Historians call history textbooks stumbling block to unity

Inaccurate and biased accounts of Malaysian history in secondary school textbooks have become a serious issue and will get in the way of uniting Malaysians, historians said last night.

The SPM History Textbook forum at Universiti Malaya here, organised by the MIC Youth, had historians Prof Tan Sri Dr Khoo Kay Kim, Dr Ranjit Singh Malhi and Datuk M. Thambirajah as panel members, with about 50 others in attendance.

“The syllabus being used today is good, but for a different purpose. This is only a fraction of what a syllabus should be,” Thambirajah said.

He explained how Malaysian history textbooks had evolved to what are being used today while Khoo, an emeritus professor in the History Department of UM, shared a lengthy presentation of interesting facts on Malaysian history, and how a lot of it was wrongly taught to students.

Ranjit (picture), a history textbook author up to 1996, said a good history textbook should be generally objective, well-balanced, devoid of value judgments, and should promote critical thinking among students.

He pointed out the shortcomings of the textbooks used as being too Islamic and Malay-centric, contained half-truths, had numerous factual errors and contradiction, politically-motivated, and contained value judgments.

He said all 17 writers of the Form 1 to Form 5 history textbooks came from one ethnic group, the first time it has happened.

Ranjit is also part of “A Truly Malaysian History” campaign which took root on May 15, where a group of scholars and non-governmental organisations are pushing for greater accuracy in history textbooks for secondary school students.

He is sometimes confused with Prof Dr Ranjit Singh from Universiti Utara Malaysia’s College of Law, Government and International Studies, who sits on the special government committee to study the history curriculum and textbooks for secondary school, and who also happens to be his brother-in-law.

The committee, whose members were appointed on May 3, is headed Malaysian Historical Society chairman Datuk Omar Mohd Hashim while the dean of Universiti Teknologi Mara’s Administrative Sciences and Policy Studies Faculty, Datin Paduka Prof Dr Ramlah Adam, who is also a Perkasa leadership council member, is the deputy chairperson.

Khoo, who also sits on the same committee, said it was easy to point fingers on how the textbooks have come to what they are today but it will be a challenge to correct the problem and teach the younger generation a more accurate version of Malaysian history.

“Our job today is not to criticise but to bring people together,” he said.

MIC Youth secretary C. Sivarraajh told reporters that the movement will collate the points raised by the panel members yesterday and submit them as a memorandum to Education Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin next week.

“The shortcomings in history textbooks are a very serious issue and have to be seen as a stumbling block to 1 Malaysia. They have to be corrected soon because there are a lot of facts which were manipulated, and not explained in a truthful manner.

“I hope other parties do not politicise this issue. This has to be solved academically, this involves an academic solution. So I think it is best that the ministry and the panel members chosen be more transparent in balancing the content of history textbooks,” he said.