10 August 2011
Malaysian history textbooks too narrow, say our youths
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Malaysian History.
Homeschooler Elliot who was a participant at the KemSMS (Kempen Sejarah Malaysia Sebenar) Youth History Syllabus Revision Project gives a first-person account of the recently concluded event (read the previous post).
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“I AM IMPRESSED” said Dato’ Haji Thasleem Mohd Ibrahim Al-Haj, looking at our faces across the tables. “Why? Because it is a Saturday.”
We laughed. He continued on to belabour the fact that few youths these days would be willing to give up their precious Saturdays to participate in an educational review board, much less for a subject like History.
My school-going friends have always given the perception that history was a class recognized for its sleep-inducing powers. I can’t really say how I learnt history – there were no textbooks, just an endless row of historical fiction and ‘Did You Know?’ style encyclopaedias. It was never boring. That being said, I’ll be the first to admit that my history is sketchy. It was only last month that I acknowledged, with great shame and embarrassment, that I had been confusing the Napoleonic Wars with World War One. How does that even happen!? But I digress.
We were reviewing the national history syllabus for Form 1 to Form 5. The opinions of the fourteen of us (five home-educated, eight or nine national school-goers, from age fifteen to twenty) would be heard by a panel, and then submitted to the government along with other recommendations. We each had a textbook to cover, and we were to describe each chapter, as well as to look for bias and skewed facts. Then we were to present our own ideals for each Form.
So we did that. The main problems we found were that the scopes of the textbooks were too narrow. They were not engagingly written, and sometimes dwelled too much on a certain race or religion. Herodotus, the father of history, was only mentioned as an aside. Data was lacking, for instance, on the Portuguese and Dutch colonies in Malaysia, but there were chapters on end devoted to the British. Not enough had been done to recognise the multiracial background of Malaysia. There was also a dearth of world history in the syllabus.
One of the panel members described how her niece could not recognise the name Marco Polo, with shocked murmurs of consolation from the audience. Another talked about how the syllabus has been politicized, attempting to push the spirit of patriotism down school children’s throats. No, we agreed, history is not meant to teach patriotism. Patriotism will happen naturally if one is happy with his or her country. Trying to force a person to love something only sows discontent. A person who chooses to be patriotic has so much greater the worth to a nation than that of a person told to be patriotic.
Yet another described how the syllabus has developed an ‘ethnocentric and theocentric’ view that doesn’t teach students how to think or engage. Shouldn’t we learn instead about the growth of human thought – the development of democracy and science? Throughout all this, I had the feeling that the problems we were discussing for this single subject applied towards the entire system.
There should always be a striving to constantly challenge, to question. The ability to think, like iron, can only be refined through constant pounding and a red-hot flame.
When we ended, much was said about how young we all were, how outstanding we were, and how they’d like to see more of us in the future. Joshua, who’s fifteen, was told that he had a great life awaiting him. Phrases like ‘maturity of thought’ were bandied about. We all grinned and nudged each other.
Photos:
Top (L-R): Dato’ Haji Thasleem Mohd Ibrahim Al-Haj, KemSMS Chairman; Dr Helen Ting, Committee Member; En Bakar Sulaiman, Committee Member
Bottom (From 3rd left): The 5 homeschoolers
To learn more about the Campaign for a Truly Malaysian History, go here.
To support KemSMS, add your name to the online petition here.
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About the writer: Elliot Tan who was educated at home practically all his life is currently doing his foundation year in Business in KDU.
14 May 2011
Penang At War: Lecture and Book Launch
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Announcement.
Ex-diplomat, corporate consultant, amateur historian and writer Andrew Barber has another book out called, Penang At War (A History of Penang during and between the First and Second World Wars 1914-1945). If you have enjoyed Barber’s previous books, you will be pleased to know he will be giving a lecture at the launch of his new book at Alice Smith School (Primary Campus) this coming Thursday, 19th May. The writer who read my online review kindly alerted me to the event which I’m sure would interest those of us who love history. My wife and I will be there, so I hope to see you too.
7 March 2011
Walk through History
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Malaysian History.
My 2 posts about Malaysian history books prompted several suggestions by friends and commentators but I thought another article would have been indulgent. Fortunately for all of us, my wife Sook Ching came back from a guided tour of heritage sites in downtown KL, and she recommends we put down books (for awhile) and put on good walking shoes for a walk through history. Here’s her report:
INSTEAD OF JUST READING BOOKS OR LOOKING AT PICTURES, another great way of learning history is to visit the places where historical events have taken place, and to talk with people who have lived through those events.
