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ON NOV 7, I recognised a childhood colleague from the 1990s, in a post that had “gone viral” on social media.
The allegation of the post was that John Doe had developed a career of harassment, targeting children who volunteered in religious societies and charities.
Firstly, I’m looking at it from a public health point of view. What are the appropriate channels that the government needs to put in place, such that the right multi-track support programmes can be administered to the accused and the victims?
There is a view that there are two parts to dealing with crime in society.
(a) Punitively, by simply punishing those who engage in behaviours deemed illegal, and hope that this acts as a deterrent to future crimes.
(b) As a public health issue, with multiple simultaneous tracks of social, medical, legal, and perhaps including punitive support.
Secondly, even when we have non-punitive tracks to deal with perpetrators, the law cannot take effect without the initiation of a formal process. For someone to receive formal clinical diagnosis and treatment, they have to first either:
(c) Be charged under a law, whereby the courts can thereafter assign them to a social worker or medical personnel for evaluation, or
(d) They must voluntarily seek out diagnosis and treatment.
The formal method for initiating proceedings for anyone who isn’t John Doe himself, is to file a police report. Meanwhile, as the behaviour of the accused has been neither diagnosed by a professional, or formally charged in court, it receives trial by social media, which is not efficient in helping us to determine the whole truth about the issue.
John Doe has already responded to media interviews. I don’t think it’s appropriate to speculate on his specific philosophical positions: neither his views on how he engages with society, nor his views on whether his behaviour is ethical or not. Those are his opinions; they will be taken into consideration by clinical professionals in the event of clinical diagnosis. We can only review what he has actually done, and it returns to the courts to properly convict an individual if he is guilty.
Finally, in my experience of socialising with him in weekly activities over a period of years, it was known that he was never very well-adjusted to society. He was often bullied for being inept at fitting in with the crowd. I know this for a fact because I participated in the bullying at that time – it wasn’t spectacularly violent, bloody stuff, but I do believe that teasing between children, social castigation and verbal abuse are all forms of bullying which may have long-term effects on individuals.
Bullying is easy to spot and deal with. But is it even possible for governments to put in place mechanisms where we can go a step further, where all members of society are familiar with spotting, tagging, and assigning professional social workers to cases of other forms of deviance in children from a young age? Do we want our society to become robust enough to accommodate such facilities?
The relationship between what counts as social norm, and what counts as crime, is often more complex than we may want to admit. Thinking deeply about this issue often reveals that we arbitrarily decide what is good and bad based on what is convenient. For some people, it may seem easier to refer to God; and for others, the truth is more mundane – we all have different intuitions, and can only agree on a social contract which must be explicitly defined, and enforced with checks and balances. That is the rule of law.
HWA YANG JERNG
Kuala Lumpur
TAGS / KEYWORDS:
Letters , Criminal , Sexual Predator , Grooming
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As drafted:
Letter to the Editor - Reflecting on Malaysia's Infrastructure for Dealing with Crime as a Public Health Concern
On 7 November, I recognised a childhood colleague from the 1990s, in a post that had "gone viral" on social media. The allegation of the post was that John Doe had developed a career of harassment, targeting children who volunteered in religious societies and charities. My reaction was evenly distributed between sadness and amusement, and I continue to have this reaction as the story has developed across tabloids, and the front-page of certain mainstream newspapers.
Firstly, I'm looking for a lens on the issue from a public health point of view. What are the appropriate channels that we need the government to put into place, such that the right multi-track support programs can be administered to each of the accused and the victims?
There is a view that there are two parts to dealing with crime in society.
(a) Punitively, by simply punishing those who engage in behaviours deemed illegal, and hope that this acts as a deterrent to future crimes.
(b) As a public health issue, with multiple simultaneous tracks of social, medical, legal, and perhaps including punitive support.
Secondly, even when we have non-punitive tracks to deal with perpetrators, the law cannot take effect without the initiation of formal process. For someone to receive formal clinical diagnosis and treatment, they have to first either:
(c) be charged under a law, whereby the courts can thereafter assign them to a social worker or medical personnel, for evaluation, or
(d) they must voluntarily seek out diagnosis, and treatment.
The formal method for initiating proceedings for anyone who isn't John himself, is to file a police report. Meanwhile, as the behaviour of the accused has been neither diagnosed by a professional, or formally charged in court - it receives trial by social media, which is not efficient in helping us to determine the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, about the issue at hand.
As of this time, John has already responded to media interviews. I don't think it's appropriate to speculate on John's specific philosophical positions: neither his views on how he engages with society, nor his views on whether his behaviour is ethical or not. Those are his opinions; they will be taken into consideration by clinical professionals in the event of clinical diagnosis. We can only review what he has actually done, against the letter of the law - and it returns to the courts to properly convict an individual if he is guilty.
Finally, in my experience of socialising with John in weekly activities over a period of years, it was known that he was never very well adjusted to society. In fact, this was to the extent that he was often bullied for being inept at fitting in with the crowd. I know this for a fact, because I participated in the bullying at that time - it wasn't spectacularly violent, bloody stuff, but I do believe that teasing between children, social castigation, and verbal abuse are all significant forms of bullying which may have long-term effects on individuals.
