"Khatful", "Khatless" or "Khatstrophe"?

Education is an emotive issue. Why? It is the future of a family or a nation. And nearly everyone wants the best for their children. When a Government fails to deliver, then parents have to look at alternatives, even if that is a painful one – from a financial standpoint.

So many nations have the best people to design curricula, lead changes, or even implement them. In Malaysia, we love to “chop and change” or do a "flip-flop" – whether it is PPSMI, PPI, 1BestariNet or from white to black shoes (and maybe back to white again!)

Ministers have a mandate to implement the future, today. But some want us to go back to the 9^th or 10^th century when times were more sedate and serene. Then we could practice khat or Chinese calligraphy with little care in the world, other than a potential Mongol invasion. The khat controversy has been raging for over two weeks – a self-created monster! There is an inherent psyche of some people to create diversions or the proverbial “mountain out of a molehill”.

As Azly Rahman rightly says,

- Khat is not Jawi;

- Khat is not Bahasa Malaysia/Melayu;

- Khat is not daily-use Arabic.

What is the real agenda? Creeping or creepy Islamization? Promote the Quran?

Instead of STEM, coding skills or multi-culturalism and diversity in education, we are mired in the sand dunes of irrationality. Do we want a progressive forward-looking, united nation or we prefer the “Mediocre Malaysia” of the last 70 years? That is central – not black shoes or khat!

Do we go back to the halcyon days of the Umayyad or Abbasid empires? The golden era of Islam had an openness to knowledge from Hindu India or Buddhist/Taoist China. In fact, they like China of today developed from the “technologies” that were available then be it in maths, science, philosophy or literature.

The Education Ministry is the biggest recipient in the 2019 Budget. An allocation of RM60.2 billion or 19.1 per cent of total government spending. But as the Americans like to say, are we getting the “best bang for our buck”? Not on my record. It is not curricula, facilities, books but leadership. And if positions of leadership is restricted to one select group then khat or black shoes cannot unite us!

Reference:

Azly Rahman, Khat and the ecology of creeping Islamization https://azlyrahman-post.blogspot.com 

Fa Abdul, Time to learn from your past mistakes, Education Ministry https://www.malaysiakini.com