THE CICAK.com

Failure: Moral Education doesn’t encourage good conduct

By ANDREW LOH

“Orang yang tidak bermoral skor dalam Pengetahuan Moral.” (Students who lack morals acquire good grades for the Moral Education course in Malaysian schools.)

This proverb was coined by some wise classmates who reflected upon the irony of the situation:

Nice, hardworking, pleasant, respectful students would generally do badly in their Moral exams.

While mischievous students who procrastinated, talked a lot in class and did last-minute hash jobs usually received A’s.

We all realized that Moral in secondary school was a paradox in itself, where being a good person did not necessarily mean you would get an A in the subject, and where getting an A in the subject did not necessarily mean you were a good person.

The subject, when originally conceived by the Ministry of Education has deviated from its original purpose. The first indication of a deviation was its name. It was no longer called Pendidikan Moral, or Moral Education anymore; rather, it is now Pengetahuan Moral, or Moral Education. Its focus is not to educate students in being good, morally upright citizens, but to test our knowledge in spewing out morality as defined by its syllabus.

Classes were normally boring and dull. We spent hours memorising the syllabus - 36 official “Moral Values,” 1 in 7 “Categories” and their fixed definitions, word for word. We called it the most useless/asinine subject ever invented. We hypothesised about the extra three class periods per week we could have used for other subjects if Pengetahuan Moral didn’t exist. We cursed the creators of this wretched subject.

Textbooks drummed propaganda and improbable, they-lived-happily-ever-after stories into our young and impressionable minds. But still, there were the occasional spicy themes like human and civil rights and blind patriotism and acceptance where I couldn’t help but challenge the textbook’s views, which led to exciting, lively, quasi-thought-provoking class debates.

Worst of all was the examination itself. Oh, how much sleep has every non-Muslim Malaysian student lost over fretting and worrying about Pengetahuan Moral? It was the bane of our existence. The agony of having to memorize 36 Values and their respective definitions verbatim. The splitting headaches and lapses in memory and sore fingers plaguing our feverish quest to regurgitate every single Moral Value in two and a half hours.

The disillusionment that set in once we found out we had used a synonymous but incorrect word. (“Darn! It was Melindungi Hak Kanak-Kanak (Protecting children’s rights), not Menghormati (Respecting)!” or “Which of these combinations is right: Patuh (Obey)/Taat (Filialty)/Setia (Loyalty)/Cinta (Love) kepada Negara (to the country)?”)

Our greatest foe was the sneaky answer scheme. Despite our teachers’ assurances that it was holistic, encompassing and comprehensive, we all had our doubts. Time after time, students would come up with Moral Values that would fit the questions and substantiate them with logical reasons and examples, only to find their answers weren’t accepted since they were not in the list of acceptable answers in the answer scheme. When confronted, most teachers would just shrug and say something along the lines of “Sorry, nilai itu tidak dalam skemalah.” (”Sorry, that Value wasn’t in the scheme.”)

All in all, Pengetahuan Moral is the epitome of the rigidity of the Malaysian education system. It squashes thinking out of the box, fostering conformism among students. It mass-produces people who memorise, instead of independent, critical thinkers. It gives us an ultimatum: Don’t even think. Just follow, just toe the line. Only then will you be rewarded.

I challenge the objectives of having Pengetahuan Moral as a subject. Obviously the ability to quote 36 Moral Values and their definitions will not make anyone a more morally inclined citizen. I will go so far as to assume that this subject was implemented for the sake of implementing a subject, not to mould better Malaysians. I speculate that Pengetahuan Moral is here for non-Muslim students as a mere substitute for Islamic Knowledge for Muslim students.

In typical bureaucratic manner, the essence of educating students into upright, virtuous individuals has been lost in the haste to assemble a hodgepodge of “Moral Values” and government doctrine into an examinable subject.

Looking back at it and with my A1 in SPM Pengetahuan Moral, I now stand proud to have triumphed over the beast that Moral Education is. Perhaps someday, someone in power will have the common sense and courage to remember the essence of character education and repeal Pengetahuan Moral.

Until then, we’ll just have to make the best out of it.

Appendix

A review of Pengetahuan Moral changed the syllabus to 36 Moral Values in 7 Categories for SPM 2004 takers. Batches prior to SPM 2004 had to memorize a whopping 80 values and sub-values.

Take note, however, that the batches for SPM 2004 and 2005 memorized 80 values and sub-values in Form 1 to 3, and then switched to the current 36 Moral values in Form 4.

—
ANDREW LOH is a staff writer for theCICAK.

He is a monstrously biased, rebellious 18-year-old who thinks that young people should rule the world, that Malaysian subtitlists should go for listening and language lessons, and that he is the third Malaysian Idol. Visit his site.