: a brief essay addressing "national unity" and "operational effectiveness"
Disclaimer : this essay was first drafted as a Facebook post at 2053h on 2025-03-30. Subsequent edits will be dated accordingly.
INTRODUCTION
I have recently decided upon Constitutionalism, as a lens to focus discussions of civics in Malaysia. What would Constitutionalism look like, if it were at the heart of education policy?
Below I progress through some "context", a "problem statement", and a "possible forward direction".
This essay assumes the lens that 1/religion, 2/the fine arts, 3/commerce, 4/law, 5/STEM, 6/other, are all aspects of population CONTROL : that is to say, they are aspects of GOVERNANCE, assuming synonymy between these two terms.
CONTEXT
First, I would like to establish that religious orientation is important to many ( but not all ) Malaysians. So much that religious education of children can be up to five hours-per-week ( or more ) of formal education. ( This is a number I pulled from the Internet, and I will not attempt to validate it here. )
Throughout my life, I have listened to discourse about religious education in Malaysia, and heard people say that it is too much, or too little. It is hard to say what it should be. I am not sure what the public syllabus is these days, but in my time ( 1990s ) the Muslim students and non-Muslim students were separated : Muslims would study Islam, and non-Muslims would study a subject called "Moral Education", and this was for the first 11 years of school.
Those of us in the Moral Education stream, would often make fun of the syllabus, as even in the terminal exam, it would be about MEMORISING moral protocols, without any focus on the systematic DESIGN of moral protocols.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
Second, I want to note that the following elements of syllabus designs "seem" WRONG, because they are culturally DIVISIVE ( in the context of the oft mentioned concept of national unity, which is so officially important in Malaysia, that it has its own Federal Ministry and Minister ).
Wrong 1
: dichotomising between "the study of Islam, WITH its history, and its apologetics" and "the study of morals in general, WITHOUT history, and without apologetics". This is an intrinsically imbalanced design, for obvious reasons - the results are not equally "deep/ rich", in each case.
Wrong 2
: dichotomising between "the study of STEM" and "the study of religious beliefs". This is just ridiculous, because I don't want part of my population to be STEM-specialists, and the other part to be religious-specialists. What I do want is for the general population to have a basic comprehension of STEM AND religion. ( I intentionally leave out other sorts of streaming/ specialisation issues in Malaysian secondary education, for the purposes of this brief essay. )
Wrong 3
: providing federally-coordinated opportunities for Muslim children to receive formal education about their own "statement of faith", WITHOUT providing equal opportunities for every other student to receive formal education about their own "statement of faith" ( which may in some cases be a statement of faith about society, that does not involve the concept of a god, or any spiritual dimension ).
POSSIBLE FORWARD DIRECTION
This essay is intentionally brief on solution statements, and will present only some concepts for consideration, to encourage further inventiveness on the part of the reader.
Without much forethought, I sketch out what it might look like if we tried to address the problem statements above.
Right 1
: any formal studies of any NORMATIVE ("religious" or "moral") belief, should be accompanied* with a HISTORY of the development of the norms, including rudiments of the DIALECTIC apologetics which led to these norms.
( * Accurately or inaccurately, at least an attempt at this form, would be a good start. )
Coordinated parallels should be drawn in the development of syllabi for each separate stream, whenever there are streams that separate the overall population of children.
Right 2
: this is arguably already addressed in the general syllabus, which includes history, science, and math. There may be two complementary approaches to improve this ...
2a
: REDUCED specialisation, with more LEGAL and CIVICS education for both STEM and religious students, until the 11th year of school - this should focus on Constitutionalism, as the glue which FORMALLY links each of these together under the legal system;
2b
: INCREASED specialisation, with macroscopic balancing, such that for example, for every 100 students diverted to specialise in religious knowledge, there should be 100 students diverted to specialise in STEM, such that the overall population retains a MANAGED balance, and that differential childhood clubs of equal importance can develop and communicate with each other.
Right 3
: simply put, every child citizen should have equal access to formal education of a good quality, about "their own statement of faith", unified by a federal program about this. Crucially, the mission of the federal program should be to dwell long and deep on the ontology of "statements of faith", and the ensuing ethical implications of any "statement of faith", with regards to Malaysia's Constitutional articles regarding faith, spirituality, and religion.
While it is expected that there will be political pressure to cancel any "statement of faith" which does not cohere with other statements of faith, the federal program should aspire to curate a framework which unifies the citizenry without denying realities about "statements of faith", no matter how weird such personal statements might be.
CONCLUSION
Constitutionalism provides the one, and only common platform, for Malaysian citizens expressing differentiated "statements of faith", to pursue meaningful discussion about anything, utilising one common domain-specific language ... that is, the language of the Federal Constitution.
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