Last month, a group of 17 early teens (along with some of their mums and siblings) went for the Malaysia Heritage Walk around Kuala Lumpur. We were led by the indefatigable and informative trained tour guide Erina Loo. Erina, who had come up with the idea of this free daily walk out of a passion for the history and heritage of our country, shared how she actually spent about a year prior to the commencement of the walk in October last year, getting to know the whole area in the heart of the city, the places as well as the people. As we walked and stopped to talk and observe, we felt at home in the midst of the busy streets and its denizens who have accepted Erina and her team of guides with their groups of tourists, foreign or local.
It was a walk down memory lane, and a feast for the eyes, ears, and nose. We went into the oldest Taoist temple in the country, which had been started by the Kapitan Yap Ah Loy, right before the altars where devotees were praying and performing their rituals, our eyes stinging with the smoke of the incense. We walked up the steep narrow flight of stairs into an old restaurant selling authentic South Indian cuisine just to look at people eating banana leaf rice with their fingers 
and smell the delicious aromas. Alas, it was not yet lunch time for us as the walk was not yet over. Some of us, drawn by the nose and growling hunger pangs, went back there after the walk. Just entering Lebuh Ampang, also known as Little India, transported us into India with its colours and aromas.
We stood on the bank of the river Klang at the confluence where the river Gombak joins it, picturing the landing of boats and barges with workers loading and unloading goods and carrying and wheel-barrowing them up the road to the rows of shophouses and the central market. In the piece of land between the two rivers, we saw the oldest mosque in the city, built around 1902, Masjid Jamek, designed by Arthur Benison Hubbock, following the Mogul architecture of India. Friday prayers were about to begin, so we could not go inside for a closer look.
The walk started at the Central Market now called Pasar Seni. What used to be a smelly wet market selling meat, fish and vegetables, is now an air-conditioned mall with all kinds of kiosks, stalls, shops, cafes and restaurants – the perfect place to bring a foreign visitor to the country for a taste of the diverse variety of art and craft souvenirs and cuisines to enjoy.
Now the visitors can not only shop and eat, but also join this Heritage Walk and get to know the city and its people’s colourful cultures past and present. But why should the foreigners know more about our city and country than us, the citizens? So go and take advantage of this wonderful gift to us all by Erina and friends. It’s on every day at 10.30 am at the information counter in Central Market. For visitors in a big group, it is advisable to make bookings in advance to ensure there are enough volunteer guides for that particular day, as we did. Call 012-208 4260 or 017-989 1031.
Penang, too, has several Heritage Walks, and these efforts should be commended and supported by all of us who love our country and want to see its eventful, colourful past respected, understood, preserved, and celebrated.
For more reports and information, see:
Walk through Malaysian Heritage
The Art of Being a Tourist
Picture source:
The Heritage walk
Kapitan Yap Ah Loy temple or Sze Ya Temple
Masjid Jamek
Lebuh Ampang
27 February 2011
Justifying history
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Malaysian History.
“He who controls the present, controls the past.
He who controls the past, controls the future.”
George Orwell’s 1984
Of all the social sciences, history has to be one of the most contested disciplines.
The recounting of the past and the act of remembering our manifold histories are as much a psycho-social endeavour as they are political and politicized ones, and in so many instances we see how history has been put to work at the beck and call of ruling elites, politicians, and governments in order to deliver some form of rationalization, justification and determinism for the way things are. Living as we necessarily do in the immediate present, we turn to the past to remind us of who we were and what we could have been, and how we managed to get to where we are today.
Yet, if and when that past (or rather the manifold alternative possibilities of the past) is narrowed and reduced to essentialist milestones that deny the myriad alternative paths that could have been taken, we are in danger of believing that our history is one that is fixed forever upon one, and only one, beaten track. History in the hands of statist elites often read as a closed text, a linear narrative that is guided by one teleology and which eventually leads us to only one final appointed destination.
FARISH A. NOOR: What Your Teacher Didn’t Tell You Vol. 1
24 February 2011
Malaysian History for homeschoolers-Pt 2
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Book Review; Malaysian History.
IF YOU CAME HERE AFTER READING MY PREVIOUS POST, you would have noticed that the books I am reviewing are hardly primary source materials or politically correct texts. Neither do I pretend that they represent some kind of syllabus content to help a student better prepare for an examination. As I said, they’re to help homeschoolers (and their parents) develop an appreciation for our history. Sure there’s lots of Malaysiana in these books.
But the main reason these books are on my list is because they make the events of the past fascinating and compelling. You could say these books fling open the windows of politicized history, and open my eyes to histories that were made by people who inhabited shared space. No apologies for my selections then. I picked these books because they were captivating. And fun. They transported me into another world. Reading them I felt Malaysian. I hope your children will feel the same when they pick up some of these books to read.
