Same people, different zeitgeist-part 1.

dear dato,i read your blog most days.i find it interesting and factual.

i am chinese,57 years,retired,educated and have financial freedom.
i was educated in english college,johor bahru.i was in the top class and had many malay classmates,in fact slightly less than half the class. They were good and hard working students.of these, half made it to universities,both local,most foreign.those days mostly to uk.most were on scholarship and very deserving too.

one of them was on mara scholarship.on returning to malaysia he made a beeline to mara,to check on repayment terms.can you believe it,they lost the file!my friend then made his own calculation and paid back ALL.

that was some 35 odd years ago.today my malay friends are all enjoying a good life and some even retired.we are still very close.
another classmate invited our chinese form-teacher to his daughter's wedding in kl.he paid for the hotel accommodation at sheraton.

it was a good system then.today it is totally different now.i will not bring issues that are all to wellknown to everyone.

now,how do we move forward?
i think you do have most answers.i wish you well and sincerely hope that ALL malaysians read your blog.i think you have the power to change.good luck.

yours sincerely,
chen siung sik.johor bahru.


 

 

The e mail sent to me by a Mr. Chen from JB sounds melancholic. What has happened to the present generation that has made many of the things by which Mr. Chen and many of us grew up with, appear diminishing? A sense of personal noblesse oblige, imposed on us by welcomed pressures- from the family, society and state, were treated as powerful motivational elements. The man who came back to pay up his student loan did that as a matter of personal honour. That can come only from the values honed at home and further reinforced by the enabling environment. Many people like Mr. Chen were eager to take up the challenge to cultivate themselves to serve a united Malaysia.

What was it that made the earlier generation behaved in the way described by this Chinese gentleman? Students of all races working hard to redeem themselves. Aware that good education was the great leveler. Racial differences didn't stand in the way to foster a sense of camaraderie. In short, what made them into different material?

In saying that, we are admitting that maybe things have now changed in less desirable ways than that which we would have liked. Racial strife is clearly on the rise. Almost everything now is talked in terms of racial equation. Malays getting more at the expense of other Malaysians. Non Malay Malaysians dismissing or trivializing the need to restructure  society in the name of a level playing field, also talked  of in racial undertones. Education does not seem to have turned students into useful and productive adults, if we measure it by the number of graduates who are unemployed. Measure it too by the amount of re training that we have to give to passing graduates.

Perhaps it was the zeitgeist of the 1960's and the 1970's. The definition of the term as we googled it:-

Zeitgeist is the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual, and/or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambience, morals, socio-cultural direction or mood of an era.

In modern times, I would put it as the enabling environment- the general ambiance of the times. It is a product of the enabler- the ruling government and the leadership of this country.

The people are the same still. Parents still value education. They are also aware of education being the great leveler. The children of a hawker, a farmer or an estate worker have the same opportunities to advance through education.

What has changed is perhaps the priorities politicians set out. I think the one element that people didn't think was important( I may not be correct) but one which I would argue, was the absence of the language and cultural imperatives. Malay and English evolved as the natural unifying language. English was the working language and Bahasa Melayu was accepted as naturally predominant language. But once language was politicised, it triggered off irrational defences and at times chauvinistic reactions. The government should have left in that way- allowing Malay and English to reach its natural preeminent levels.

Probably many people may have noticed this. The increasing popularity of English medium schools resulted in the natural decline of Chinese and Tamil vernacular schools. The decline wasn't forced in the sense that they were to make way for Malay medium schools. Practical considerations and economic realities made English medium schools the preferred schools for Chinese and Indians. If the government had left it at that, Malay medium schools were to continue along their natural course and English medium schools were the alternatives to vernacular schools, things may have been different. English educated people would still have to come to terms with the predominant lingua franca and would have to make adjustments accordingly. It would have the unintended effect of diminishing the importance of vernacular schools in less painful ways, rather than being seen as victims of language and by extension, cultural hegemony by Malays.