Delivering his opening address at the one-day congress entitled Upholding Malaysia's National Education Blueprint 2013-2025 at Putra World Trade Centre on August 27, 2013, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamed touched on a very critical area of education - the failure of the schools to produce well-mannered and cultured young people.
The Sun reported as follows, quoting Dr Mahathir: "However, besides instilling knowledge, schools should also inculcate traditions, culture and noble values, since today's parents do not have time to take this on.
"Religious education and moral classes in schools are not enough", he said, claiming that youths lack noble values and are ensnared in social problems.
"They feel no shame for the wrong they have done. Look East, in Japan, if an aeroplane crashed, the transport minister would resign.
"But not here. We lack the discipline to uphold values and principles."
Dr M has succinctly put it in a nutshell, i.e. that our schools have failed to produce a society that is an asset to the nation but rather a liability. I concur with his observation, belated as it is.
This is an issue that has often been spoken about - the decline of the morals of our society, and which has plagued the nation for a few decades now. Sadly, those who should be in the forefront taking positive steps to remedy this do not seem to be concerned.
The first to be concerned should be the Ministry of Education. However, it is in perpetual denial mode and has been all these years despite the endemic indiscipline situation in our schools. While the discipline has been going down and down, the Ministry has been painting a picture that it is not an issue at all.
For all the hype about educational reform, it has not thought it fit to face this problem with an open mind and honesty. Not a word about this endemic disease in our schools has found its way into the Education Blueprint.
The Blueprint talks about creating a society that has high moral values, that is cultured, etc.
However, without first discussing the prevailing discipline situation and the reasons for it to have deteriorated to this level, i.e. without diagnosing the disease or without identifying the shortcomings and failures, how can you put in place a workable remedial plan and implement it?
The other party that should be very concerned about the problem should be the teachers themselves. They are the ones facing the problem daily. They are the ones at the receiving end.
Teachers have unions and head-teachers have associations of their own. I am not aware of any serious discussions by these groups on the discipline problem or any memoranda prepared by them and sent to the ministry.
They should be vociferous on this issue for they know the real situation in the schools. Are they obliged to back the ministry's stand that there is no serious discipline problem in schools? Then why the recent call to station policemen in schools?
The role of teachers' unions and associations should also encompass the issues their members face in discharging their teaching duties. Among these, the question of discipline should be given top priority.
This is for the simple, common sense reason that if the students cannot even keep quiet in class, or do not respect their teachers and have no respect for school rules, then teachers are wasting their time as "teaching" loses its meaning. Teachers' time and effort is wasted and is unproductive.
All this leads to some children leaving school at the end of 11 years without being able to read and write properly, without being able to do simple mathematical calculations, and worst of all, without any character worthy of a decent human being, worthy of a citizen who is an asset to the nation.
Such citizens are not those who are rich and mighty but those with a good character and morals. Ironically, the Ministry has been trying to help these students pass their exams by lowering the passing marks.
Dr M is also correct in putting the responsibility on schools to inculcate good values and characteristics in children. He rightly points out that most parents today do not have the time to take this on.
If I may add, most young parents today also lack parenting skills as they do not have the benefit of living in extended families.
Bring back the cane
The cane is the best medicine for controlling child misbehaviour in schools, when the love and counselling approaches fail. There is a critical need to go back in time to the 1950's and 60's when the cane was a standard instrument for keeping the children in line.
I do not know of a single case of children in my alma mater who received some strokes of the cane who turned out to be violent persons, or who suffered psychological repercussions. On the contrary, I remember a few of them who turned out to be good students and did well in life.
What is so abhorrent about using a light cane when all else fails? Is it not better that the child is given one or two strokes, and maybe just on one or a few occasions, and be corrected for life, rather than receiving some strokes of corporal punishment in adult life, or being shot dead by the underworld or even by the law? The earlier this is done in a child's life, the better the result. That is real nipping of misbehaviour in the bud.
Can any of our elderly ministers and others in high office who would have been in school in the 1950's and 60's tell us if the cane was never used in their schools, and if it was, what finally happened to those who were caned? Did they suffer any psychological problems? Did they become aggressive and violent persons in adult life? Did they hate the teachers who caned them?
Why was it acceptable to use the cane for hundreds, or even thousands of years until around the 1970's when its use was banned? If using a light cane can cause all the horrendous things that psychologists say would result, like children growing up with psychological problems, acquiring aggressive behaviour themselves, becoming rebellious and so on, why wasn't there so much lawlessness, lack of social values, lack of culture, lack of shame, as we see today?
Can any child psychologist or child expert tell us why indiscipline has gone to the dogs not only in our schools but in adult society after the banning of the use of the cane in schools? Why was the situation the opposite during the days when the cane was standard classroom equipment for maintaining discipline?
If children are not taught to respect law and order in schools, can you reverse the clock and start teaching about law and order, manners, shame and all the other good values when they have become adults without character? - August 29, 2013.
* Ravinder Singh reads The Malaysian Insider.
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