Re-imagining a truly Malaysian school

ARCHIVES 2013

By admin-s On Nov 4, 2013

Imagine a scenario in Malaysian classrooms where primary school children learn the meaning of the word ‘peace’ and muhibbah in many different languages and dialects: Bahasa Malaysia, Bahasa Jawa, Siamese, Bugis, Bawean, Bangladeshi, Hokkien, Cantonese, Hakka, Tamil, Urdu, Tagalog, Hebrew, Arabic, Senoi, Jakun, Iban, and Kadazan-dusun.

Dr. Azly Rahman
Imagine the children, in weekly language word-study circles, explaining to each other the meaning of the word in their own language.

Imagine the children learning Language Arts and Social Studies exploring the interdisciplinary theme of the language they use at home.

Imagine them translating proverbs from their native language into English, and next illustrating them and next doing class presentations.

Imagine at the end of the year, the children and their parents proudly dressed up in their cultural outfits, singing songs in their native language without being laughed at, sharing food – in a cultural celebration night.

Imagine secondary school students doing their final school project on the meaning of their cultural practices and the relationship to their ethical belief system and how each may teach them to profess universal values of peace and social justice among different races.

Imagine all of them doing a project that analyses the themes of famous cross-cultural movies and using this vehicle to learn the concepts of cultural preservation and continuity.

Imagine, at the community college and university level, when they have had enough exposure and appreciation to linguistic and cultural diversity, Malaysians forming cross-cultural dialogue clubs, engaging in multiple literacies and multiple voices forum, interfaith circles of learning, transcultural network of friends and other innovations in multi-cultural social imaginations – so that we may not need communalism anymore as a basis for our national political design.

Imagine, we then have graduate students forming something called ‘Malaysian Transcultural Social Democratic Futuristics’ political study groups to dismantle all existing parties that have served their time.

What an exploration in a newer human design we may embark upon to create a society based on a transcultural radical-multiculturalist utopianism. It would be a good experiment we may embark upon for the next 50 years so that we may redefine the meaning of ‘progress and development’, rethink the solution to corruption, and reconfigure the existing and incoming newer Malaysians.

But let us go back to the present Malaysian classroom.