A Doctor in The House: A Memoir of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad (117 page)

Unfortunately, the Chinese educationists objected to this idea. Deferring to their views, many Chinese parents preferred to continue sending their children to their old dilapidated schools rather than let them attend the brand-new Vision Schools. It seemed the Chinese did not want their children to mix with Malay and Indian children. Perhaps they considered the Malay children too playful and inclined not to take their studies seriously. Perhaps they feared some contagion of bad attitudes, or perhaps it was something else—but I was upset by their attitude. Chinese schools were very willing to take in Malay and Indian children, using Chinese as the medium of instruction, and that made their refusal to support the Vision Schools concept even more hurtful. Many Malay parents, recognising that Chinese was the local language of business, were convinced that their children would do better if they knew Chinese. Quite a number also claimed that education in the Chinese schools was actually better, because their teachers were more dedicated and serious.

If these attitudes and practices were to become more widespread, national education in Malay would certainly fail. Yet at times I felt like agreeing with these Malay parents—Malay teachers were not putting their hearts and souls into their jobs and many seemed to be concerned only with their own careers and service conditions. They have always complained endlessly about inadequate pay. Even after pay scales were improved—and they were improved several times during my 22 years as Prime Minister—the same complaints continued to be voiced, as if nothing had been done.

Yet no developing country in the world has spent as much on education as Malaysia. All over the country, we have beautiful school buildings, and some secondary schools look like universities. Visitors from other developing countries have often remarked that Malaysian schools are luxurious and well-equipped. Now we also have Smart Schools, which are equipped with all kinds of modern teaching aids. The educational amenities provided by the Government cannot be faulted. Scholarships, too, are plentiful.

I was also always on the lookout for things that might make knowledge acquisition easier. One day a Malay educationist brought a man from China to my office, accompanied by several children aged five to 10. The man demonstrated how the children could solve arithmetical problems involving big numbers virtually in the blink of an eye. I was intrigued. I wrote down a number of about eight digits to be multiplied by an equally large number. The children rattled off the answer in a few seconds, without writing anything down. I was amazed. These, I thought, must be special children. The man said they were ordinary children trained to use special methods. He also showed me how calculation using the abacus could be as fast as, or faster than, an electronic calculator.

The Chinese man turned out to be a professor from China, and I asked him whether he could teach school children in Malaysia to do the same. He was willing to stay in Malaysia for as long as was necessary to teach Malaysian teachers his method. I was delighted and immediately requested the Ministry of Education to include in the curriculum both the use of the abacus and the Chinese professor’s methods of mental arithmetic. It would surely help improve the mathematical skills of our children. But the idea of adding the abacus posed many bureaucratic problems. Government educationists wanted to compare the methods of the man I sent to them with those of another man with similar skills. Then they had to determine a pay scale for the man who, not unreasonably, wanted a special contract. The man was eventually hired after prolonged negotiations lasting for more than a year. I never received any report after that, but I remain convinced that by introducing the abacus, Malay children in particular would improve their mathematical skills.

But education should not only be about acquiring knowledge. It should also be concerned with character-building. It should cultivate the attitudes and attributes which make for good character and leadership, self-confidence, and the inquisitiveness that stimulates thinking and inventiveness. It must help develop a sound orientation towards the world based upon rationality and logical thinking. Intellectual and character development are not separate processes—they go together. A rational person is a decent and good person, and a good person will not act mindlessly or irrationally. A good person is also one who, as well as displaying good ethical values, can think clearly and rationally. Nothing is more dangerous than knowledge in the hands of a corrupt and untrustworthy individual.

Despite the inclusion of religious and moral education in the syllabus, character building and the implanting of good values do not get much attention in Malaysian schools and universities. Most things are learnt by rote and reproduced mechanically during examinations without understanding. Examiners rarely entertain and certainly do not encourage original thinking. One adjunct professor who lectured to a group of university students told me he was disappointed when not one of the students asked him a question. Either they did not understand him, he surmised, or else they had no capacity for analysis and critical thinking.

Many people do not even understand the need to be honest or to guard one’s honour. In school, students are urged to be disciplined but are not told why, so they understand discipline simply as an imposition, not as mastery over base desires. It is not explained to them that their lives may one day depend on being disciplined, upon their ability to maintain control over themselves in the most trying of circumstances. Simply being told to be disciplined produces only resentment and resistance, and the end result is anything but the good character that is desired.

My parents instilled in me values which enabled me to face and overcome many challenges over the years. Most parents these days have little time to do that and neither, unfortunately, do schools and teachers. These values, though they may impose self-restraint since they require that we control and hold ourselves back in various ways, are also empowering as they encourage and enable us to do worthwhile and noble things which we would not otherwise be capable of. Some teachers are dedicated and inspiring—they do not simply talk about those values but personify them and, by doing so, persuasively communicate them to others, including their students. But most are just teaching to earn a living and they do not see moulding the character of their students as part of their jobs.

Religious teachers should be among those who have some notion of character development and should thus be committed to influencing the personal development of their students. Regrettably, this is not the case. The ideas they bring are hardly appropriate to these times. They encourage rote learning and dutiful conformity to the outward details of ritual practices, not the ability to understand, choose between and act upon moral choices and key values. Religious teachers should be involved in moral education and the implanting of strong and positive values, but they are not trained to do that. In fact, their understanding of the successful moulding of a mature and moral adult character can be very wrong. They hardly ever teach what made the Muslims successful during the golden era of Islamic civilisation. Their focus is on the mechanical performance of certain rituals and formalities to gain merit in the next world, not upon the individual’s inner moral growth. In the end, they encourage the development of a subservient character with an inferiority complex and no self-confidence, a personality that cannot stand tall and be responsible and ethically aware. They encourage, in other words, the development of a personality type that will be obedient to religious dicta, as they themselves embody and understand it.

