Pakatan Rakyat coordinator Zaid Ibrahim said the surest way to get the concept of 'Middle Malaysia' airborne was to give it the launch pad of a core curriculum in the national education system.

"Essentially, our education system lacks a core curriculum," said Zaid, in remarks to Malaysiakini on the concept articulated by DAP secretary general Lim Guan Eng at the party's convention in Ipoh last weekend.

NONE Since floating this idea, Guan Eng ( left ) has come in for criticism from friends and foes alike, the mildest of them claiming that the idea is a facile imitation of former US President Richard Nixon's 'Middle America'.

In the late 1960s and early '70s, Nixon claimed 'Middle America' was the repository of all that was salt and sane about the American Dream, and therefore was at odds with the elitist liberal hubs on the west and east coasts of the country.

In the growing debate on Guan Eng's concept, Zaid Ibrahim has weighed in support of the Penang Chief Minister.

Back to the drawing board

Zaid said he agreed with Guan Eng that nation-building in Malaysia has to be done all over again.

He said this was because the divide and rule policies of the Umno-dominated Barisan Nasional had fragmented the Malaysian people into mental cantons and ghettoes.

"Citizenship is all about shared values but Umno's policies are all about ethnic segregation and racial ghettoes," said Zaid.

He said the existence of a core curriculum would entail a corpus of knowledge, with embedded values, drawn from the great civilisations.

pkr egm bangi zaid ibrahim joins pkr event 130609 14 "In lacking this core curriculum, the education system cannot be expected to instill a common concept of citizenship, with corresponding rights and obligations," he asserted.

"I know there will be disputes about the composition of this corpus, with supremacists espousing the superior worth of their pet civilisations, but if the corpus is broad, its breadth would be insurance against exclusivist and supremacist thinking," argued Zaid ( right ).

Zaid credited Guan Eng with sprouting an idea whose tendrils are likely to penetrate all sectors of national life

A critical sector would be education. Zaid emphasised that in urging the notion of a core curriculum he was not promoting a perception of the educated as unified and consensual.

"No, the main idea behind the core curriculum is to promote the possibility that we could disagree agreeably. That's the basis of civil and rational debate," said Zaid.