How do we teach our children to be un-biased and un-prejudiced? To teach them to appreciate the diversity of Malaysia and to value the differences that make us a great nation.
One woman in America manage to teach children what it feels like to be put down by stereotypes and bigotry, she manage to place a lasting impression on children, an impression that held up for more than 2 decades.
To better understand how Jane Elliot manage to teach her students to value diversity , first we need to understand what we currently have in Malaysia.
We have 2 different ways to teach our children values, Agama Islam and Pendidikan Moral.
Why do we have 2 separate ways of teaching our children ethics and values?
Are the teachings of Islam contradictory to what is being thought in Pendidikan Moral Classes?
We teach our children that we should celebrate diversity and 1Malaysia, yet from the very first day in school they will be segregated based solely on Religion.
Are we telling our children that Muslims and non-Muslims are different, that they require two separate educational approaches to teach them values and ethics?
Why don't we debate an education system that teaches children to value diversity and appreciate our differences before we go digging up the sex-lives of our politicians. We teach our children that bias and prejudice are EVIL, before we go worrying about renaming roads in the city.
Of course this little flaw in our education systems slips people minds, because their busy arguing the medium for instruction of science and maths.
How can we teach against Bias, Prejudice and Racism WHEN our classrooms will (once a day) be segregated based on religion....seems rather contradictory.
Of course the problem spreads further, because how can we compare the SPM results of 2 school leavers, when their not taking the same subjects? Is an 'A' in Moral worth more than an 'A' in Pendidikan Islam? Of course to make matters worse, these are compulsory subjects......which could signify something sinister.
I'm not here to give a damn about JPA scholarships, but the question is a valid one.
So what do we do?
I'm not entirely sure what the end model should look like, but if you go around proclaiming "Satu Sekolah untuk Semua" you must be prepared to have all our children undergo the same subjects which means a single INTEGRATED way of teaching our children Values, Ethics and Morals, without subjecting to the segregation by religion.
This is how a brilliant women, Jane Elliot manage to combat perjudice in her school the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was assasinated.
"She aimed to make prejudice tangible to her students. At the start of class, she divided the students into 2 groups: brown-eyed kids and blue-eyed kids. She then made a shocking announcement: Brown-eyed kids were superior to blue-eyed kids --"They're the better people in this room". The groups were separated: Blue eyed kids were forced to sit at the back of the classroom.
Brown-eyed kids were told that they were smarter. They were given extra time at recess. The blue-eyed kids had to wear special collars so everyone would know their eye-color from a distance. The two groups were not allowed to mix.
She was shocked by how quickly the class transformed. "I watched those kids turn into NASTY, VICIOUS, DISCRIMINATING third-graders....it was ghastly." Friendship seemed to dissolve instantly as brown-eyed kids tease their blue-eyed former friends. One brown-eyed kid asked her how she could be their Teacher "if you've got dem blue eyes"?
At the start of the following day Elliot announced that she'd been wrong. It was actually the brown-eyed children who were inferior. The reversal of fortune was embraced instantly. A shout of glee came from the blue-eyed kids as they ran to place their collars on their brown-eyed counterparts.
..............
Elliots simulation made prejudice concrete, -- BRUTALLY concrete. It had an enduring impact on students lives, Studies conducted ten and twenty years later show Elliots students were significantly less prejudiced than their peers who had not been through the exercise.
Students still remember the exercise vividly." Made to stick, Chip and Dan Heath.
This is what we should be teaching our children. In real concrete terms that prejudice, racism and bias have no place in Malaysia. More importantly, how the people who experience the prejudice, racism and bias feel..... what it feels like to be treated as inferior or morally lacking.
On a separate note: Kijangmas has an initiative for "Satu Sekolah Untuk Semua" you can sign the petition here.
I am NOT signing it, because it doesn't answer the question of this post, "Will we continue to segregate based on religion?" as well as the question of "What happens to MARA and MRSMs?". Instead it has turned into nothing more than a vernacular school witch hunt. An attempt to make vernacular schools the scape-goats of a low-quality education system that continues to segregate and (to an extent) ENCOURAGE the segregation of children in Malaysian schools based on Religion. That is WRONG!!!.
