.
Going back to basics
