Common denominator in the rise of school indiscipline and street crime
The change was in the criteria that candidates to these leadership positions had to meet. From the 1970s, teachers were promoted to headships not on the strength of their performance as teachers, but based on their political connections. If they were active as ketua cawangan, setiausaha cawangan, etc they would be first choice for promotion.
Ravinder Singh, The Malay Mail
There is a common denominator in the rise of school indiscipline and street crime. In both cases, there are rules and laws to be obeyed by children and adults respectively. Rules and laws remain pieces of paper until and unless they are enforced. To enforce the rules and laws, you need disciplinarians and no-nonsense leaders at the helm. In schools these are the head teachers and their superiors. In society they are the heads of police stations and their superiors.
In the ‘50s and ‘60s we had such leaders in both the schools and the police force. These disciplinarian, no-nonsense leaders were in those positions based on merit and proven track records. They did a fine job of ensuring that school rules and laws were properly enforced. So we had well disciplined schoolchildren and a good, law-abiding society. This is not to say there was zero indiscipline or crime, but things were kept strictly in check by nipping lawlessness in the bud.
Then began the change that has brought us down to where we are today. The change was in the criteria that candidates to these leadership positions had to meet. From the 1970s, teachers were promoted to headships not on the strength of their performance as teachers, but based on their political connections. If they were active as ketua cawangan, setiausaha cawangan, etc they would be first choice for promotion.
Similarly, meritocracy was not just put in the back seat, but even thrown out of the window, in the promotion/appointment of other government servants to positions in authority.
When you put pilots in the cockpit who have not gone through the rigorous training that is needed to ensure the planes keep flying safely, and mediocre aircraft engineers and technicians to maintain the aircraft, you can expect disaster after disaster. The disaster from a plane crash is very much more easily seen than the disaster from not enforcing school rules and laws in society. The former disaster happens immediately and is very visible; the latter takes root, grows slowly and since it is not nipped in the bud, years later matures into an ugly head.
The ugly head becomes the focus of society as it impacts on society negatively. But why and how it came about is not looked into as its roots are by now very remote and out of mind. Is it less important to ensure that strict discipline is maintained in schools than ensuring that airplanes are serviced by competent engineers and technicians? The disaster from hundreds of thousands of undisciplined schoolchildren becoming adult members of society each year is greater than that from a plane crash.
What we have in both the schools and the police are people who are not disciplinarians. In the schools, disciplinarian head teachers should be able to handle firmly not only the students, but also the teachers and parents. They should be able to get the parents to co-operate with them to maintain discipline, or else take the undisciplined children out of the school. In the police, the heads at each level should be able to keep those under them in a straight line. Here, another element comes in also — corruption. An unclean head cannot keep the rest of his house clean. But who is to see that the heads are clean? It is not that the police are poorly paid. A sergeant, at the age of 50+ can draw a salary of RM4,000. This is good pay for a non-graduate. The scale goes higher with the ranks.
