Between Bunting and Gavels: Political and Legal Accountability in Malaysia

There are generally two forms of constitutional accountability in the world today – political and legal accountability. Through these two methods a government in power can be held to account for its actions.

Political accountability basically means that the Executive is held in check through political means and institutions. If the policies of Pak Lah and company make us, the rakyat, mad, we can cast our vote against the Scales to show our displeasure. In a country with a strong democracy, this would mean that the government who screwed up would have to be content with being the opposition for the next five years. Of course, in Malaysia, that has not happened in our 50 years of existence.

Legal accountability, on the other hand, involves the courts intervening in the event that the Executive does something unlawful (read: constitutionally wrong). Of course, the word ‘intervene’ is misleading, as generally it takes a well-funded organisation or a well-endowed citizen to take the government to court – by itself, the judiciary does not poke its nose into the government’s dirty linen.

The United Kingdom is a country in which traditionally it is the role of politicians to take the government to task for its errors. Like all vibrant democracies, it has seen many changes in power throughout the last century. Hence, it is clear that robust and lively politics is necessary for this form of accountability to do its job.

In contrast, legal accountability is very much alive in the United States. The Supreme Court is indeed supreme in this nation under God. Laws passed which go against the Constitution are struck down with much force and vigour. Here we can see that a strong and independent judiciary is vital to the functioning of this method of checking the Executive.

In our country, however, we find both forms of accountability sadly lacking.

The Barisan National (or its predecessor, the Alliance) has been in power for the last half century, without even the slightest interruption. The reasons behind this are many and interwoven, but one thing is clear: something is rotten in the state of our politics. Not only has the ruling party never lost a single election, it is never even lost its two-third majority in the Dewan Rakyat. Even in our angriest states (such as in 1999), we have never managed to be bold enough to show our displeasure clearly.

I once believed that judicial review would be a better alternative in this country. After all, if our politics takes place in an undeniably uneven playing field, we can at least rely on impartial and fair judges to “let the guilty hang”. How wrong I was. With the unveiling of the Lingam tape, it is now ever more so clear that our judiciary is a toothless lion restrained by an invisible leash held by its master, the government. What began with the emasculation of our court system in 1988 has continued to the point that we can no longer trust the learned men in black (robes).

To be a true democracy and not a failed state, we need to strengthen our opposition, and restore life to our emaciated judiciary. Otherwise, all will be lost.

Educational Discrimination of a Different Kind

An issue which is commonly blogged about is educational discrimination on ethnic lines.

With such volatile competition, it is no wonder that another form of educational discrimination is normally ignored by the masses...

This is none other than discrimination by educational stream.

The following quote tells all:

"At lower secondary, students who score a string of As are considered suitable for the Science stream and the rest are placed in the Arts stream." - NST Report

'Tis indeed a sad but true fact in our country that the Arts stream is seen as a receptacle for "second-grade students". The world of education in Malaysia is divided into those in the Science and Arts streams, with the former being exalted far above the latter. All students who do well in the PMR are siphoned off to the Science stream, while those regarded as less academically-capable are sent to the Arts.

The notion that the Arts is less academically-rigourous than the Sciences has no basis whatsoever. To be frank, it's a load of rubbish. Yet many Malaysian parents continue to steer their children in the direction of engineering and medicine (with its related counterparts: dentistry and pharmacy). [it should be noted that most do not aspire for their children to be real scientists, with the exception of the field of biochemistry, which has received much press and government propaganda] And what of economics, sociology, anthropology, literature, history, et al? These are for the less intelligent, the less gifted... in other words the lower-class of the educational pyramid.

It evades me how and why this unacceptable state of affairs could come to being. Indeed, it has become a system that discriminates against those who are intelligent, but are more suited for the Arts. They have been told from the moment they step into school that physics is the realm of geniuses (Newton! Einstein! Hawking!), while literature is for idiots (or weirdos like Shakespeare, Chaucer and T. S. Eliot). [And what about Philosophy? It's no wonder that there are zero faculties for the study of this vital subject in our local universities. For shame! For shame!]

But for sure, the infamous Dasar 60-40 (60-40 Policy) of the Ministry of Education has contributed to this completely flawed system. The unimportance of Arts to the policy makers is evident in their dismissal of the stream as only worthy of 40% of all upper-secondary students, while 60% must be channeled to the Almighty Science. My secondary school principal was so proud of the school's policy of 100-0. Yes, there was no Arts classes in Form 4 and Form 5 in my school, and that was something to boast and celebrate about.

