This beautiful and rich with diversity country is sometimes nothing more than a shit place to live in. Its uniqueness on multicultural race sharing and living together that supposedly make Malaysia one of the most desirable country to be, is only a thin layer of icing on a cake. What went wrong?
Footage of Masjid Austin clashed was viral via the social media. There’s nothing wrong in that. People like to share things. What was wrong was how people react to it. Some were heavily disgusted by it while some other sparked new hatred with sentiments. I was about to type “it will be a matter of time when someone will start to view this as a racist issue” when it was already featured in another site asking for full condemnation toward the couple. I was gobsmacked.
Sentiment and other played major role way back before this. When the PPSMI and Etems were introduced, most of the teachers without English Language background knowledge were sceptical. Millions were spent and the teachers were sent for courses in phases which took months (include practice, microteaching, macro-teaching, discussion etc) Of course some of them viewed the project as ‘Project Gajah Putih”.
After four or five years, some of us language teachers saw the implication to the language learners. It was schematic Learning and we were supposed to be on the verge of new era in teaching English. Of course something had to intervene and I think to name Political pressure as one of them is not too much. The idea of our superior language is sufficient to our survival was painted to our young mind. Soon other racial-supremacist idea began to fill our mainstream media. Without thinking of the academic underlying reason, PPSMI and ETems were scraped.
A month ago, there was an issue where people were offended by the question set in a test promoting racial stereotype. I had trouble to teach Pendidikan Moral to young learners when they knew nothing about other races. To relate a name such as Jeswan Singh, Sikh and Punjab was quite a job. To explain we used to call our Chinese friend with names like Ah Seng, Ah chong was was tiring and to explain why some Indians do not eat meat sometimes baffled us because none has interact with any of them. With the current situation we are living in, everything will be stereotype. Sometimes it is exhausting worrying about small and certain details or rules might offend people. Sometimes these pedantries are the evidence that we are nothing more than divided Malaysians.
I had trouble to find a book by Uthaya Shankar called Malaiur Manickam. It was published by Dubook Press. The author became a hate target (as to my understanding) from various hate camps and I found his book when I was at Pustaka Minerva. To my surprise it is quite a good book. It gives sights to the Indians and their religion. While in this era of multicultural living together, nobody seemed to understand each other well, I find this kind of book crucial. Those we called the minority is actually a fraction of Malaysia.
I was at the MPH bookstore yesterday, hoping to get a glimpse of new books since I could not go to PBAKL. It is not easy to look for books especially when I am not a fan of any genres (and people find my fav- JD Salingers’ Catcher in the Ryhe as crap)I spend an hour while my children prowling their books in the bookstore. And guess what.
Malaysian English literature suffers traditional bias compare to their BM or foreign counterparts; they’re unfortunate in that sense. The books were hidden somewhere nobody would even have the courage to look at. There was a time I used to take those books and swaps places so people could find them easily and it was quite a stir to the management. Haha. But the store manager was there supervising and I could do nothing more but look for books. Instead of buying new novels I ended up buying AIM book of Analytical and Critical Thinking because it is sad, after 5o years of independence, the so call sovereign country is still immature especially in thinking about others. While our nation has taking its step forward our mentality on the other hand is not following its pace.
(Oh I also bought Haruki Murakami’s and fell in love with it)
Comments
Post a Comment