Malaysia: A Pictorial History 1400 – 2004 by Wendy Khadijah Moore
This coffee table book is a beautiful record of everyday life seen through the eyes of photographers and artists. The dust jacket says the more than 1,200 images took two years to collect; many of these rare photos have never been published before. There are early black and white photos dating back to the mid-1800s by well-known Danish photographer K. Feilberg and others that capture the scenes of early Malaya so vividly it’s hard to put the book down. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words and so the author has wisely kept the text compact and precise. Several photos were colourised. I’m not sure if that was how the publishers found them, or if they did it for the book.I would be disappointed if it were the latter.
But I do have a bone to pick. After that pleasant foray into a monochromatic past, the colour photos and political photo-ops in the last chapter (A New Identity 1970-2004) seemed jarring. Then there’s a huge section devoted to the Mahathir years (Dr Mahathir’s first day in office, raising Tun Mustapha hands to mark UMNO’s entry into Sabah, Dr Mahathir and Mandela, Dr Mahathir in tears at the UMNO general assembly, etc), followed by photos of Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi in a section sub-headed ‘Power Transition/2004 Elections”. Any indication that Malaysia is a lively democracy is represented by 3 modest photos (smaller than a MyKad) of Wan Azizah, an unnamed DAP candidate, and a PAS procession. Very telling, but that’s a slight irritation in an otherwise visually informative book.
The Kampung Boy (1979) and The Town Boy (1981) by Mohammad Nor Khalid, more popularly known as Lat
Shame on you if you don’t know the titles I’m referring to. I’m not sure if these two books would ever qualify as history, but why not? Lat’s books are great companions for lazy afternoons, but Kampung Boy is also a classic and a genuine keeper.There’s so much life in his lines, and so much heart too. Here is Malaysia’s beloved cartoonist Lat’s autobiographical account of childhood in a kampong sketched in a sensitive mix of zany exaggeration and a wonderful eye for detail. Brilliant!
Some may chafe at his brand of Malaysian English but you can’t fault its authenticity. Kampung Boy is easy reading, providing snapshots of characters we can identify, bantering in syntax we are more than familiar with. This is precisely the appeal of Lat’s books. Together with Town Boy, his sequel of teenage years and his friendship with Frankie, the pair of graphic novels are perfect bookends to an innocent time now lost. Those were days sometimes referred wistfully as the ‘good old days.’ Lat’s genius at transcending culture and stereotypes reminds us how they can be good again.
The Land of the Sultans: An Illustrated History of Malaysia by Ruud Spruit
The author is the former director of Westfries Museum in Hoorn, which is Malacca’s twin city in Netherlands. Now this is an interesting perspective on Malaysian history written from the viewpoint of the Dutch. You can tell I like this book already, and it’s not because it has a better spread of great photos and drawings (which it has). After a brief intro on Malaya’s Hindu-Buddhist past, we’re given a tour of the Malay Chronicles, the founding of Malacca, Parameswara, the arrival of the first Arab seafarers, the coming of Islam, and the Siamese threat, et al – all in the first 20 pages. The third chapter titled, The Portuguese, wastes no time to tell us in the opening sentence that, “Suddenly the Portuguese appear….”
Of course the coming of the British has its own chapter, nevertheless most of the focus is on the Dutch East Indies Company and their exploits in Malacca and the conquest of Batavia (Jakarta). For a relatively slim volume of 144 pages, Mr Ruud covers a lot of ground – ships, trade routes, battles, flags, guns, armoury, the Stadhuys, the Christ Church, the Chinese, UMNO, Tunku Abdul Rahman, and Merdeka. The author is a historian and the book has a workmanlike style, so you know he’s not Tunku Halim. Language and vocabulary more suited to 12 years and older (but don’t let that stop your kid even if she’s younger).
Land Below the Wind by Agnes Newton Keith
Books about Sabah and Sarawak do not automatically come to mind when we talk about Malaysian history, and we are the poorer for it. Agnes Newton Keith (1901 –1982) was an American writer who spent five years in Sandakan after moving to North Borneo with her English husband Harry Keith the state’s Conservator of Forests and Director of Agriculture. Her three autobiographical accounts of life in North Borneo (Sabah) have been very well received, but it is her first volume that I have. It is an amazing account of a woman who lived and grew to love her adopted home, and it shows. Lots of humour, jungle anecdotes, and for want of a better word, charm. The book won the 1939 Atlantic Monthly Non-Fiction Prize, and deservedly so.
