Kuala Lumpur invests in its young generation

Kuala Lumpur invests in its young generation

What is the significance of the new Education Bill?

By Timothy N Harper

The Malaysian government, after months of speculation, has
taken a "quantum leap" in education. A new Education Bill aims to
create "a united, democratic, liberal and dynamic education
system" that will underpin Malaysia's march towards
industrialization: its "Vision 2020".

Education has always lain at the core of nation-building. Both
Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and his deputy, Anwar Ibrahim,
held the education portfolio and used it to define their
political persona. After the April 1995 general election, a new
minister, Najib Tun Abdul Razak, a powerful independent player
within UMNO, announced a flurry of high-profile initiatives.
Pundits suggested that Najib was courting the media limelight and
signaling ambitions to challenge Anwar Ibrahim.

This is misleading. The new Bill has been eight years in the
making. It is the centerpiece of a sequence of legislation that
includes a Universities and University Colleges (Amendment) Bill;
a National Higher Education Council Bill and a Private
Institutions of Higher Education Bill. In a deeper sense, Najib
has argued that the attempt to create an integrated national
system dates back 40 years to the recommendations of the 1956
report on education, a seminal document in Malaysia's national
struggle that bears the name of Tun Abdul Razak. The son is
fulfilling his father's legacy.

The impetus comes from three sources. First, economic growth
has outstripped the availability of skilled workers. By the year
2000, Malaysia will have a shortfall of 17,000 engineers and
53,000 technicians. Emigres are lured back by high salaries;
foreigners are being recruited. But this is not enough. Vision
2020 was forged in the white heat of the technological
revolution, and the new education policy aims to generate a
workforce dexterous in its art.

Secondly, the government is responding to the rising
aspirations of its people. This is reflected in the appearance of
about 160 private institutions of higher learning. These will be
regulated. Malaysia is bidding to become a regional center for
higher education. Foreign universities plan branch campuses and,
beginning with the University of Malaya, local universities will
be corporatized to encourage private investment, enhance academic
salaries and aid recruitment. Quality and costs will be monitored
through a new National Higher Education Council. There are fears
that private education will remain beyond the means of many
families and that university fees will rise. The government
denies this. However, student bodies have petitioned and
protested against corporatization.

The legislation also embodies deeper national aspirations. The
streamlined education system aims to speed the realization of a
new Bangsa Malaysia, a Malaysian nation, that will reach across
communities and spell the end of ethnic politics in Malaysia. To
its critics, it trespasses on existing, deep-rooted visions of
national identity. Passions center on language. For decades, the
national language, Bahasa Malaysia, was pushed in all areas of
education and the public sector, and encouraged in the private
sector. However, it has reached a threshold in its advance.
Translators struggle to meet the demand for specialist textbooks;
the use of English has been revived in the teaching of science
and has become a passport to betterment for the new middle
classes. Malay intellectuals have attacked the government's
liberal approach to English and defended the Malay language as
the historic expression of the Malay nation. The opposition party
Semangat 46 has eagerly embraced this cause.

Yet the backlash has been relatively muted. Cultural activists
no longer possess the political influence they once wielded. Much
of the Malay elite are proficient in English and have little to
fear from its wider currency. However, a generation of Malay-
educated graduates -- and not only Malays -- has received limited
exposure to English language teaching. Pragmatism may direct them
to upgrade their language skills: bourgeois ambitions may
overcome their cultural scruples.

Yet, in the competitive environment of the towns many will
have little time to upgrade, and may be disadvantaged in
employment or promotion. This constituency cannot be ignored. The
government assumes that its material aspirations will be
fulfilled through dynamic economic growth and its cultural needs
realized within the Bangsa Malaysia. Yet, it is significant that
the Education Bill was accompanied by a range of moves to expand
Bahasa Malaysia's symbolic significance.

The new Bill also addresses the future of vernacular
schooling. Although it preserves the existing status quo, Chinese
educationalists believe it frustrates their cultural ambitions.
They are suspicious of the powers vested in the Minister to close
down "national-type" Chinese schools and MCA parliamentarians
have opposed provisions that seem to impede the expansion of
Chinese independent schools. Yet they did not take their
opposition to the public as they have done in the recent past.
The great struggles on culture and language seem to have subsided
in a general mood of pragmatism and prosperity as the symbols of
Malaysian nationalism become the common property of all.

The Education Bill seeks to force the pace of this process. It
recognizes the persistence of unfulfilled cultural ambitions, but
appeals to the new generation emerging in Malaysia: the
generation of 2020. Politicians are deeply exercised by its moral
character and its commitment to the sense of national struggle
that animated earlier generations.

Ethical and religious education has been placed at the heart
of school curricula; new programs of social engineering
introduced. Old restrictions on the activities of students have
been upheld. The opposition is dismayed by this, and by the speed
and determination with which the legislation has been pushed
through Parliament. Malaysia's leaders are investing their future
in the young. The investment is a heavy one and this places
distinct limits on the liberality of the new system.

Dr. Timothy N. Harper is a Fellow at Magdalene College,
University of Cambridge.