The Prime Minister equates student hooliganism with anti-government demonstrations. The students become hooligans, he believes, because they are taught to be anti-government in the kindergartens, and taught how to be violent. It is a small step from then on to taking the law into their own hands. There would, of course, be "chaos, if people no longer respected the law". His considered view he tells reporters on his return from the G-15 summit. One would have thought the venue should have elicited reactions to what transpired in Cairo. But you remember in Bolehland, returning from an international conference is a perfect venue to hold forth on student indisciple. What he does not say, but should, is who teaches students to break the law and be anti-government? Parents? Or Teachers? Is he telling us his education minister is responsible for tens of thousands of school teachers whose primary reason to be there is to teach pupils how to revolt? And what has he done all these days to stop that? Or is it something more sinister -- the total neglect of discipline in schools amidst an officially inspired downgrading of the teacher's role in society? In other words, is he shifting responsibility of his own role in this mess?

Successive education ministers come with instant fixes quickly forgotten when they move on to greener pastures. The smart schools which the present defence, and former education, minister built with no roofs and no computer software is consigned to the dust heap as his successor calls for the return of the cane. But when indiscipline in punished in class leads to police reports and transfers, teachers give up the ghost amidst student hooliganism and violence. Today, petty gangsters amongst students so rampant that teachers are assaulted after class. Indiscipline is the norm, the education minister, with his head in the clouds usually with ignorance on what education is and ought to be, taking the easy way out with high profile instant fixes which are not. The cabinet and senior civil ervants escape this impact on their lives, since their children go to high-fee-paying private schools.

Today, the government believes hooliganism would disappear with a judicious use of the cane. It would not. The 19 Mahathir years destroyed the structure of governance, made it to the whim and facnies of the incumbent. The teacher spends more time filling in forms for official statistics than preparing for his lessons. He is told by the government he is there under sufferance, a needless expense on the exchequer, his self-improvement dampened with official discouragement; and when he attempts to bring some semblance of discipline, could find himself beaten up his students after school, or go to court for using the cane. The Prime Minister thinks otherwise. His ire is at the reformasi crowds, and by extension, those lately vociferous Malays who believe he overstayed his welcome by a decade. He believes the seeds of revolt is imparted today in the kindergarten. If if it, how does he account for those well-dressed young men and women who flocked to support He Who Must Be Destroyed At All Cost two years ago? Were they, as kids, taught to be anti-Mahathir in 2000?

The indiscipline in schools today is the direct result of the laisse faire educational policies, implemented without thought or consideration, the dismantling of an educational structure with half-baked theories and ideals, in an attempt to be modern. In all this, the needs of the students or their teachers were ignored, who left to their own devices, would rebel. It is precisely because they were ignored and sidelined in the frequent policy changes and ministerial handups that brought about this culture of hooliganism the Prime Minister railed about. Much of what is wrong with Malaysia's education system is the result of callous government policies in which statistics were more important than the student. The new fix to yesterday's problem is the cane. Tan Sri Musa Mohamed, who wants his tenure as education minister remembered with the return of the can, as no doubt Dato' Seri Najib Razak would be for his smart idiots of his smart schools, misses the point. He thought this up without finding out why, and the teachers and headmasters I spoke to is so in the dark that it cannot take off. Offhand remarks is not a substitute for a sound education system. Until that is understood, little can change from the current round of student hooliganism and violence. Transferring that violence from the student to teach is no substitute for a well-regarded education system. But then, who is interested in that? Certainly not the education minister.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my