Monday, October 18, 2010

Nilai-Nilai Murni...

or moral values.... Values are universal. We are taught from young what they stand for. I recently saw some of these values pasted on the book shelves at a school library; trilingual - BM, English and Jawi. I learned Jawi when I was in primary school. It's rusty now but I can still make out the words slowly. Kinda nice. Back to the signs... such signs are common sight in most schools these days.
Nilai-Nilai Murni
Schools spend a small fortune to buy these signs and they hang them everywhere. But are these values practised?

What is keadilan (justice/fairness)? Does it mean that Ramli gets a place in the Matriculation College while Lee Mei does not even when both come from the same social background and have the same set of results? In fact, even if Lee Mei might have better set of results, she might still not get a place.

Or semangat kemasyarakatan (community spirit)? Is it one community only we're talking about or all Malaysians? For example, the way some lecturers in BTNs berate about the Chinese being pendatangs and Indians being pariahs? I thought all of us are pendatangs unless you can claim pure ancestry from the Orang Asli. Anyway, is that community spirit? Or like the 2 Principals who sang the same tune like the said BTN lecturer above??? Where is the hemah tinggi? If we start measuring them against the moral values yardstick, all of them will get a F!

Where is the kejujuran (honesty) or rasional (rational) in all these racism that is going around us? A Form 4 student takes up Catering as one of his subjects for SPM. Before long, he is subtly pressured to drop it. Reason given? Well, halal (kosher) and haram (non-kosher) issue. It seems anything he touches might not be halal... even though the food ingredients are bought by the school. Going by the same line of thought, I would think we might as well start wearing masks to filter the air we breathe since this air has gone into so many (animal) lungs... or the water that we drink? Water is a limited resource and is therefore recycled. Same principle. Where is our rationality?

Been moving around a bit this past fortnight and I notice that so many schools have all these signs put up. What is their purpose? For deco? To educate? Or perhaps to show the kids that it's all right to be hypocrites? If that's what those signs are for, perhaps too we should put up another new sign... HYPOCRISY!

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