History is for education, not for politics

Tay Tian Yan

Hstory is not meant to re-engineer the students' minds, but to inspire them. History is not made to serve the purpose of politics, but to elevate human characters and social progress.


You need to pass your Bahasa Malaysia paper to get your SPM certificate. This is something everyone can comprehend. This is Malaysia and there is a need for this.

Beginning 2013, an exam candidate must also pass history as well before he can get the same cert. But why?

People will tend to ask: Why not English? Or Maths? Or the student's mother tongue?

These subjects are all very important. At least they carry some practical values in our quest for a developed and high-income nation.

Indeed, but while English, Maths, or another language are needed by the country, they are not politically needed.

History is politically needed.

For instance, our history started with the Malacca Sultanate, then Umno leading the nation to independence, the all-too-sacred invincibility of social contract, and BN steering the nation towards stability and prosperity... These important lessons need to be instilled in our future generations.

You must pass the History papers before we can get the cert, so students will never want to doze off in history classes and they need to go for history tuition classes after school. They also must make sure they remember all the facts and figures by heart before exams.

From that moment on, all the so-called politically correct facts must be etched deep inside the students' hearts. They must never forget nor challenge them.

This psychological education meets all the political requirements.

While history is important, and there are indeed good reasons to make history a compulsory subject that students must pass in exams, there is nevertheless a prerequisite: this ruling should only be implemented in specific developed nations.

In these countries, history is not meant to re-engineer the students' minds, but to inspire them. History is not made to serve the purpose of politics, but to elevate human characters and social progress.

For instance, in America's history textbooks, the teachers would relate the history of European immigrants in North America, and then want the students to form study groups, search for information in the library and compile a report to debate whether the arrival of Europeans in North America had caused destruction to the Indian civilisation.

Or the teacher would talk about the Civil War, and then separate the students into two groups, one standing alongside the North while the other standing alongside the South, and debate about the benefits and influences of the War.

This is what we call true history education.

I can never imagine some day our teachers would allow their students to debate whether the history of the Malayan Peninsular began with the Hindu civilisation 1,400 years ago, or with the arrival of Parameswara in Melaka 500 years ago.

Similarly, other than Umno, MCA and MIC, the other political organisations, including the roles played by leftist movements in the country's independence as well as as the British decision to forego this Far Eastern colony long before that, would never be touched on.

As for social contract, something that even the pros are still unclear of, the history textbooks will define based on political needs.

In developed countries, history education allows the students to think about and unveil the meanings of different types of arguments.

Moreover, the decision to make it compulsory to pass history was made in an Umno general assembly, not after in-depth deliberations by educational experts in a non-political situation. - Sin Chew Daily