Don’t damage a child’s psyche

The insenstitive act by SK Seri Pristana has opened up a can of worms, one whose stench travels way back to the Education Ministry's four-walls.

COMMENT

Last September the Education Ministry embarked on a mission to brainwash students and forewarn them against the ‘harm’ in embracing human beings from a different sexual orientation.

The ministry went so far as to to sanction a set of guidelines to ‘educate’ parents and students on rejecting all notions of homosexuality, bisexuality and transgenderism.

The then deputy Education Minister Mohd Puad Zarkashi was only too happy to take on the mission of eradicating the existence of the lesbian, gays, bisexuals and transgender communities.

For starters, a so-called parenting seminar was held on the topic of LGBT by the Yayasan Guru Malaysia Berhad and Putrajaya Schools Parent-Teacher Associations Consultative Council.

Leaflets stereotyping the LGBT groups were made available to the participating parents; they were told to be wary should their off-springs take an interets in V-neck T-shirts which the parents were told were the ‘trademark’ of homosexuals.

Then in April this year the Education Ministry decided to ‘pep up’ its anti-LGBT stand with the government-funded free-for-all musical ‘Asmara Songsang (Abnornal Desire) which kicked off in March.

A blogger who had reviewed the musical remarked that it was “as narrow minded and bigoted a view as one could get”.

But is the Education Ministry or the Barisan Nasional-led government perturbed by the hate and malignant culture it is so busy propagating in schools?

Don’t damage a child’s psyche

From its ‘hate people who are different’ mission, the Education Ministry has moved on to yet another soul-destroying step, this time ‘teaching’ the Muslim students and teachers to disregard the feelings and sentiments of the non-Muslims natives of this country.

When the non-Muslim students of a school were ‘forced’ to eat in a makeshift canteen near the school’s toilet simply because the school decided to shut down its canteen to observe the fasting month of Ramadan, Deputy Education Minister II P Kamalanathan did not find the issue of the school disrespecting the basic rights of a child to a clean environment a big deal.

In fact, Kamalanathan dismissed any hint of racial discord taking place at the school and went on to support the school’s alibi that the canteen was closed to facilitate renovation work.

Knowingly or otherwise, this insenstitive act by SK Seri Pristana has opened up a can of worms, one whose stench travels way back to the Education Ministry’s four-walls.

Words fail to describe the damage schools like SK Seri Pristana do to a child’s pysche, drilling in the young impressionable minds the need to hate those who dare live life differently.

When a school under the ‘blessings’ of the Education Ministry takes on the role of a malefactor and behaves in ways that are detrimental to the holistic development of a child, the cross to bear is not for the parent alone.

Education Ministry’s offensive agenda

From disrespecting the sanctity of a human being to manipulating and politicising racial sentiments, the Education Ministry’s obtrusive actions have wrecked the very fragile racial ties in the country.

If Education Minister Muhyiddin Yassin who is also the deputy prime minister were to think that the rakyat has blown the SK Seri Pristana canteen issue out of proportion, he would be better off rethinking the entire episode.

The fact that Muhyiddin remains unfazed that parents who expose wrongdoings at schools end up being threatened remains a ‘mystery’.

Is the Education Minister not scared that school heads have taken it upon themselves to widen as much as possible the racial gap between the Muslim and non-Muslim children?

Is the Education Minister not worried when a school headmistress tells her non-Malay students to ‘go back to India or China’ all because these pupils together with the Malay students created a din during their school assembly recently?

Or for that matter how does Muhyiddin in his ardous role as Education Ministry head and the nation’s second-in-command view the act of a disciplinary teacher in Malacca who called a student a ‘prostitute’ after mistakenly accusing the girl of being part of a noisy group and had created trouble for another teacher.

In spite of all this and barely a week after the SK Seri Pristana canteen issue, it is now the principal of SM Alam Megah in Section 27 Shah Alam who has made news for the wrong reason.

Shah Alam MIC division deputy chairman A Prakash Rao who brought the incident to FMT’s attention said he had received numerous complaints from parents over the issue.

Prakash Rao has requested that the Education Ministry conducts an investigation over the issue which irked the Chinese and Indian parents.

It remains to be seen whether the Education Ministry will once again despatch its ‘peacemaker’ Kamalanathan to quieten down yet another troubling racial attack episode by a school head?

Jeswan Kaur is a freelance writer and a FMT columnist.