Bullying is easy to spot, and deal with. But is it even possible for governments to put in place mechanisms where we can go a step further, where all members of society are familiar with spotting, tagging, and assigning professional social workers to cases of other forms of deviance in children from a young age? Do we want our society to become robust enough to accommodate such facilities?
The relationship between what counts as a social norm, and what counts as crime, are often more complex than we may want to admit. Thinking deeply about this issues often reveals that we arbitrarily decide what is good and bad based on what is convenient. For some people, it may seem easier to refer to God; and for others, the truth is more mundane - we all have different intuitions, and can only agree on a social contract which must be explicitly defined, and enforced with checks and balances. That is rule of law.
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JULY 11 — The last week in Malaysia: well winter is here again, and I can’t see my toes for snowflakes. On the table:
i. Appointment of queers to public office
ii. Child marriage
iii. Deportation of religious scholars/ figures based on their theological positions.
Once again the screaming, weeping, liberals have called for elected leaders to disrupt the cultural predilections of the religious right. However, the left forgets or ignores a few things in their public effort:
1. Our leaders are elected, and the electorate is (for better or for worse) composed of religious conservatives. Therefore what the left asks for is, essentially undemocratic in at least one interpretation of approach. Moreover, even if it is democratic in some interpretation, our elected leaders lack the ability to secure both their mandates from the religious right and left, and have been forced in their decades-long policy of binomial panic to fall to the right.
2. This isn’t to say that the right should be let loose to abscond with universal liberties. Rather, the left again targets the wrong crowd. The road to justice and equality among people of different preferences doesn’t lie with the law — laws are often remade or broken. The road lies in diligent persuasion of the masses that their targeted policies (* Note 1) are the right policies. It is to the expensive and thankless proselytisation of the grassroots via slow, daily, programs where focus must return — not from remote locations, but in communities on the ground.
Meanwhile the left can proceed to call out the panicked leaders of the federal government, while no one provides an operational solution. This is valid exercise of speech freedoms, but it does not seem to be a effective rhetoric: it is not persuasive.
I’m looking forward to more strategic grassroots efforts. These require some humility and tolerance of hate, as you can’t easily persuade a hateful person to analyse their motivations for hate unless you are able to first demonstrate empathy with their outrage. Good luck, high five... on we go, Malaysians.
* Note 1:
Having queers in public office, unifying the age-of-qualification for the civil liberties of [marriage, voting, vice], and the enactment of public policy that explicitly delineates guidelines for the classification of ethical positions (and thereafter their inclusion or exclusion from federal funding or other endorsement).
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I REFER to your front-page report,“Teacher power” , by Simrit Kaur (The Star, Dec 24).
I understand it is only human nature to employ heavy-handed discipline as a last resort in dealing with people who are otherwise uncontrollable. So I believe the Education Minister is right in his course of action.
However, I would like to suggest that switching from spoken language to hands-on policing might not be the only option for dealing with indiscipline.
People appreciate being given good reasons to do things. Yet, behavioural education is rarely presented in reasonable language.
Most of the time, children are simply told to “do this” or “do that” without being given good reasons. This is very ineffective in controlling children who seek reasons.
Such children have “scientific” minds, and it is terrible for society to alienate them by telling them to ignore their “scientific” gifting.
It is more effective to control such children by reasoning with them. So, I would like to propose that the Education Ministry look into equipping school discipline masters with better reasoning abilities, that is, logical thinking and clear articulation.
The inability to control often results from failures in communication.
HWA YANG JERNG,
Petaling Jaya.
Read more at https://www.thestar.com.my/opinion/letters/2005/12/29/reasoning-with-children-a-better-way-to-check-indiscipline/#mzxvCp8gcoCUdD4T.99
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I REFER to the letter, “Religion plays a big role in cultivating a person’s character”, by Timothy Cheah, (Sunday Star, Dec 18).
Cheah depicts Dr Hwa Yung as a sort of theological liberal.
Now in Christian theology, the “liberals” are a very specific family of thinkers, which Dr Hwa is somewhat opposed to.
There are two kinds of religious pluralism, and Cheah fails to clearly articulate Dr Hwa’s position on religion. Allow me to attempt a correction.
One kind of religious pluralism is epistemological pluralism. In this view, all religions are equally valid methods for any human being to access the Truth, which is God ... or whatever you choose to call The-Ultimate-Object-of-Religion.
This is generally not Dr Hwa’s theological position, nor is it the position of the Methodist Church of Malaysia at large.
A different kind of religious pluralism is political-but-not-epistemological pluralism. In this view, a person can believe that only his own religion can give human beings access to the Truth.
Nevertheless, because that person wishes to maintain good social relations with his geographical neighbours, he chooses to live harmoniously in a society with other people who do not share his convictions about the Truth.
If I am not mistaken, it is this version of religious pluralism which is embraced by most religious people in Malaysian society.
