Participants at a human rights and education conference today expressed doubt if schools imparting human rights values through religious and moral education lessons were doing it right.

Curriculum Development Centre (CDC) deputy director Dr Rohani Abdul Hamid said students learned about their rights and how to exercise them in local studies in primary schools, history lessons in secondary, and in co-curricular activities and societies.

"With these subjects mandated in the course of studies, human rights is very much entrenched in the experience of every child," said Rohani during a symposium on Human Rights Curriculum in Schools organised by Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam).

She conceded that the present system is dogged by shortcomings as its emphasis is on the passing of moral education examinations rather than on learning and adopting the values.

"We do agree that for moral education, it looks as though things are really bad," she said in response to a participant's remark that students appear only to memorise the lesson contents to pass examinations.

Rohani said the state of moral education had become of great concern to the government that it had been raised at the Cabinet level.

"We gave a briefing to the prime minister and we are now examining textbooks again. We are also looking into how training of teachers can be improved," she added.

Separate curricula

She said there are two curricula for human rights education to cater to Muslim and non-Muslim students as they are not allowed to take both Islamic studies and moral education subjects.

"A few weeks ago, the CDC was asked to reword and breach the two sets of contents in terms of human rights values to be taught to students. We met with the Malaysia Islamic Department (Jakim) to discuss the matter. We are still working on it," she said.

The present school syllabus on human rights values taught in moral education includes lessons on the protection of the rights of children, women and workers; freedom of expression and worship; as well as respect for the integrity of others.

Muslim students taking the Islamic education curriculum on human rights learn conduct governing men and women, Muslims and non-Muslims, citizenship, care of self and self-worth, and freedom of assembly.

Gender equality

Former Universiti Malaya lecturer John Doraisamy who spoke on human rights promotion through language in schools, said values could be taught via the selection of materials used while teaching.

"Passages dealing with human rights issues can be selected from different sources and used for comprehension work," he said.

Doraisamy also stressed that students could also be taught values on gender equality as well as discipline when expressing their views to others.

"Students can be taught or trained in the discipline of 'attacking the view and not the person who expressed the view'. The norms of civilised debate must follow," he said.

Another speaker at the symposium, Prof Khoo Kay Khim from UM's history department was less optimistic about the viability of promoting human rights through history education because of concerns over teachers' ability to carry out the task effectively.

"History is difficult because it leaves much to the abstract and intangible. It must be handled by those with philosophical understanding. Unless this can be done in teachers' training, introduction of human rights values via history is not viable," he said.

Khoo said promotion of human rights through history without proper understanding by educators may result in distorted understanding or "narrow" values being imposed upon pupils.

He added that history had often been used in a "lopsided manner" to impart human rights values as done by the British when attempting to replace indigenous laws with their own laws, and by the Japanese in justifying their actions during the Second World War.

"Unless and until all possible questions relevant to the subject are asked, it could be difficult to arrive at a rational conclusion on how the subject of "human rights" can be meaningfully conveyed to the young through history," he said.