This essay
will be divided into three main sections.
The first section will cover a brief history of what I have endeavoured
in for the past 2 years and my passion for change in the current Malaysian
education system. The second and third
sections will focus on women’s rights and LGBT rights. These issues are predominantly important to
me. However, it is in no way trying to say
that these three aspects are more important than any other human rights but
mainly to state my personal views.
My Encounter with the Malaysian
Education System
Only with
quality education will a country be able to create a global community that
would be able to provide skilled and knowledge workers to compete in the world
arena. As of now, Malaysian graduates,
do not have the competitive edge to be able to function beyond Malaysia.
Upon
graduation, I lectured at Stamford College and a year later, was appointed at
an Assistant Lecturer at Multimedia University.
During my tenure at these two institutions, I noticed that undergraduate
students struggled with the English language.
Not only did they struggled with the language, they struggled with the steeper
learning curve as an undergraduate as the local education system in primary and
secondary levels have failed to equip them with analytical and creative
thinking skills. Thus, I was inspired to
work hard to guide them in building their confidence in self directed
learning.
In 2006, I
took a leap of faith to break away from employment to try my hands on being
self employed in the supplementary education industry – tutoring. I chose Johor Bahru because it is mainly a
predominantly mandarin speaking community, due to the influence of Singapore
mandarin sitcoms and family upbringing. Johorians
have a different perspective towards the Malaysian mainstream education system
whereby a majority of them would whisk their children off to Singapore daily
for school in a hope to give their children a better education. These students would then struggle by
commuting daily in and out of Singapore.
Others would choose to send their children to a private Chinese medium
school even though upon graduation, the certificate is not recognised by the
Malaysian Ministry of Education. Most of
the students from this system will seek to study abroad, either in UK,
Australia, United States, China or Taiwan.
I started my
venture by offering door-to-door tutoring services for students all around
Johor Bahru, teaching mainly English language to Malaysian students who study
in Singapore primary and secondary schools.
I have always known that there is an urgent need to change the education
landscape in Malaysia to allow students the right to quality education. However, after taking up the role as a
private tutor for primary and secondary students this conviction for change had
grown stronger. Thus, I decided to found
Think Tank Centre.
I founded my
centre on the basis of wanting to provide supplementary education to the local
Johor students to help with their level of proficiency in English. My centre opens to all segments of the
society regardless of race and economic background. There have been cases where many centres
throughout Johor only accept students of a certain ethnic race. It has become a common practice here as there
is a strong belief that students of a certain ethnic race tend to do better in
exams and thus, this directly brings up the status of the centre in terms of
excellence.
I advocated a
change in mindset amongst parents that learning English was a lifelong
experience. The perception of an exam
oriented method of learning for English is not the solution for a student to
increase his or her proficiency level. Of course I faced a lot of disagreement
from parents about my point of view as they still viewed that scoring
distinctions was the main objective of extra tuition. I don’t disagree with them, but I try to
educate parents to see that learning is not only about exams. It is about preparing their children for the
future and how they can use English as a communication tool to bring them
further in life. Early this year, I also
opened up new classes for Math and Science for both Singapore and International
School syllabuses. Things are going running
well with the centre and there is remarkable academic progress amongst my
students.
Malaysia
needs to create more graduates that are able to think globally to provide
Malaysia an international advantage in fostering better relations with the
international world. What role does
higher education have between nations?
Higher education facilitates high movement of students from all over the
world to travel to countries that offers quality education. United Kingdom, United States, Europe, Australia
and New Zealand are popular educational destinations for students all over the
world as it is wide acknowledged they pride on their high quality of education.
According to the Organisation for
Economic Coorperation and Development, there are 4 million tertiary students
that study outside of their country in 2009.
Higher education is also important in advocating acquisition of foreign
languages, area studies and intercultural appreciation, which is key to
creating a borderless world community.
Institutions
of higher education have spear headed numerous scientific and cultural projects
that has created opportunities within its country of origin as well as
abroad. This creates a relationship
between foreign institutions to work towards scientific and cultural
discoveries in a global scale. Apart
from this, since the 1960s, universities and colleges also provide
consultancies in the creation of foreign educational institutions. To give an example of this consultation work
is by MIT that helped the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, India.
