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.