The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) is not on the right track in starting a campaign to tackle an increase in corruption cases in schools by giving talks or lectures to students when the corruption in schools usually involve the administrators, as said by its community education department director Shamsun Bahrin Md Jamil ( The Sun , Oct 1), or minister Paul Low on rewarding companies that are free of corruption as a way of fighting corruption.

What mechanism is Paul Low going to use to ensure that a company is 100 percent corruption free before rewarding it? Has it occurred to him that even if he can find such a company, he will then have to keep giving the reward all the time to buy ‘corruption-freeness’. When the rewards stop, corruption will set in, and the corrupted will boldly claim they are corruption free as they have won ‘corruption-free’ awards. What a shallow, stupid idea.

Is it haram, or as said in Malay, ‘tak sampai hati’ to throw the hook at the corrupted and put them behind bars? Why? The authorities should get it into their heads that the best education about compliance with laws is the strict, no-nonsense enforcement of those laws without fear or favour?

Isn’t giving people rewards of any kind (even pieces of paper called ‘certificates’) for being corruption-free (if there is a fool-proof way of determining this) an act of corruption in itself?

If school administrators are involved in corrupt practices (I’ve heard of school heads getting commissions on the tonnes of workbooks sold to students), just take action against them and let the children see anti-corruption laws working in real life. That will be the best anti-corruption education in schools.

Secondly, study how children are being ‘taught’ to expect and accept ‘gratification’ for doing what they should be doing without looking forward to, or being motivated by, those acts of gratification.

When teachers dangle sweets, pencils, erasers, etc as rewards for putting up hands and answering questions, for completing their homework, for getting certain marks in tests, for not being absent, etc., the message that is being strongly given to the innocent children is that it is their right to be given some gifts (gratification) for doing something which they should be doing in the normal course of their life without being induced with gifts or rewards.

Teachers who do this are sowing the seeds of corruption in the children.

The teachers may say that they were taught during training that giving ‘incentives’ or small rewards to children for being able to carry out a task is a positive way of getting them to learn as was proven by Ivan Pavlov in training dogs to perform tasks. It is called Pavlovian conditioning or classical conditioning, a result of his “dog salivating study”.

Pavlov’s theory is good for dogs, not for motivating children with material prizes, gifts, or whatever you call them, in or out of school. Human children growing up in a culture of ‘gift receiving’ for doing something for teachers and / or for parents, will adopt that culture, internalise it and practice it in adult life.

The behavioural changes that Pavlov’s classical conditioning brings about in children who are given gifts and presents for doing what they should be doing as a matter of course is that it ends up teaching them to expect gifts for doing something - in other words it sows the seeds of corruption.

Then on teachers’ day pupils bring gifts for teachers the value of which depends on the status of the parents.

Silent, subtle messages

These acts of incentive or reward and gift giving may not fall within the definition of ‘corruption’ as in the MACC’s vocabulary, but the silent, subtle messages that innocent children get is that it is right to expect gifts to be given for doing one’s work and not to perform if no gifts are coming.

If the MACC is serious about fighting corruption, it has to educate the people, including children, by taking firm action against the corrupted and by preventing the sowing of the seeds of corruption from an early age as in the examples above.

MACC’s community education department should educate parents and teachers on how not to sow the seeds of corruption in children through their shortsighted actions of gift giving for doing everyday chores, or blind following of Pavlova’s theory that should be left for dog or other animal training purposes.

Giving talks and lectures to children on corruption is not going to achieve the objective of fighting corruption. Stop the ‘motivational’ acts of teachers, parents and others in society that very subtly end up sowing the seeds of corruption in the first place.

Where schools are concerned, act against the administrators involved in corrupt practices, stop the teachers doing direct-sales and other businesses in school, stop salesmen going into schools to sell their products to children.

What is Paul Low’s plan to eradicate corruption within the government service, or does he believe there is no corruption here?

Corruption-free enforcement of laws is the best education about corruption. Paul Low and the MACC, this should be the way, not giving rewards that will only encourage corruption.