I strongly
believe that international relations and diplomacy is needed for implementing
new policies within a government and education is always left in the back
burner in policy making of any country. Thus,
this is why I feel that it is important that an educational revolution is
needed in Malaysia to be able to be a part of this global educational movement.
Women’s Rights
Moving on to
the next section, I would like to expound on women’s rights. Women have come a long way to fight for their
rights in which earned them the right to divorce their husbands, to vote and to
protect themselves from any forms of violence.
In the late
years of the 1800s, women were not allowed to vote and waves of protests were
started by independent groups of women known as the suffragettes. The suffragettes movement were then lead by
Millicent Fawcett to fight for women’s right to vote with an argument that
working women pay the same amount of taxes as working men but were not allowed
to vote. In 1903, Emmeline Pankhurst
founded Women’s Social and Political Union and believed that if men refused to
listen to reason then women would have to use force to persuade them. Her methods eventually lead to a victory for
women’s rights to vote in 1928.
Women’s
rights have come a long way and have won many battles, but the reality is that
there are still many battles to be won.
In this time and age, there are still many women who are unable to
exercise their rights and are subjected to violence such as sexual abuse and
domestic abuse. Apart from physical abuse, women are subjected to constant
discrimination in the work place and have to constantly work harder than men to
break the glass ceiling.
What baffles
me more is the growing practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) amongst
certain ethnic groups in the United Kingdom despite it being illegal. Approximately a total of 500 school girls aged
12 will be circumcised during the summer holidays and most of these are done at
home by a non medical practitioner. This
practice is based upon cultural beliefs by certain African tribe groups and is
mainly motivated by a belief that circumcision will increase the sexual pleasure
of men and to guarantee a girl’s chastity before marriage. But the desire to conform to traditional
practices is the main motivation of these practices. Some 140 million women worldwide have been subjected to FGM
and an estimated further two million are at risk every year. Most live in 28 African countries while others
are in Yemen, Kurdistan, United States, Saudi Arabia, Australia and Canada.
In the
Malaysian context, laws and legislation relating to rape, domestic violence and
sexual harassment is still inadequate. In
2000 alone, there were 1217 reported cases of rape 3468 cases of domestic
violence. These are only the reported
cases with hundreds of cases not being reported due to overwhelming shame due
to cultural influences. These issues are
still very much a taboo to be discussed about openly in Malaysia.
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender
(LGBT) Rights
Another issue
of human rights that strikes a chord with me is LGBT rights. All of us have our
sexual orientation and gender identity. Thus,
discrimination against Lesbians, Gay, Bisexuals and Transgender based on sexual
orientation or gender identity is an infringement of basic human rights. Sexual orientation covers
sexual desires, feelings, practices and identification towards people of the
same or different sexes (same-sex, heterosexual or bisexual orientation).
Gender identity refers to the complex relationship between sex and gender,
referring to a person's experience of self expression in relation to social
categories of masculinity or femininity (gender). A person's subjectively felt
gender identity may be at variance with their sex or physiological
characteristics.
The rights
for LGBT people to get married and to share equal rights as their heterosexual
counterparts and decriminalization are two issues within the LGBT rights
movement.
Marriage equality for LGBT has become
a highly political issue, especially in the United States, where success in the
parliamentary election is very much influenced by the political parties’ stand
regarding this issue. There has been several milestones achieved in the US gay
rights movement in 2011, most notably the abolishment of the “Don’t ask don’t
tell” policy in the US army. President
Barrack Obama has given his full support to make this change in the US
legislation. However, with the recent
pressure to win the elections, Obama has somewhat softened his support for the
gay community to win the hearts of certain Americans who disagree with making
marriage equal for LGBT individuals.
There is still a long way to go in US politics for the gay rights
movement.