I know for a fact that Dr Hwa readily supports this point of view.
HWA YANG JERNG,
Petaling Jaya.
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I READ the article about American colleges of the liberal arts and sciences (StarEducation, Aug 16) with interest and would like to offer some comments.
In the United States, a university is like a bunch of colleges stuck together. Even if you go to Harvard, Princeton or Yale, as an undergraduate you will probably be registered under the university’s college of the liberal arts and sciences. In general, undergraduate institutions are referred to as “liberal arts colleges” and going for your first degree is referred to as “going to college”
Liberal arts colleges are marketed as paying pay more attention to the “breadth” of one’s education rather than the “depth” of one’s industrial specialisation.
Some people argue that education systems which try to emphasise both “breadth” and “depth” sometimes ends up producing only students with mediocre breadth and depth of knowledge, and may hinder ambitious students from highly-focused specialisation in a subject area, or from highly-focused diversification.
At a liberal arts college, out of four years of coursework, students sometimes take more than half their course work outside any particular discipline or department.
This means most major concentrations are the equivalent of one or two years of solid coursework. This is normal in the US and makes it possible for students to acquire double or triple majors with relative ease.
For example, Mathematics and Economics make a good and highly marketable combination. Students with this combination become even more marketable if they take up Physics as well.
If students have a “shopping period” of two years before they need to decide on a major, even at a relatively small college with only 12 departments, students may, within the first two years, overload and end up with six courses per semester and 24 classes (at two classes per discipline or department).
Now, if the departments in the college are well organised and the courses introduce the students to the nature, scope and research methodology of various disciplines, that would be fine.
However, perfect scenarios do not always exist.
In actual fact, most students at liberal arts colleges hardly know anything about what 50% of the available disciplines cover – many do not know that certain faculties or disciplines even exist on their campus.
In short, as long as students know what they want out of their undergraduate education, the four-year liberal arts college can provide the students with a fantastic environment and facilities to pursue their interests or dreams.
So far, this tertiary education option seems to be less popular among Malaysians who are generally obsessed with specialisation at younger ages for quicker marketability.
But I encourage high-achievers to consider a liberal arts degree for their first degree so that they may learn a bit more about world history before specialising for the future.
HWA YANG JERNG Seremban.
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LAST week’s article “Tidak apa attitude rules” (StarEducation, March 14) reminded me of my own political outlook. People get involved in a system only when they believe their actions will make a difference.
My political outlook as a young Malaysian was formed when I was in secondary school. I am a Gen-X/Y child who used to be quite ignorant of politics. I was interested in politics in Form One through Form Three, but after that I stopped following the news because it makes local politics boring.
It wasn’t just the lack of political-philosophical education in schools, but also the media coverage which put me off politics.
Looking on the bright side, it’s better to have apathetic citizens than to have misinformed voters.
When citizens are not politically educated, what results is a class of “leaders” and a
class of “followers”. This isn’t a bad system, mind you, and young people today seem to know it.
Practically speaking, we don’t need a theoretically-pure democracy. Our country is what we have made it to be, and we should be proud of what we have, don’t you think?
I love Malaysia for what it is, simply because I think the system works. I will work with the system to make it better, but that doesn’t mean that everyone should have to bear the burden of civil responsibility.
HWA YANG JERNG
Maine, the United States
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THE letter “Rethink education system” by Ashraff Sanusi (StarEducation, Dec 21) struck a chord in my heart. As a recent product of the Malaysian public education system, I’m aware of the thousands of complaints heaped against that institution.
Yet now as a third-year student at a liberal arts college in the United States, I find myself complaining just as much about the US education system. No country’s system is perfect.
Our Malaysian education system is certainly not the worst. In fact, I believe that it is quite good and certainly above average.
While schooling in Malaysia I had teachers who were positively enlightened souls. It mattered not that they had won neither prizes nor fame. What I loved about them was that they had a profound understanding of life and how to live it; science and how to teach it; as well as spirit and the ability to inspire in others wise ambitions.
But have we succeeded in nurturing brilliant minds? Now, if by “brilliant” we mean academically or technically accomplished, there is absolutely no question that Malaysia can and does produce experts in various fields.
Of course, it would be nice if every child could enter the education system and come out brilliant. But the fact is, there is a statistical distribution of intelligence in every population, and not even 5% of the population can ever dream of being a distinguished scientist.
As for curbing indiscipline in schools, Moral Education is a good subject. Even learning by rote moral definitions is effective to a certain degree, as it forces pupils to think about their actions and the consequences that follow.
People’s choices are guided by their personalities and experiences, and our education system succeeds in giving kids meaningful experiences in terms of extra-curricular activities.
Finally, I mean no disrespect when I say that fear is not a tool in education. Discipline in education is all about respecting pain, and not fearing it.
The basis of Moral Education is showing people how they should live. It assumes that individuals want life and I think it is partly parents’ responsibility to give their children reasons to love life.
Hence, in view of what I have just said, I think our education system need not be revamped.
HWA YANG JERNG
Via e-mail
