AT last month's Umno general assembly, incoming party vice-president Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein floated the prospect of revisiting how history is taught in the nation's schools. The suggestion immediately raised eyebrows among Umno's partners-in-governance, with the MCA pledging to convene a conference on the matter. CHOK SUAT LING, SHERIDAN MAHAVERA, SITI NURBAIYAH NADZMI and YONG HUEY JIUN explore what may have fallen through the cracks of this country's historical mosaic as it is presented in the school curriculum.
What can and what can't be found in school history textbooks has been a source of concern for many years.
Besides omissions and insufficient emphasis on certain communities, experts and parents alike contend that some of the text and illustrations in history textbooks are placed there to subtly brainwash young minds.
Some of these elements contain politically-aligned and narrow views that can skew students' impressions of historical events and their impact on the country and its communities.
While school history textbooks now make a clear push for a national culture and society, are more comprehensive, and encourage students to be more analytical than in the past, when they were required to merely regurgitate facts and dates for examinations, certain elements in the texts must be reviewed.
In the Form Three textbook, for example, the contentious term "ketuanan Melayu", or "Malay supremacy", appears with a definition deemed inappropriate. Some quarters argue that the phrase should not have been included in the textbook in the first place.
In the same textbook, one illustration gives the impression that vernacular schools cannot promote national unity, and a paragraph on the same page states that vernacular schools will progressively be phased out.
Also in the Form Three text, specifically in the chapter on cooperation among the races towards independence, the quote used to illustrate the theme states that the country belongs to the Malays and should, therefore, be returned to them.
These are just some of the elements that have found their way into history textbooks under the secondary school integrated curriculum (Kurikulum Bersepadu Sekolah Menengah).
Former Kelana Jaya member of parliament Loh Seng Kok thinks too much focus is given to Tamadun Islam, or Islamic Civilisation. "There was only one chapter in the old Form Four history textbook, but now five out of 10 are on this subject matter," said Loh, who carried out a study on history textbooks two years ago.
Loh, along with his MCA colleagues, submitted a memorandum to the Education Ministry pursuant to that study.
What has also been noted is the downplaying of the roles played by Chinese and Indian communities in the socio-economic development of the country.
Some quarters also take exception to the Chinese clans, the Ghee Hin and Hai San, which played so pivotal a role in the advent of colonial administration in the Malay states, being described as kongsi gelap or secret societies, abiding by the old British proscriptions on these organisations.
Specific historical figures such as Gurchan Singh, the "Lion of Malaya", and Sybil Karthigesu have all but vanished from the record. Both resisted the Japanese during the occupation of Malaya in World War 2 and paid the price for it. They used to get some mention, but have since disappeared from the pages of our history.
The key historical roles played by prominent figures from Sabah and Sarawak also merit little or no mention beyond "a line or two".
All Malaysian communities have their role in the story of how this nation came to be what it is today, and history texts need to reflect this shared ownership. Questions of ethnic relations in history must be discussed in scrupulously neutral language, without judgments of right or wrong.
A review would, indeed, be timely, but it must be collective, consultative and knowledge-based, not driven by emotion or political imperatives.
FROM MURDERER TO NATIONALIST
CLAD in a dark shirt and white trousers, Rosli Dhobi held his head high in defiance as he was led to the gallows.
The member of Rukun Tiga Belas, a secret underground movement agitating against the British administration in Sarawak, had been sentenced to hang for stabbing the governor to death.
Deemed a common criminal, Rosli was too insignificant to be mentioned in any history - until the secondary school integrated curriculum (Kurikulum Bersepadu Sekolah Menengah) immortalised him as a nationalist in the Form Three and Form Five textbooks.
Are the facts presented in KBSM history textbooks historical truths or impressions?
"Historical facts are one thing but interpretation of facts is another," says historian Prof Datuk Dr Ramlah Adam. "Politicians prefer the latter."
Ramlah says that the history syllabus was drafted on the records of explorers and philosophers such as Tome Pires, Ibn Battuta, I-Ching and Admiral Cheng Ho, and writings such as Sejarah Melayu, the Malay annals.
"Could we erase any part of our history and pretend they did not happen? Or choose what we like and leave out the rest?" Politicians may have their own interpretations of events, Ramlah says, but they are usually shaped by their own interests.
"Let the schoolchildren be educated by the professionals." Ramlah, an author of history textbooks, says the previous curriculum reflected some of the old imperial didacticism towards historical facts: rebels were rebels, for instance, not freedom fighters.
Under KBSM, "history is given a Malaysian perspective and the syllabus is designed to fulfil the National Education Policy".
The policy, drafted in 1990, outlines the effort to develop a citizenry that is "knowledgeable, reliable and responsible", contributing to the harmony and prosperity of society and nation.
The history curriculum is divided into two parts. The lower secondary component covers prehistory till the separation of Singapore from Malaysia in 1965, while the upper secondary introduces the history of the world and Southeast Asia, from the birth of nationalism till modern Malaysia.
While the lower-secondary component is chronological and factual, upper secondary students receive an analytical and critical survey of history. History is a compulsory subject for the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia, but Ramlah says not enough weight is given to it: a pass is not necessary.
"History should require a pass, just like Bahasa Malaysia, English and Mathematics. With such weight, students would strive to understand the country's history better."
Poet Datuk Baharuddin Zainal, a.k.a. Baha Zain, agrees. "If the government is serious about creating a nation-state and sowing the seeds of patriotism among the young," he says, "it is essential to make it compulsory for the students to pass history in SPM."
Baharuddin suggests that the Education Ministry review the history syllabus in line with the National Education Policy.