Criminalization of LGBT individuals
just because of their sexual orientation and gender identity is a violation of
human rights. The detention of
Jean-Claude Roger Mbede in Cameroon is an example of criminalization that is
happening around the globe. Decriminalization of LGBT individuals is a must to allow
these individuals to enjoy the right to walk freely without fear of
incarceration.
In 2006, the Yogyakarta Principles on
the Application of International Human Rights Law in Relation to Sexual
Orientation and Gender Identity was developed by a group of LGBT experts in
applying international human rights law to discrimination experienced by
lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender people to ensure human rights
protections. Nevertheless, across the globe, instances of discrimination
towards LGBT individuals are a norm.
Some examples of discriminations are through execution by the state,
denial of employment, housing or health services, denial of asylum, rape or
torture in detention, and loss of custody of children.
These discriminations are an act of
violation of basic human rights and many governments in many countries still
refuse to address the violence committed against LGBT people. One example of a heinous crime that is
happening in South Africa is where ‘corrective rape’ is committed towards
African lesbians, claiming that it would make them ‘straight’. These crimes have gone on without much
intervention from the South African government.
Back home in Malaysia, LGBT rights are
not recognised. The LGBT community in
Malaysia is a ‘hidden community’ due to fear of humiliation and incarceration
as Islam is the official religion of Malaysia. The ruling party in Malaysia,
United Malaysia National Organisation (UMNO) set up a “People’s Anti-homosexual
Voluntary Movement” in 1998 to advocate for stricter criminal laws against
homosexuality. The Anwar Ibrahim sodomy case in 1998 was a political debacle
for Malaysia as well as a highly sensational court case. Despite national and
international protests, he was not released until he served his four year
sentence.
The only political party that publicly
states their support to fight for LGBT rights in Malaysia is the Democratic
Action Party (DAP). Instead, most LGBT rights movement in Malaysia are ran at a
pretext of organizing an annual sexuality rights festival called “Seksualiti
Merdeka” or “Independent Sexuality”. This festival hopes to provide an advocacy
platform for sexuality rights in Malaysia. In recent years, it has had to
battle with backlash from the government and numerous anti-gay groups in
Malaysia.
The rights of LGBT individuals in
Malaysia are in dire need of representation as what is happening right now in
the Malaysian community is an approach that LGBT individuals do not exist in
our society. Personally, I have close
friends who have been disowned by their own family due to the shame that it
brings and I can see their struggles to reconcile their love for their partner
and with their family.
There is a
great need for more advocacies for the LGBT rights movement. Governments and gay rights movement have to
continue to work together to play a role in drafting and approving legislation
to protect the rights of LGBT individuals.
Apart from this, greater awareness is needed to educate the masses that
discriminating against people just because of their sexuality and gender
identity is not a warranted behaviour as it can cause grievous repercussions to
those who are directed to.
To conclude, I have great aspirations to make
a change in Malaysia as well as for the global community as a whole, mainly in
the fields of education and human rights. I wish to create an environment in
Malaysia through politics and NGOs in which Malaysians will have the
opportunity to be competitive in the global arena and be able to practice their
rights to the fullest extent as we all deserve so much more.
References:
1.
Lane, J. & Kinser, K. (March 12, 2012). The
Chronicle of Higher Education. In What is
Higher Education’s Role in International Relations? Retrieved May 25, 2012,
from http://chronicle.com/blogs/worldwise/what-is-higher-educations-role-in-international-relations/29208
2. McVeigh, T. & Sutton, T. (July
25, 2010). The Guardian The Observer. In
British Girls Undergo Horror of Genital
Mutilation Despite Tough Laws. Retrieved May 25, 2012 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/jul/25/female-circumcision-children-british-law
3. Josiah, Ivy. (September 9, 2001).
Asia Society. In There are No Human
Rights Without Women’s Rights. Retrieved on May 25, 2012 from http://asiasociety.org/policy/social-issues/women-and-gender/there-are-no-human-rights-without-womens-rights
4. N.A (nd). Amnesty International
Website. In About LGBT Human Rights. Retrieved on May 26, 2012, from http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issues/lgbt-rights/about-lgbt-human-rights
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