I believe that everybody is capable of great things, of acquiring knowledge and skills, and of succeeding in whatever they choose to do. God made us so that if we do anything repeatedly, we will improve our capacity and achieve success. That is how I learnt pathology in my third year at Medical College. I read the textbook repeatedly until I not only understood the text but could actually visualise the pages of the book. I could see in my mind’s eye the actual text and illustrations when answering questions. It is not about deliberate memorising of the text. It is about becoming very familiar with the information—in the way we recognise faces, for example.

It is the same with practical work. I used to do wood-turning as a hobby. I produced very bad results at first, but by doing the work repeatedly I was able to master the technique and to produce reasonable pieces. For those who diligently master knowledge or skills, there is a bonus. The skills that a person acquires will somehow be passed on to their children and their children’s children. I once watched a Balinese boy carving a piece of wood and was amazed at his skill. He was able to produce beautiful sculptured pieces almost effortlessly. I could not do that nor, I knew, could my children. Yet many Balinese people, young and old, can carve beautifully in wood or stone. It appears that they have inherited the skills from their forefathers and improved on them.

If the Malays were to set their hearts on acquiring business skills, for example, I am sure that within one or two generations they would match the Chinese in business. When I tell the Malays this, they are apparently not convinced. The Government provides them all kinds of support to help them acquire knowledge and skills. Unfortunately, they have developed a dependency on this support and demand that it be made permanent. What is the good of becoming an independent nation if internally as individuals and as a community we are always dependent on others?

I have found that it is not only positive attitudes that can be handed down from one generation to another; disabling ones can also be passed on. In one way or another, every child and every generation acquires attitudes and value orientations which become part of an individual and also of the group or race. Character expresses itself in action—in the actions of parents and teachers as they raise the next generation; and in a variety of specialised skills, techniques and attitudes that they hand down. This is how the Japanese became and remain Japanese, the English go on being English, and the thorough Germans continue to be thoroughly German. It is not the colour of the skin or the climate. It is the culture and the value system that they develop.

I have discussed the New Economic Policy at length in these pages and how it has contributed much towards overcoming the gross economic disparities and social disadvantages between the races in Malaysia. But affirmative action cannot go on forever. I had hoped that much of the disparity would disappear through education, which is why we endured criticism of discrimination in the award of scholarships. But it is now nearly 40 years since the NEP was first implemented and we still have not achieved our target of making the Malays own 30 per cent of the country’s corporate wealth. The Government’s provision of enhanced access to university education to Malays has seen a similar wasting of opportunities. To ask the non-Bumiputera to stand aside and wait while so many of the Bumiputera are happy to play around and not study is unfair.

To address this, the Government decided that admission into the country’s universities should be based on merit. If not enough Malays were qualified, or if they had no desire to avail themselves of the opportunities, then qualified non-Malays would be admitted. The Malays raised a great hue and cry, yet the percentage of Malays in the next intake was actually higher than before merit was taken into account. I was mystified, until I discovered that the admission qualifications were not the same for the Malays and the non-Malays. Malay admissions were based on matriculation results while the non-Malays had to sit for the Higher School Certificate Examination. I had hoped to shock the Malays into waking up and taking their education seriously, but I failed. My action was frustrated by the desire of Malay officials to “help” Malay students. Malays will never learn to compete on a level playing field if their protectors keep tilting the ground in their favour.

In recent years, we have also had the problem of an imbalance in our university students, up to 70 per cent of whom are now female. It cannot be that so few boys are capable of qualifying for entry. Many say that they prefer to work and earn an income rather than spend several years in the universities earning nothing. Some say they prefer to be trained as technicians, but you do not see them working in these fields. Many are involved in activities which verge on the criminal. Almost all the 
mat rempit
—the motorcycle daredevils—are Malays, as are most drug addicts.

Unless a way is found to draw Malay boys into university education, the qualified girls are not going to find husbands they can look up to and respect. Poorly-qualified husbands will earn less than their wives. Perhaps many Malay men like things that way, to be economically dependent upon and supported by their wives while they laze around in coffee shops or indulge in motorcycle stunts. Perhaps this kind of dependence and passivity suits them. If so, if they want to be sons of indulgent mothers, not responsible and socially-capable husbands to Malay wives and heads of strong Malay families, then they should not deny the rights of others. Their attitude makes me worry about the Malay future. Where, I wonder, have we gone wrong? We talk these days about lifetime education and there may well be a few late developers who can benefit from educational opportunities later in life, but they are surely far fewer in number than the legions of underperforming Malays.

As retirement approached, my time to deal with all these problems ran out. There was nothing that I could do anymore. Long before I became Prime Minister, the ideas that I had laid out in 
The Malay Dilemma
 had slowly crystallised in my mind since the time I had been a young medical student in Singapore in the early 1950s, and probably long before that. I was now nearing the end of 22 years of service as Prime Minister. Yet, for all of our achievements, some of the most basic problems of the Malay people that I had outlined in 
The Malay Dilemma
 still persisted. Some seemed no closer to being resolved than when I started.