JKDPN Submission (recap of old points)

Submitted to National Education Policy Committee (Jawatankuasa Kajian Dasar Pendidikan Negara, JKDPN) a rehash of my main thoughts on this from 2018.

Policy Area: "Nature and scope of "civics" syllabus."

Narrative: ""Malaysians mostly enter adulthood without knowledge of how to operate our republic. The reason for this, is that past leadership repeatedly consolidated power in the Executive branch of government, and so the headlines for 35 years (50?) spoke mainly of executives as agents of change. Now when a citizen wants change, they complain about Executive inaction. The citizens only know how to vote in general elections, and then they are dismayed when their ideal public policies do not easily come to pass. This is foolish. Sic.""

Context: "Secondary schools (years 7-12)"

Recommendations: "The Constitution is a manual. It is not enough to read it in school, there must be exercises and drills to practice it - mock parliaments, mock courts, mock financial markets. / The Civics education should not merely introduce the theory of Malaysian government, but it should instill a participatory Practice of citizenship, along the conduits of power and branches of government written in the Constitution. / The Legislators (parliament), the Executives (cabinet), and the Judiciary (courts), and the Council of Rulers (monarchy), each have different roles. The Executive in charge of national education needs to implement Drills among children, to ensure that they understand these levers before they become Qualified by Age to Cast Votes in the general elections."

Justification: https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/05/how-to-discuss-education-public-policy.html

Additional Notes: "(1/2) I think (your committee) needs to add a lawyer, specifically a constitutional lawyer. (2/2) The difference between a "moral education" and a "civics education", is that civics must focus on the hard skills of manipulating the levers of government, and political life in general. Moral education exists to instill values. Civics exists to allow you to co-exist with explicit disagreements on morality. The whole point is to get you to brain how, and why, we do not simply disembowel each other on a whim."

References: 2018-09-30 "Civics Education in Malaysia" https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/09/civics-education-in-malaysia.html 2018-05-20 "How to Discuss Education Public Policy" https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2018/05/how-to-discuss-education-public-policy.html