Ethnic Relations Course : An Alternative Proposal

Finally, I'm back in the US and I have decent internet access once again. I had a good time meeting family and friends (including some who read this blog) in the 1 month that I was back. It was a reminder to my wife and I that we do want to return home when I eventually finish my PhD (though we might take a few detours along the way).

So many issues to discuss but I think I'll start with one which is closer to home which is the latest fiasco on the Ethnic Relations course and textbook in UPM. Tony has blogged about it here and here and I want to chip in with an alternative proposal to a "textbook".

I disagree with the idea that there should be ONE textbook on the teaching of Ethnic Relations in Malaysia. The practice of historical revisionism has been discussed by Tony and many of our readers. The fact is, every writer / author would approach a certain subject, for example, the May 13th 1969 riots, with a certain bias or agenda in hand, sometimes consciously, often subconciously.

Even if the writers / authors try their level best not to have an agenda, the very process of research might tilt towards a certain perspective. There will be / has been writings on this incident viewed from different perspectives. If you're interviewing, for example, only Chinese KL-lites who lived through the incident, their accounts of the riots would be different from Malay KL-lites who went through the same experience.

Instead of relying on ONE textbook (which is a very typically Malaysian thing to do -study ONE book to pass your exams instead of reading from a variety of sources), I propose that a variety of writings / articles should be used instead.

I'm personally surprised that Prof Shamsul AB is the project director for this new subject given that he should know that there has been different academic perspectives offered on the subject of race relations. He himself has authored many books and articles on the notion of Muslim and Islamic identity and how this has been contested over the past decades.

Other Malaysian academics who have written on this subject from different perspectives include Colin Abraham, Francis Loh, Terrence Gomez, Sumit Mandal and Johan Saravanamuttu. It is interesting to note that Johan Saravanamuttu was asked initially by the Ministry of Higher Education to be the head of the technical committee for the subject but pulled out because the Ministry wanted to fast track this project while Johan wanted it to be piloted first.

The problem with this course and the other compulsary courses in our public universities (Malaysian Studies, Islamic Civilisation, Malaysian Citizenship and languages) reeks of brain-washing instead of encouraging critical thinking and healthy debate on thess matters.

The notion that there should be ONE textbook on the issue of the civil rights movement in the US for example would be laughable in any university of repute here in the States. Instead, students are exposed to a variety of readings and allowed to argue their own points of view (no matter how biased) based on the texts that they have read. Good grades are given to points well-argued and not on taking the "government's" or the "university's" position.

But maybe that's going too far in our public university's context. To think that we might actually consider teaching our students to think critically! How seditious a thought!