mindcandy pennies from the overgenerous lunatic

Intresting article.

Historical presentations need a mature audience

Posted by: gonyj

The UPM teaching guide on the "Ethnic Relations" subject raised controversy mostly in relation to the accuracy of historical facts. I quote a sentence from the 19th July article on pg N3 of the Star titled "Ong: Textbooks should consider sensitive issues: "Ong said the MCA felt that the guide should not draw conclusions on certain incidents that would jeopardise the relationship & harmony between ... ethnic groups." The article failed to mention who is likely to be drawing conclusions. By inference, it most probably means the teachers using the guide and the students on the ultimate receiving end. A gun is not lethal weapon unless it is in the wrong hands. By analogy, historical facts remain facts, unless perceived wrongly and acted upon by misguided people. An accurate depiction of history is important, but so is a mature nation whose people are able to observe and interpret the facts rationally and subjectively. A mature person would also be able to assess the truth even if something was presented in a false light. The local students nowadays, tertiary students notwithstanding, lack maturity. Having been spoonfed all our lives, I seriously doubt my generation's average analytical skills are sufficient enough for interpreting something as serious as "ethnic relations". Try asking any student to write an essay based on a historical event, say, the Malaysian Road to Independence, and he will give a standard textbook answer which reflects none of his own thoughts. Some may beg to defer but I am merely stating an opinion based on a perception of my own generation. Emotional youngsters that we are, we are easily swayed by public sentiments. Neither are we mature enough, nor exposed enough to 'digest' racial issues in the correct way. My point is, before the education authorities consider launching such a controversial subject, did they ever give a thought to the possibility that both teachers and students might not be able to stand up to the challenge? If the authorities are sincere enough in promoting racial harmony, they should start from the bottom up. Cease spoonfeeding students and force them to think in the way that reflects their educational standing. Most importantly, teach common courtesy and racial tolerance.

From here

Is pretty intresting, mostly because it is true in more ways than one. Most malaysian university students lack maturity and most importantly, the ability to rationalize and deduce current issues, its effects on the world and others in general. It's a pretty common and sad tred out there.

Sometimes I wonder what would actually happen when it comes to philosopical forum-style dicussions in an official setting. Will we malaysians actually have nothing much to say about the war, the kidnappings and its effects, global warming, industrial logging and whatnot? Or we'd just keep quiet and do the trademark tidakapa additute, being complacent that none of the issues affect us, which is why we should not bother? This kind of mentality has been going on for years. And its pretty worrisome.

But yes, there are people who couldnt care less about anything in every country, its just that its more obvious when it comes to malaysia. People making idiotic racist remarks in the internet and then go "oh its my opinion you idiot!" without giving a damm about how those remarks make people of other races feel, and whats more, the person who made such a remark was from...none other than Universiti Malaya. That is refreshing to know. Very refresing and worrying to know that some of our university graduates are racists. The ethnic relations guide will only worsen the current mentality if maturity is not imposed when it comes to thinking about people who are diffrent than you. There are a lot of people out there in Malaysia who like to use the phrase "If you dont like malaysia, you're ungrateful and leave it!" when other races complain of subtle discrimination. On the surface it sounds true, but really, if both sides are true and have their reasons behind such statements, where does it all go?

Nowhere.

You see, most malaysians fail to consider about the position of the other party before making any statements. I'm guilty of that myself but at least its under control. It's a common fallacy when it comes to making statements. It has already been proven with the collection of idiotic statements that the parliment churns out every now and then, although recently PAS has made some improvements and has actually critized the murder of the 13 dogs, in which they were shot to death in front of their owner who loves dogs oh-so-much. A lot of people mistake freedom of speech for the freedom to make stupid statements without ever caring whether or not what they say will cause harm or danger to the nation, and I've seen my share of malaysians doing it, especially online. They say things that they dont even have the guts to say in real life here online and when people get offended, they hide under the ground and going defensive in a really stupid manner. There was a dark period in Malaysian Online history where malaysian IPs were banned from a whole list of IRC servers. All due to malaysians trolling their arse off at the chatrooms, thinking that since its online, they can get away with it. And in the papers, occasionally, we'd read about singaporean kids making all kinds of seditious comments online when malaysian kids are doing the same thing.

I think its about time that things get more out in the open. After all, everyone has access to the internet, and any kind of information can be aquired. It takes a certain degree of maturity, that is, the ability to get out of your shell and think about others, put yourself in other people's shoes and see things from their point of view, to actually dicuss about sociopolitical matters without sounding like a total jackass with the international community.

I guess that's that for now. Gotta scoot off to the gym and there'll be yet another annoying workout sheet