Ode to MAJU!

At the outset, education has been a subject very close to my  heart that I have been bitching about for years now. All the ills  of society is the by-product of a failed education system. A lack  of education brings forth the bums, cons and in some cases,  politicians! So to look sharp and smart, the privileged ones can  today "buy" a piece of paper accreditation  to frame on his/her  wall and perhaps secure positions of great power, even if it is  from a Christian University that churns out degrees and  theologians to become Christian pastors and priests. And when  I say education, I mean a good education in math, science,  fields of technology and in the world's preferred language, the  Queen's  English! Nothing less. Thank you Siti (MAJU) Kasim.  *My 2sens hereinafter in red parenthesis.   PRESS STATEMENT  MAJU REFUTES NUTP CLAIM THAT SEKOLAH  KEBANGSAAN HAS NOT BECOME TOO RELIGIOUS  National Union of Teaching Profession (NUTP) president  Aminuddin Awang has been quoted by Utusan Malaysia on 15  September 2020 rejecting claims that national public schools are  “too Islamic”.  This fellow Aminuddin, was the Deputy Secretary General in the  2017-2021 season and now has by-passed his then Secretary  General Harry Tan Huat Hock and his then Deputy President  Chan Thye Choon to become President! Were those two  non-Malays not good enough to be President? See chart from  November 2017 (here) Therein you can see the rot in leap-frogging  patronage based on race and religion. But this trend of patronage  as been going on since the time of that corrupt old racist  MahaFiraun who came to power in 1982.So who started this shit?  Still living in denial about race and religion? MAJU cannot believe that NUTP as represented by its above  president can make such a claim whilst at the same time citing a  litany of religious practices that were unheard of in Malaysian schools  during the 70s. Examples include: reading doa during exams,  maulidur rasul celebration, playing and competing in nasyid, Quran  readings, and story-telling of prophets. All this is happening even in Christian missionary schools today,  such as SK Convent and La Salle which once used to have a  chapel for solitary prayers and catered for all faiths. Again the  elitists and ultras will choose to send their kids to expansive  private schools in  faraway lands where English is the medium  for teaching and communicating. Again I say the privileged ones  need not worry about the state of our education system, right?     There are many more blatant examples such as having ceramah  by external ustazs, practicing circling the kaabah with a model in  the school itself in some places, mandatory group prayer sessions  at various times in such schools including the constant encouraged  peer and teacher pressures for religiosity on the students.  Today I cannot understand the need for ALL schools to employ an  ustaz but the bigger worry is when ustazs are invited from war-torn  countries and are allowed to preach to young children in our  multicultural schools. A very dangerous appeal if they might  implant the wrong ideas in restless young minds.    Dec 21st 2018 news reported, "The government will revise the  curriculum in national schools as they have become “religious  schools”, says Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad”. The failed "visionary" who thought developing the country with  mega structure and bridges would bring us to 1st. world status  BUT instead completely dragged us into the 3rd. world desert- Arab country status. Developing people and investing in building  good and decent citizens is what gets you to be 1st. world status,  not mega buildings    It is not MAJU that made this assertion, it is the ex Prime Minister  of about 26 years who made this iron-clad claim. He should know.  He has seen the devolution of Malaysian education throughout his  tenure, after, and more. A change from a progressive and  science-led education system up until the 80s, into one that is  now enveloped with uncompromising and overt Islamic religiosity.  The creator of this Islamic educational module himself did jack-shit  in that 22 months of a "second-chance" he had to redeem himself  as he has failed so badly even as 2020 has dawned on us and is  almost "Game Over".for this blurred 2020 Vision of a corrupt and  frustrated old man.   Here we have the Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin  wanting Malaysia to produce Nobel Prize winners but the environment  in the majority of our schools does not nurture such ambitions. There  is no Nobel Prize in Religion. And there is no developed nation that  attained such status via religion. They all get there through science,  as the data clearly shows.  This man Moo is still in Lalaland lah if he is thinking of a Nobel  Prize. A man who dares not to reprimand his rabid mongrel from  PAS who by an unholy pact for political survival, spew venom on  Holy books of other faiths and cause so much suspicion and anger  instead of unity. This man is also so afraid of loosing votes by  taking the popular stand of self-denial. A slick and sick man with a  limited shelf-life. Sometimes I feel sorry for this man who is actually  powerless against his political partners lurking in the shadows to  stab his back and abandon him when the hammer falls.      The fact is that from Year 1 to Year 3, our students spend on  average 96 hours per year on Pendidikan Islam including Tasmik.  Science on the other hand gets 48 hours per year. If we count  Bahasa Arab - which the majority of the students are being  pressured to take - that would add up to a whopping 176 hours  per year on Islamic studies alone. The numbers for Year 4 to  Year 6 does not change much with science increased to 64  hours vs 96 hours for religious subjects. These data is based  on Ministry of Education own facts.  Today simple Malay words have been given the Arab flavour,  whilst the Arabs are turning to English to escape from their  3rd. world leanings. This camel herder language is not  represented in the world stage. It will embarrass the  Arabs even if they did not speak good English on  international platforms. So when did our "educators" go wrong  by abandoning good old Indonesian/Portuguese/Sanskrit  Bahasa Melayu for Arab- tainted Bahasa Malaysia? Our  Bahasa language used to be a checkered language before  and we were doing just fine, until 1982.     So just looking at the curriculum, and putting aside the religious  environment that the national schools tend to cultivate, what is  the NUTP president talking about? What holistic education is  that? This is called cognitive dissonance. And when the  president of the teacher's union has this in his head, you know  that our children's education is in deep trouble. Pray tell me if a bunch of kopiah and tudung clad "educators"  sitting in the committee of teachers would ever deny their political  masters urgent need to fish for votes by manipulating and  championing the rural folks wishes? This social-engineering of  our diverse multi-cultural fabric has been in motion for a long time  by the MahaFiraun was his then blue-eyed side-kick and  partner-in-crime Anwar Ibrahim!    We imbue interest in subjects through the quality and quantity of  time spent on them when they are young. Is it any wonder that  today we have a proliferation of ustaz and ustazah, and a majority  Malay youth population so religiously bent on judgement instead  of engineers and scientists that can contribute to Malaysia being  a developed Nation.  If all these "religious scholars" teach only about the pleasures in  the after-life, then, why don't they just die en masse now and go  to heaven and enjoy their wines and their virgins of their heart's  desires that they so fervently preach about? We have all these  clowns to the left of us and jokers to the right, still here we are,  the non-Malay Malaysians, stuck in the middle with you. Cheers!  MAJU rests its case.                                         Siti Kasim Founder Malaysian Action for Justice and Unity