1Malaysia and Parliamentary Debate

It's debate season now. One of the requirements for any team to take part in a Parliamentary Debate is one of the 3 main speakers on each team must be a Bumiputera. BTW, Parliamentary Debate is for upper secondary school students. It's a souped up version of the old style debate with more oomph and kick. And it's good exercise for the gray matters too! 8)

And last I checked, our PM was still with his 1Malaysia thingy... So where is this 1Malaysia in a competition like this? Is he so far ahead that the rest of the gahmen institutions have yet to digest his call?

And there'll be lots of yadda, yadda, yadda...must give chance-lah, Malays not good in English-lah; plenty of reasons will continue to roll as to why special clauses are needed. I should think that the standard of English among the majority of students regardless of race is roughly the same now. Thanks to our short sightedness and the always-seems-to-be-under-siege gahmen... who always seem to feel the National Language is in danger of losing its importance! It shouldn't matter whether you have all non-Bumis or all Bumis in one debating team. Cos sometimes you also do get an all-Bumi team which can be quite mengancam.

So, 1Malaysia.... it's just one laughable PR exercise for the gullible. A lot of things are still in the 2 or 3Malaysia mode. Once you see real effort in dismantling the race-based-everything under our blue Malaysian sky, only then the PR exercise becomes for real. Anyway, what's all this protection going to do for the protected ones as the world becomes smaller? Sure they'll seem successful on the outside (or as long favours and privileges continue to swing towards them) but a couple of traits will become their baggage. For one, they will not be able to 'jiak-kor' (that's Hokkien for standing up to tough times). They miss out on the adage tough times don't last, tough people do thingy. Or tough times come, they go running to the Atuk! Just like my kid who comes running to us to solve his problems cos we shield him too much. Two, they won't be competent enough to compete... I could yadda, yadda some more but this is an old tale, 30 years old this year.

But the main thing is it's just not right! Fairness, Justice, Righteouness, Ethics... all the good moral values that we keep teaching our kids via religious classes and moral studies seem kinda twisted in our environment. It's like this Parliamentary Debate thing... each team is forced to have a Bumi speaker... I wonder if it's the other way around... do they also make it compulsory to have a non-Bumi speaker for debates in Bahasa Malaysia? I thought the PM's been hyping about 1Malaysia? Best to just do away with all this nonsense and start teaching our kids to go by meritocracy....

We are teaching our kids that we go by majority (that's cool)... but ours is the skewed type of majority, the bully-type of majority... in Hokkien, we say 'pau-yar' (sure-win). So, if every time we pray, we beseech to God Almighty who is supposed to be fair and just, merciful, etc, etc... and then in practice we get the impression that it's 1Fairness (justice) but 2 standards that we experience. Hmmmm, God of 2 standards??? You wonder. You see, almost everyday I'd listen in to some prayers... we are a very religious nation.... and somehow, after some time I begin to question the sincerity of their faith.... Well all this Parliamentary Debate thingy sort of just opened up this floodgates of thoughts....

BTW, this year is another new experience... I helped and 'kay-poh' with a friend's students. This time it's Keat Hwa. Over the years, I've lent my gray cells to my friends' kids who seemed to think that nestled among the crevices of my gray cells are goodies they can use.... So this year, it was for a friend's students. I enjoyed working with them; it was fun to see their enthusiasm. It was actually quite gratifying to see light bulbs going on in their eyes as they picked up steam in the prep process... that's what such activities are supposed to do for them. And it was extremely nice to see the two girls I was coaching scale up that steep learning curve with such determination and one of them did real good too.

This is the other side of education which I enjoy tremendously... the mugging part is over-rated; with its results being very hardworking and tenacious (the good thing) and rigid and self-centred (the not good thing). The prodding of the mind to be more critical in a constructive way, the challenge to understand the world around us (not just the little coconut we're in)... I think those are things which should hold equal importance to us.... and parliamentary debate is a small step towards the creation of that awareness. After all our world now is a world of adjectives... creative, sharper minds. Information?? It's very senang to get. It's such adjectives like critical, discerning, forward-looking, creative, that will separate the boys from the men, girls from the women! And our education system is not working much on those adjectives.... cos it feels like we're still at the noun stage...