History...

Ask students what they think of history as a subject... many wish they can drop it. If History as a subject were to 'drop dead', I think it would make many young souls happy. And why not? Cos history is boring! Therefore it requires great discipline to study it. You have to memorize.. why study about dead people? Plus of course... it is bias... but I suspect it's like this in many countries of the world... we think the young minds are great places to start to be imbued with 'propaganda'... but this is no longer the era of Mao and his little Red Book. There are many alternative sources of information.

History is a convenient propaganda tool. But propaganda or not, kids from the other side of the divide have mastered the art of giving the answers required and still get that A for their public exams! Sometimes, I think the writers belittle the intelligence of our young... It's still better to try to be balanced and fair in our dissection of the past.

Countries are run by people. People make mistakes. History has a purpose in life. It is written so that we don't make the same mistakes. But we ignore facts that are embarrassing. And we deny the follies of our past when we rewrite them in a way that is favourable to us. Facts are bent to favour us. They bend truths and make them half-truths or non-truths.

We seem afraid to face our shortcomings and wrong practices of the past. And because that, it is difficult to move forward. Look at Malaysia, we may seem to have progressed materially but morally, people end up dead when they are called in for questioning. Criminals end up dead under the police care.... the law and the law-breakers don't seem very different, huh? Both seem thuggish! In choosing not to embarrass our race we are actually hurting the future generations. The past is supposed to make the present better so that there is a better tomorrow. But does it do the job? Anyway, material wealth will rot away if the moral absolutes are not adhered to. It's only a matter of time before these birds of the same feather will turn on their own. Greed, corruption, despotism, nepotism, etc. have a way of doing that! History is full of such examples.

Let me illustrate a point here...

This is from Sejarah Text Book Tingkatan 3 page 58.. 'Orang Melayu telah mengadakan demonstrasi secara aman bagi membantah cara Sir Harold MacMichael memperoleh tandatangan Raja-Raja Melayu.'

Pg 62 of the same book... 'Satu lagi langkah kolektif orang Melayu ialah mengadakan rapat umum semasa lawatan L.D Gammans dan David Rees di setiap bandar untuk menunjukkan bantahan mereka.'

The demonstration culture is also in UMNO. But, strangely, when the people opted to demonstrate (as in Bersih, Hindraf and the recent abolish ISA thingy), the very same party opted to use the police to quell the demo. The ensuing 'mayhem' was actually their own doing, not the demonstrators'. It's easy enough to see that. Yet, obviously UMNO (BN gahmen) did not seem to know their own history well. What some writers have been saying about UMNO being birthed from demo actually rings true...

And UMNO being the main component of BN has led BN to more shameful 'demos' like the storming of the APCET II. It was a much uglier 'demo'... windows smashed, furniture destroyed (by the demonstrators); yet I don't remember the police coming in with water cannons and riot gear to quell that shameful episode. The 'protestors' behaved like hooligans yet nothing was done.

So, History is a rather twisted subject here. The twist is purposely intended. We become revisionists and rewrite history to fit our worldview or political goals. There is also such a thing as selective reading but being a tested subject, the students do not have that luxury. So where will we move on from here? There are more examples I could quote...

Another example is the uprising of Dato Maharajalela and co in Perak. One of the reasons given for the killing of J.W.W. Birch, the first British Resident, was he tried to stop the practice of slavery.... To the privileged class, slavery was a way of life. But Birch interfered. If I had been one of the slaves freed because of his interference, I would have been immensely grateful to him for my freedom.

Yet, our history looks at the killing of Birch from the point of the 'pembesar'. I've always wondered how the normal folks (especially the slaves) viewed Birch. Life would have changed much for them... they earned their freedom. This very interference became a reason, which actually had been fuelled by the loss of power over the wealth of the land of the pembesar, for the killing of Birch. That's the price he had to pay for his call to the adventure in the sun of the tropics! But if you read our history books you'd actually feel that it could have been written from a more balanced point. Birch did try to do something good... he tried to free the Malay slaves from their Malay masters! Ironic, isn't it? Cos, finally 2 minor warriors were hung to death for their roles while the masterminds got away with their lives.

But the History syllabus has also evolved over the last few years... these days they have this 'application' questions in the structured and essay questions for the upper forms. It's actually kinda easy to kelentong if you are well read enough and get enough practice from Pendidikan Moral. History as a subject is not actually that difficult. We beat around the same bush... plus you don't really have to think very much. The hard part is the memorizing... there's no real need to understand or think out of the box... they don't require that cos it can be kinda destabilizing for the powers that are!