NST July 23: Reinforcing the positives
Boost for unity
Reinforcing the positives
23 Jul 2006
KUALA LUMPUR: The official syllabus for the controversial Ethnic Relations course for undergraduates assigns no blame to anyone for past ethnic conflicts.
In fact, it does not dwell on the May 13 race riots and does not cover the clashes in Kampung Medan in 2001.
Nor is there any mention of Suqiu, the Chinese group which made a laundry list of demands before the 1999 general election.
"These are not the things the course wants to deal with, because Ethnic Relations isn’t a ‘micro-level’ course," said the course’s consultant, Professor Datuk Shamsul Amri Baharuddin.
"It’s also not an introduction to Malay, Chinese or Indian culture."
Instead, the teaching material broadly explains Malaysia’s success and stability, helping students understand the major concepts, mechanisms and dynamics behind it.
According to Shamsul, since Malaysia has experienced growth and political stability to the point that it had become a model for the developing world, "then the question we need to ask is how did we really achieve all this?"
"The course explains in broad terms the contributions by all sections of society and the framework that helped — the social, constitutional, legal and economic," said Shamsul. "In essence, this course offers a systematic way to understand ourselves."
Ethnic Relations will be divided into class and practical sessions. Past conflicts may be raised during discussions as historical events.
But Shamsul noted that the module clearly emphasised larger aims instead of "finding fault" when touching on the past.
"The course doesn’t dwell on May 13 to determine who was right or wrong. Students are asked to look beyond, because the incident was not merely a quarrel.
"Positive things also came out of it, changing the landscape and giving us important lessons and a better understanding of ourselves.
"In the end, it’s the positives which we aim to reinforce," said Shamsul, explaining the rule of thumb adopted when designing the course.
The module, which took a multi-racial team of 20 social scientists 18 months to design, recently went through a second reading. Another team of experts announced by the Prime Minister met to go through the module yesterday to "weed out any potentially offensive material".
The final draft will be submitted to the Cabinet for approval before it is released to public universities.
Some universities like Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and Universiti Putra Malaysia have already begun teaching the course, and have used their own guidebooks.
It was UPM’s guidebook for the course, which blamed the Democratic Action Party for May 13 and the Kampung Medan clashes on Indian youths, that sparked concern about what is being taught to university students. The Government has withdrawn the book.
Shamsul said any judgment about the course must be based on the upcoming module, since it was the official syllabus.
"The team was conscious from the very start that it should be positive, that it should not be about bad-mouthing other ethnic groups, because we felt that we have had enough of this mengata (accusing) phenomenon."
The Ethnic Relations Course: What it’s really about
Part 1 - Basic Concepts on Ethnic Relations
Part 2 - Plurality and Plural Societies in the Malay World: Past, Present and Future
Part 3 - The Malaysian Constitution in the Context of Ethnic Relations
Part 4 - Economic Developments in the Context of Ethnic Relations in Malaysia
Part 5 - Political Development in Malaysia
Part 6 - Ethnic Relations Towards an Integrated Society
Part 7 - Local and Global Challenges for Ethnic Relations