We now face the same question as Lenin, "What is to be done?"

First, we must reverse the damage of the ridiculous 60-40 Policy. By forcing more students into the Sciences, we have spat on one half of the whole world of education. Equality of the streams is vital for our survival!

Second, I propose the setting up of schools in the vein of the Maktab Rendah Sains MARA (MARA Science Colleges), but dedicated to the study of the arts. Yes, it is time that we have Maktab Rendah Sastera MARA (MARA Arts Colleges). If seperate institutions are unfeasible, then we should introduce arts subjects in these institutions. [Implicit in this proposal is the opening of these institutions to non-Bumiputras, but that is a issue that needs an article of its own.]

Lastly, and most importantly, we must rid ourselves of the stigma against Arts students. It is now the case that a student is automatically looked down on if he or she divulges that he or she is studying Arts. Parents must cease from discouraging their children from pursuing Arts subjects. Teachers must do the same for their students.

Let us hope that it is not too late. The time is ripe for a counter-revolution!

Abolition of UPSR and PMR: Analysing the Fruits of Exam-centricism

It was reported yesterday that the Malaysian Examinations Syndicate (MES) has proposed that the Ujian Pencapaian Sekolah Rendah (UPSR) and the Penilaian Menengah Rendah (PMR) be abolished and replaced by a system of school-based assessment.

Today The Star reported that "most parents are wary about doing away with the [exams]."

This is not a surprising reaction, as most of these parents have never envisioned a school system without these two major examinations seperating the realms of primary, lower secondary and upper secondary school. These parents have themselves grown up within this system, and are disconcerted by the thought of such a radical change.

"Dr S.C. Ng said that examinations prepare students for life. 'Children must be trained to face challenges and there is no better way then through public examinations.'"

Now, this statement would true if one looks at life as one long series of tests and trials. Even if one were to adopt that view of life, can it really be said that there is no better method of preparing a child for challenges than through these two "big-time" exams?

Perhaps it would be helpful if we were to analyse how these major examinations shape our children.

Result #1: Hafalization
It is well-known that Malaysian students, like most Asians, have become masters of memorisation. Some (for example, those trained in Chinese schools, with a long heritage of hafalization stretching all the way back to Imperial China) are better at it than others. Nonetheless, memorisation, superseding true understanding, has become the primary mode of learning for many. All of us know of students who memorise entire essays -- gleaned from various books or worse, fed to them from tuition teachers -- and vomit them out word for word in robotic fashion.

Impressive, certainly. But what is the goal of education? Is it merely training a pupil to perform amazing feats of memory? Definitely not. Yet, who needs to bother about learning how to really write a fine essay when all that matters is producing a few good pieces of work to impress some unknown examiner? And why bother about really understanding the mechanics of Keynesian economics when there's no oral exam where one's shallow, superficial grasp of the material will be exposed?

Result #2: Narrowing of the Mind
Malaysian students commonly pester teachers with the famous question, "Is this coming out in the Exam?" The moment a Malaysian student is told that a certain portion of the subject is "not in the syllabus" (meaning it is not going to be tested in the major examination), it is certainly rare for him or her to bother trying to understand it, much less remember it. In this method Malaysian students have been limiting their range of knowledge for years and years.

The exam-based system has produced a species of student called the "Professional Exam-taker" (PET). He or she is brilliant at doing whatever it takes to score on a test/exam. But ask him or her anything that lies beyond the Almighty Exam Syllabus, and be prepared to get a shocking answer, or no answer at all. I can offer you one real-life example:

T: Do you know where Cuba is?
PET: Err... um... I think it's somewhere near... Russia?

T, who is a friend of mine, has been going around asking various "top students" similar questions, as a test of their general knowledge (The PET in this case was the top student of the top SMK(C) secondary school in my hometown). The results have been overwhelmingly depressing, if not unexpected.

Result #3: Tuition-mania, and other spawn of The Exam-Driven Life
This one needs no further elaboration. But I shall make a quick comment about the focus of teaching in our schools today. Without a doubt the ultimate focus is to allow the student to do well in the public examinations. This translates into all sorts of arguably unhealthy practices such as overemphasis on workbooks, answering-exam-questions-centred teaching etc.

Once again I reiterate: the opposition of parents to the abolishment of the UPSR and PMR is due to not being able to imagine what education will be like without these two examinations. It can be likened to the "old wine-skins" analogy. They have never tasted what the "new wine" of continuous school-based assessment is like, and hence, they are dead-set that the old exam-centric way of doing it is the very best.

Greetings (Test Post)

Check one two!