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Varsity students are another brick in Umno's wall
Published:  Jan 22, 2013 10:54 AM
Updated: 8:17 AM

YOURSAY ‘Even if we teach everything we know to the new workers coming out from universities, they are too dumb to learn anything.'

Root cause of the Bawani-Sharifah affair

your say Parent: Universities today are simply an extension of school, which itself was set up to enable parents to work in factories, and to produce a literate workforce to serve industrial needs.

Mass schooling, as we know it, is less than 100 years old in many countries. Often, this mass schooling was designed by industrialists to best serve their needs.

So, the main purpose of any university is to produce "skilled workers" overseen by "skilled supervisors" also known as academics.

Why would any university want "thinking" academics or students? What purpose would it serve? Real education is only for a privileged few - those who own the industries. This story is at least 50 years old.

Occasionally we get professors Mohamad Tajuddin Mohamad Rasdi (who wrote this article), Azmi Sharom or Abdul Aziz Bari among the ranks of academics - who refuse to allow industrial training to "pass of" as education. Most other academics don't know the difference.

Jimmy Ng: Mohamad Tajuddin, we salute you for having so eloquently described the sad state of affairs in our higher institutes of learning and you are so right in saying that nothing short of a "complete overhaul" of our universities is the only solution to end the "rot" that has already set in.

Ipoh2: There is a joke among my peers that we have no fear of someone taking over our jobs because even if we teach everything that we know to the new workers coming out from universities today, they are too dumb to learn anything.

Swipenter: Just like the song by Pink Floyd ‘Another Brick in the Wall', all our universities are interested in is to produce graduates who are timid and conforming. Students must ‘listen, listen and listen' and don't ask questions and encourage to develop critical and independent thinking for themselves.

Asking questions and giving alternative views is tantamount to questioning the lecturers' credentials and his/her authority.

On the other hand, these lecturers love timid and conforming students. As a result many graduates can't even communicate their thoughts but give run of the mill answers to questions posed to them.

No wonder we have so many unemployable graduates. They are just another brick in Umno's wall.

Anonymous #07688157: Educating people to be thinking out of the box, be analytical, creative and daring to challenge the norm should all start in schools.

I once passed a classroom in my child's secondary school to look for a particular teacher and I saw this horrifying scene - a teacher standing with the big ruler which she used to bang a table in front of her and shouting the word "diam".

I looked at the students who looked back at her petrified. I do know why she did it but I couldn't help thinking what a way to treat children.

Naturally they will clam up and not discuss or challenge the teacher about what they think or how they see things differently.

The education system is in a sorry state, thanks to the several incompetent education ministers we have had and all the useless policies that they churned out using our children as experiments.

Chiabee2: What a daring revelation from Mohammad Tajuddin, a local academician. The wind of change is certainly blowing slowly but surely in the right direction now.

Ssfjkhglr843: Friends of Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) student KS Bawani, please advice her to qualify as a lawyer first and then continue her crusade.

She proclaims socialism and names Che Guevara as her idol. Governments the world over are uneasy with socialism. See what happened to Kassim Ahmad and Syed Husin Ali.

More recently, Sungai Siput MP Dr Jeyakumar Devaraj and others - infamously called the Emergency Ordinance (EO) 6 - were detained and then later released due to public pressure. Okay, the Internal Security Act (ISA) has been repealed but still one can't be too careful.

Bawani, nothing will happen to you now, with the public so taken up by you, but soon your novelty will wear off and everyone will be busy with their own thing and if you still are a thorn to the mighty and powerful, it may be a liability.

So please tone down your crusade and finish your studies, establish yourself and then crusade all you want. I write this out of love and concern for you. I am very sure there is a Special Branch (SB) file on you already.

Enough is enough: The KS Bawani-Sharifah Zohra Jabeen affair has opened the eyes of the public of the quality of our universities and the graduates. The current Universities and University Colleges Act (UUCA) is exactly one of the vehicles required by the Umno-led BN to continue its rule on Malaysia.

We need to weed out BN in the next general election (GE13) to restore the freedom that our universities once enjoyed.

Zekai: Mohammad Tajuddin, it's funny that you've singled-out Universiti Islam Antarabangsa (UIA).

I've been wondering too that for an Islamic university with perhaps the biggest number of fiqh and syariah scholars, very few from UIA have come out to discuss 'Allah'. Only Ustaz Zaharuddin Abd Rahman and perhaps Prof Mahmood Zuhdi Ab Majid have done so.

Chee Heng Leng: I agree and support the views and stand put forth in this article. I was an academic in a public university for 24 years before taking optional retirement.

While there, I witnessed the direct, unapologetic, and rude intrusion of short-term politically expedient and motivated measures by the Ministry of Higher Education into our academic institutions.

Now, these kinds of intrusions have been 'normalised' and taken for granted. We need to reverse this process and reinstate academic and intellectual institutions into our public universities. Otherwise, don't call them universities!

Shahril Mohd Kharib: All other academics, the gauntlet has been thrown. Please respond in kind.


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