Grown Ups Not Our Undergrads

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It’s amusing when someone says the young know best or that our future is better in their hands.
As an academic, I am acquainted with students and their lack of maturity, not just in academia but also in life, coupled with their under-developed political views and the religious fervour they harbour.
They have read little and learned even less about the world beyond the walls of their religious and public schools.
Like their parents, who are unlikely to have read much either, they tend to subscribe to the teachings of their ustaz and religious teachers over the vast knowledge they should have gained at school and university.
A look at some of the decisions and actions taken by university students, mostly from public institutions, will prove my point.
One that is still hogging the headlines is what I would refer to as the “ham sandwich incident”.
A student had assumed that ham could only mean pork when a simple check could have revealed that that is not so. Perhaps it was not in his lecturer’s PowerPoint presentation.
In this age of AI and ChatGPT, a few keystrokes could have cleared the air. He could have even asked the shop assistant.
It’s well and good that the student took the matter up with the Universiti Malaya authorities, but lodging a report with the police without so much as a simple search on the internet or asking the right questions?
I wouldn’t hire someone like that.
Before the ham sandwich incident, our collective attention was hijacked by a call to stage a public demonstration a la Bersih to protest the appointment of Musa Aman as Sabah governor.
This time, it was the students of Universiti Malaysia Sabah who could not distinguish between a person who has merely been accused of corruption and one already found guilty.
The courts have ruled that former prime minister Najib Razak is guilty of putting his hand in the till, but which court has convicted Musa?
Any mature person would be well aware that stories about his insane wealth are not enough to pin any wrongdoing, perceived or otherwise, on him.
Questioning the appointment of a questionable person as governor in a forum or on social media would have sufficed as a better demonstration of maturity that is a little past puberty.
Last year, the possible inclusion of a few non-Bumiputera medical students at Universiti Teknoloji Mara (UiTM) — a Bumiputera-only institution — drew the consternation of another batch of students.
Did they know the original spirit of Mara and ITM? Have they read what UiTM founder Arshad Ayub wrote about inclusiveness?
For that matter, did they even understand Malaysia’s second deputy prime minister Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman’s cryptic message about the “Bumiputera first” policy?
Do they understand that there is a great need for medical specialists in this country today?
Rather than start a dialogue with medical professionals, historians and politicians of all races and creed, they opted to go out into the streets. Why?
I thought that as academics, we would have taught them the value of research, rationale and mature arguments rather than to join demonstrations without any understanding of the issues at hand.
Where have we gone wrong?
Then there was the protest over the rejection of the Jawi script a few years ago that is still baffling.
Back then the Gabungan Mahasiswa Islam (Gamis) staged a protest against Dong Zong for the latter’s decision to exclude Jawi in the Bahasa Melayu syllabus in Chinese schools.
The Malay-Muslim students even dangled the threat of a repeat of “May 13” in the face of the Chinese educationist group. As many of us know, that was the day in 1969 when many lives were lost without cause.
Instead of inviting Dong Zong for an intellectual dialogue or to debate the issue in the open, the Gamis youngsters chose to issue threats and display their displeasure publicly over a perceived insult.
Where was the compassion for the innocent lives lost needlessly in the 1969 riots?
Do we, as academics, inculcate in our students the fine art of issuing threats or taking to the streets to prepare them for a chosen career in the future? I never did.
Lastly, there was this Sabahan student who performed the Sieg Heil in tribute to Adolf Hitler for the murder without cause of millions of Jews — men and women, children to the elderly.
To the world, Hitler’s actions were a crime of unprecedented proportions. To this student, it was a noble act of courage and spirituality.
Now, which university has this in its syllabus? I want to know.
The Malaysian Qualification Agency evaluators are so efficient at unearthing minute details in perceived transgressions that it boggles the mind.
Perhaps it can tell us how a product of the Malaysian education system considers it fit to see the Holocaust as just for people he had never met.
When asked for my views on the Malaysian Higher Education Blueprint, I am always amused.
With students that we have, our education system is already way beyond blueprints. - FMT
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.

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