Antidot to Natives is Proper Education

Read this article in Malaysia Today.

This is another form of discrimination and mishandling of justice to the people of Sabah. This incident shows how the local people can be treated like stray dogs even though they hold the rights to the lands. And the reason to this is due to lack of education.

That’s why all the while it is a very smart strategy of government to keep some of the people in Sabah and Sarawak from proper education so that BN can control them at anytime. Simple, without proper education, these group of people can hardly fight or resist them over their policy, so called development process. They don’t have access or understand the procedures to fight back, and as the result been the victims of exploitation if no one help them.

Go back to education topic, how can we expect local kids to excel in a school when most of their fearful teachers don’t have passions and understand the culture of the natives in both states? Believe it or not, it’s a very ridiculous believes of some Peninsular Malaysians after 50 years of independence to say that most of Sabahans and Sarawakians are still staying in the trees, and the head hunting culture still exist until now. The people found out this from a few concern parents who sent their undergrad kids to UNIMAS, a few years ago. When teachers from Peninsular come to teach in rural area, perhaps the incentives from government are the most that blink in their minds. Remember, teachers from Sabah and Sarawak teaching in Peninsular doesn’t really get the same incentives compare to their counterparts from the other side teaching in Sabah and Sarawak. So ladies and gentlemen, aren’t this a form of discrimination by the Federal government to Sabahans and Sarawakians in civil service sector? If money is the driving factor for some of these teachers, perhaps their sincerity to teach the local kids in rural areas is questionable. It’s better still if the government just to put passionate local teachers, born and raised locally in these places to teach the local kids.

Not long ago, Datuk Douglas Uggah (News from Borneo Post) challenged a local school to have their UPSR passing rate increased. It’s not the problem of the school all along. See for yourself, the syllabus also. Our Education Ministry keeps on revising syllabus for instance introducing English in certain subjects to replace the previous. You can’t expect the rural kids to master English in short time compare to city kids. So, by the time the students in these places are familiar with the syllabus, who knows a new syllabus has been revised by Education Ministry to replace the current one. After all, it’s not the school’s fault; the blame is on the Education Ministry too.

In fact, the awareness of the parents of these kids in rural areas should play an important role to encourage their kids to excel as high as possible in education. Its not just about the mentality of kais pagi makan pagi kais petang makan petang anymore. In today’s world, an education scroll is one of the relics to survive. Many Chinese parents in the past were aware of the importance of education that they were willing to endure hardships without putting their dependencies on the discriminated government’s schemes for the sake of their kids’ future. Today, many of their kids have succeeded in their professions. Some of these parents might have already gone, but they had created the culture of the importance of education to their next generations. So, for the native parents of these kids, it might too late for themselves now to go back to schools but they can still set far visions to see their kids live a better and smarter life through better education. Regardless of issues to syllabus revisions or impassionate teachers, encouragement is most important to the kids to never give up, because the gold of success is waiting for them at the door. For sure, with better education, they will be wiser to compete with the rest, in a world full of challenges and uncertainties. To the corrupted government, watch out for these smarter native generations of future, for they are no longer the bullied targets.