NST July 20: News analysis: Varsity students mature enough to discuss issues
News analysis: Varsity students mature enough to discuss issues
20 Jul 2006Santha Oorjitham
UNIVERSITY students are mature enough for a course on ethnic relations. In fact, some academics believe the subject should be introduced even earlier — in school.
The university course, that becomes mandatory in the academic session starting this month, has been under the spotlight this week as Members of Parliament criticised one university’s guidebook.
Although the module for the Ethnic Relations course will not be ready until next month at the earliest, the guidebook used by Universiti Putra Malaysia has been called "biased, tendentious and divisive" by Opposition leader Lim Kit Siang while Barisan Nasional MP Loh Seng Kok said it could incite hatred among the races.
Yesterday, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi ordered the UPM guidebook to be withdrawn.
But educationists hope the course, designed by a multiracial team, will help Malaysians to discuss "sensitive" issues calmly and rationally — and to learn from incidents in the past, without playing the blame game.
"The outburst in Parliament seems emotional and really shows we need the course, because people don’t understand the concept of ethnicity," says Universiti Utara Malaysia’s Associate Professor Mansor Mohd Noor.
The deputy dean of the Faculty of Public Management and Law, who has been studying ethnic relations since 1989, says that in order to examine controversial topics unemotionally, Malaysians need to be "socialised, educated and exposed".
"At the university level, students are mature enough to understand the underlying reasons and to have a wider perspective," says International Islamic Universiti rector Datuk Syed Arabi Idid.
When the Ministry of Higher Education handed out the Ethnic Relations course outline last year, IIU "embedded" the concepts into four of the courses which are part of its general study requirements.
The rector recommends these issues should be included in school history textbooks.
"It is important to let the younger generation understand the needs and sensitivities of living in a multiracial society," agrees the chief executive officer of the Asian Strategy and Leadership Institute, Datuk Dr Michael Yeoh.
"It would be even better if ethnic relations were taught at school level."
"Ethnic relations should be introduced, but not through a quick fix," says Rustam Sani, formerly senior research fellow with Universiti Malaya’s Centre for Civilisational Dialogue.
"Students should be slowly introduced to what our multi-ethnic society is all about through the system of education, for example through history and civics."
The university course will not allocate blame for racial incidents in the past. But it won’t shy away from discussing such topics.
Academics stress that the course should be objective: "Ethnic relations should not be about putting blame," says the IIU rector. "There should be no morality. It should be very detached."
Tan Sri Lau Yin Pin, chairman of the MCA-linked Institute of Strategic Analysis and Policy Research, hopes the course will be "factual and very careful in its interpretation".
"We can’t run away from problems, but we should look at all the aspects and not one particular ethnic group," says the president of the Malaysia Hindu Sangam, Datuk A. Vaithilingam.
"We need to look at issues rationally and identify the root causes."
Traumatic incidents from the past such as the May 13, 1969 riots have to be covered, says UUM’s Mansor: "We need to learn from the past to manage the present and move on."