"There is no point in revising the syllabus just to meet political pressures. It must be done after a comprehensive study. "Too many times the professionals and educationists have trusted political leaders to make judgment calls. Sadly, some of them have been unwise."
INTERPRETING THE ROLES OF NON-MALAY MALAYSIANS
IN the 1930s, the British administration faced fierce opposition from the working class, largely made up of Chinese at the time, says Dr Kua Kia Soong, director of Suara Rakyat Malaysia (Suaram), a human rights organisation. In one of the first shots at inter-ethnic political alliance, Pusat Tenaga Rakyat (Putera), a left-wing coalition of militant and moderate Malays, partnered with the Chinese-dominated All Malaya Council of Joint Action. In October 1947, the coalition organised a general strike - a "hartal" - that brought the country to an economic standstill to put pressure on the British government.
The Japanese Occupation in 1941 was met with fierce resistance from local nationalists. The British had supplied arms to the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) - in effect, the CPM - making it the most potent anti-Japanese guerilla movement and well-organised military group in the country, writes Wong Tze Ken, associate professor in the Department of History, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Malaya, in the first volume of the book, Malaysian Chinese and Nation Building.
The move gave MPAJA an edge, and the means, to wage war against the British after the Japanese surrender in 1945.
"The CPM ideology and struggle had no place in the nation-building agenda as it eventually became irrelevant as the country moved ahead after independence," says Wong.
Prof Tan Sri Khoo Kay Kim agrees, as the vision of communism was one of classlessness and statelessness.
Under the gaze of a different generation, the joining of forces between the Malayan Chinese Association and the United Malays National Organisation - the Alliance Party - for the 1952 Kuala Lumpur municipal elections spearheaded the country's seminal independence movement. The Alliance scored a landslide victory, winning nine of the 12 seats contested. That solidarity was a turning point, says Khoo. For the first time, the Alliance convinced the British that independence might actually work.
Dr Voon Phin Keong, director of the Centre for Malaysian Chinese Studies, thinks the subject of history is best left to the historians or specialists in the area. "It should not be left to just anyone. School history textbooks should be written by a panel of historians and subjected to review by a different panel."
Kua thinks textbooks are not needed in the age of the Internet. Instead, students should learn to access all available resources with the teacher acting as the facilitator in the classroom. "History in education is about uncovering the truth," says Kua.
And truth, as we all know, is subject to interpretation.
ONE NATION SHARED AMONG MANY PEOPLES
YEARS ago, when lawyer G.A. David Dass taught at Universiti Institut Teknologi Mara, he would be approached by students who would evince surprise that he was genuinely interested in teaching them and had no motives other than ensuring they understood the material.
He ventures that this was because they had been "conditioned into believing that non-Malays were not to be trusted and that our presence in Malaysia meant that they were taking something away from the Malays".
Dass believes that most non-Malay lecturers at UiTM have had similar experiences, in an example of how Malaysian history and how it is taught in schools - and how it can be manipulated by politicians - can graft lasting impressions on young minds that determine how they relate to others of a different community.
For years, Dass says, the non-Malay history in Malaysia had been framed by an ethnocentric elite as a story of how the Malays had "lost out", "been dispossessed" and "subjugated" by "bangsa asing" or "foreign races".
This narrative presumes that Malaya was "conquered" (dijajah) by Europeans eager to exploit its natural riches. Control over who came into the land was out of Malay hands, and the penjajah allowed bangsa asing to enter and build their tin mines and rubber estates, while the Malays watched by the wayside in their villages.
Such a telling of history is warped, erroneous and, when it comes to the Indian experience in pre-independence Malaya, disingenuous.
It overlooks the contribution of Indians to local customs, culture, arts and governance. It ignores the fact that for 80 per cent of the Indians who came to Malaya in the 19th and early 20th centuries, their lives were shackled in deprivation and hard labour.
"How did thousands of mostly Tamil indentured labourers, who were paid pitiful wages and who toiled under the most back-breaking circumstances to open up plantations and build roads, dispossess the Malays?" asks Dass, who co-authored the book Malaysian Indians: Looking Forward.
Though the history of Indian contact with the peoples of Peninsular Malaysia between the 1st and 11th centuries is mentioned in school textbooks, its influence on Malay culture has been played down.
It is almost as if it is an embarrassment, says U.K. Menon, deputy vice-chancellor of Wawasan Open University, to acknowledge the extensive traces Indians left on local pre-Islamic culture which can still be seen.
In The Malaysian Indians: History, Problems and Future, the late Muzafar Desmond Tate wrote of how Brahmin priests and Buddhist missionaries gave Malay chieftains the organisational system that would transform them into the kings of today.
But, Muzafar stressed, the early Indians' influence was not manifested in force of arms or large-scale migration.
When it comes to the later migration of Tamils, Telugus, Malayalees, Sikhs and Bengalis, there is a begrudging acceptance of their presence, notes Dass.
"They were not a colonising force to subjugate or rob the Malays. Many lives were lost in opening up these plantations and towns, and these Indians were indentured to the Europeans who brought them in. The point is to recognise each community's sacrifices that went into this great nation.
"Our founding fathers knew this was integral to nation-building." His co-author, Jayanath Appudurai, says that the problem with how history is taught today is that it is seen through the lens of only one community.
"But the record shows that the peninsula was in a strategic position that attracted everyone from different regions of the world to converge and set up their own settlements here."
To acknowledge the various influences that went into creating what is now Malaysia is not to prop up one race or culture over another, Jayanath says.
"It is not about the Indians being superior to the Malays or the Chinese being better than everyone else. It is about recognising the multi-ethnicity that has always been and continues to be present in the peninsula.
"It is about seeing Malaysia as a nation, not of a single ethnicity, but one of shared membership among many."
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