That's my 2 cents. Don't spend it all in one place.
One woman in America manage to teach children what it feels like to be put down by stereotypes and bigotry, she manage to place a lasting impression on children, an impression that held up for more than 2 decades.
To better understand how Jane Elliot manage to teach her students to value diversity , first we need to understand what we currently have in Malaysia.
We have 2 different ways to teach our children values, Agama Islam and Pendidikan Moral.
Why do we have 2 separate ways of teaching our children ethics and values?
Are the teachings of Islam contradictory to what is being thought in Pendidikan Moral Classes?
We teach our children that we should celebrate diversity and 1Malaysia, yet from the very first day in school they will be segregated based solely on Religion.
Are we telling our children that Muslims and non-Muslims are different, that they require two separate educational approaches to teach them values and ethics?
Why don't we debate an education system that teaches children to value diversity and appreciate our differences before we go digging up the sex-lives of our politicians. We teach our children that bias and prejudice are EVIL, before we go worrying about renaming roads in the city.
Of course this little flaw in our education systems slips people minds, because their busy arguing the medium for instruction of science and maths.
How can we teach against Bias, Prejudice and Racism WHEN our classrooms will (once a day) be segregated based on religion....seems rather contradictory.
Of course the problem spreads further, because how can we compare the SPM results of 2 school leavers, when their not taking the same subjects? Is an 'A' in Moral worth more than an 'A' in Pendidikan Islam? Of course to make matters worse, these are compulsory subjects......which could signify something sinister.
I'm not here to give a damn about JPA scholarships, but the question is a valid one.
So what do we do?
I'm not entirely sure what the end model should look like, but if you go around proclaiming "Satu Sekolah untuk Semua" you must be prepared to have all our children undergo the same subjects which means a single INTEGRATED way of teaching our children Values, Ethics and Morals, without subjecting to the segregation by religion.
This is how a brilliant women, Jane Elliot manage to combat perjudice in her school the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was assasinated.
"She aimed to make prejudice tangible to her students. At the start of class, she divided the students into 2 groups: brown-eyed kids and blue-eyed kids. She then made a shocking announcement: Brown-eyed kids were superior to blue-eyed kids --"They're the better people in this room". The groups were separated: Blue eyed kids were forced to sit at the back of the classroom.
Brown-eyed kids were told that they were smarter. They were given extra time at recess. The blue-eyed kids had to wear special collars so everyone would know their eye-color from a distance. The two groups were not allowed to mix.
She was shocked by how quickly the class transformed. "I watched those kids turn into NASTY, VICIOUS, DISCRIMINATING third-graders....it was ghastly." Friendship seemed to dissolve instantly as brown-eyed kids tease their blue-eyed former friends. One brown-eyed kid asked her how she could be their Teacher "if you've got dem blue eyes"?
At the start of the following day Elliot announced that she'd been wrong. It was actually the brown-eyed children who were inferior. The reversal of fortune was embraced instantly. A shout of glee came from the blue-eyed kids as they ran to place their collars on their brown-eyed counterparts.
..............
Elliots simulation made prejudice concrete, -- BRUTALLY concrete. It had an enduring impact on students lives, Studies conducted ten and twenty years later show Elliots students were significantly less prejudiced than their peers who had not been through the exercise.
Students still remember the exercise vividly." Made to stick, Chip and Dan Heath.
This is what we should be teaching our children. In real concrete terms that prejudice, racism and bias have no place in Malaysia. More importantly, how the people who experience the prejudice, racism and bias feel..... what it feels like to be treated as inferior or morally lacking.
On a separate note: Kijangmas has an initiative for "Satu Sekolah Untuk Semua" you can sign the petition here.
I am NOT signing it, because it doesn't answer the question of this post, "Will we continue to segregate based on religion?" as well as the question of "What happens to MARA and MRSMs?". Instead it has turned into nothing more than a vernacular school witch hunt. An attempt to make vernacular schools the scape-goats of a low-quality education system that continues to segregate and (to an extent) ENCOURAGE the segregation of children in Malaysian schools based on Religion. That is WRONG!!!.
That's my 2 cents. Don't spend it all in one place.
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