Correct Rectify And Remedy The Potentially Dormant 2r Embedded In Our Educational System

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THE news of the 11-year-old who suffered heatstroke on April 30th, after a teacher forced him to stand in the sun for three hours has left Malaysian from all walks of life angry, dismayed and disgruntled.
Ampang Hospital in Selangor provided the family a reference letter for her son to be assessed as a person with disabilities in view of his resulting health issues.
The irony and contradiction is that three warning letters from the school were allegedly sent to the boy’s parents regarding his absence from school while he was receiving medical treatment at the hospital.
What the Malaysia public is wondering though is whether there are many teachers of this kind in the teaching profession.
No one with a sane mind will deny the existence of such teachers in the system. These teachers have gone through proper teacher training programmes of mastering the psychology, pedagogy and the rest of the disciplines to teach effectively and efficiently, so why are there still many found with racist and sadist mindsets?
The Education Ministry should now look into the curriculum of teacher training as well as the selection process and training trajectories before they qualified as teachers.
The selection process must be able to detect and identify applicants who are racist and religious bigots.
If this can be eliminated at the interview and selection process, the Education Ministry is doing a great favour to the teaching profession.
The Ministry shouldn’t only be looking at the tree all the time but missing the forest, if not such incidents will reoccur again and again.
Malaysia is a multiracial, multi-religious and multi-linguistic society that carries along with it its pros and cons of its diversity demography.
In theory we can talk of unity in diversity until the cows come home but in practice it is an utter failure.
The policies and its implementation and the rhetoric of politicians must be scrutinised at all times. There are several dichotomies between many diverse elements which can instantly whip up racial religious hatred towards one another.
Malaysia is a fragile society as far as race and religion are concerned, and it has not matured sufficiently as politicians are ever ready to sniff around the sentiments to gain political mileage.
We hope this uncivilised incident will make the Ministry look deeply at the curriculum, selection and training programme of the teaching profession. It should not be brushed under the carpet as an isolated incident.
The Ministry must do some soul-searching with proper officials to correct, rectify and remedy the potentially dormant 2R (race and religion) embedded in our educational system which rears its ugly head with snippets of incidents like this. 
 
K. Tamil Maran (K.T. Maran) is a Focus Malaysia viewer.
The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.
- Focus Malaysia

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