Mrs Keith writes of her ignorance of Borneo’s existence and their arrival at this outpost of the British empire in the Far East, and discover that swimming costumes are ill-suited for this conservative land in spite of the sweltering heat and inviting beaches. She recounts awful nights awake with “damnable pig ticks” in bed, cradling dying infants, her first encounter with an amok who had killed two constables, Chinese women kulis who carry her barang, and in the final chapters, thinking sadly about the beginnings of the Japanese War and the end of an idyllic passage. When she writes about a year-long home leave occasioned by illness, there is a certain poignancy: “We wanted our leave and we knew that we needed it. But we felt that night when we sailed from Borneo that we were not going on leave, but we were leaving our home.” I was delighted to know that Agnes Keith’s house is a tourist destination today.
22 February 2011
Malaysian History for homeschoolers
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Books.
A homeschool dad once questioned why I kept insisting on acquainting our sons with Malaysian history: “There’s nothing but Parameswara and Hang Tuah. What’s that got to do with us?” Hmm. Interesting question. You can’t fault the cynics, what with controversies raging over blatant distortions in Malaysian history text books for secondary schools. Truth is, the version of selective history forced-fed on public school students since the late 70s didn’t do anyone any favours. No wonder so many of us have become jaded adults with no sense of collective identity and no appreciation for shared history or cultural value. And some people over at the Ministry of Education are wondering why Malaysians have such a dim view of Malaysian history. But whose history, Mr Minister?
Textbooks are a bore anyway, so why let the powers-that-be spoil the fun when there are a number of excellent books on Malaysian history out there? We’re nowhere near the kinds of books Scholastic publishes for children – and I mean those gripping and engaging historical fiction that teach with multidimensional stories rich with ‘contextual clues’ as one writer puts it. Here are a few books I introduced to our own homeschool, including several others I discovered too late for our boys. These books are available at the local bookstores.
A Children’s History of Malaysia by prolific Malaysian horror meister Tunku Halim. First published in 2003, it’s history written as story for young children. There’s the usual suspects - Parameswara, Puteri Gunung Ledang*, and oh, there’s Dr Mahathir too, even the Indonesian Konfrontasi. Odd that the cover is plain white (for a children’s book?) and shockingly, not a date or year in sight (well, he’s kept them all away in the Appendix). Author Tunku Halim admitted turning to beloved classics (like CS Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles) and contemporary children’s best sellers (JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series) for inspiration because he didn’t want to bore children. I think he has succeeded to a very large extent. He certainly learnt well because the book has more than a hint of CS Lewis’ tone of voice, which is not a bad thing. It’s really an excellent introduction to history, and what Tunku Halim has accomplished is no mean feat – all 278 pages of it. Recommended.
His second book of history titled History of Malaysia, A Children’s Encyclopedia, was probably influenced by the enormous popularity of that first history book. The hardcover book is very readable, lavishly illustrated and annotated (the author did his homework) and covers events dating from 7th Century Srivijaya Empire (ask yourself, how many history textbooks actually teach about this period?) to the formation of Malaysia in 1963. I spotted an error in the Chinese population in a table that places the number at less than a million (!) in 2004 though. It’s NOT a textbook, still I didn’t like the fact that subjects were arranged alphabetically instead of chronologically, but then the author did say it’s an encyclopedia. This is however compensated with a relatively comprehensive timeline in the back pages. If you write to the author (tunkuhalim@gmail.com) – he actually names homeschoolers - to purchase more than 10 books, he promises a very substantial discount!
Andrew Barber has
done a wonderful job with Malaya, The Making of a Nation 1510-1957. Written in attractive prose by a person who has a flair for history and a story-teller’s gift, it’s a book that reads as well as it feels. It’s obviously written for non-academics, and this is probably why it doesn’t have the whiff of must and mildew. All the better I say! Well-designed, printed on stock paper, reasonably large print and generously illustrated too. Mr Barber is a former British diplomat who now lives and works in Malaysia. Only 132 pages – even children 12 years and above would find it a good read too. As books on local history go, the author deserves credit for his clear writing style that avoids jargons and the abstract.
So when I chanced upon another book on Malaysia by the same author, I did not hesitate to buy it as well. The cover says, Malaysian Moments, a Pictorial Retrospective, and it has the same beautiful feel (attributed to designer Lileng Wong) and great photographs (Lileng and Kate Phillips). The book contains fascinating stories that do not normally feature in standard history books, but they should. There’s a story on the origin of Negaraku; W Somerset Maugham and Anthony Burgess are introduced in a chapter suitably titled The Expatriate in Malaysia: A Literary Genre ; and an interesting piece on Frank Swettenham’s 1906 Centennial Map of Malaya. These insightful essays first appeared in a magazine for expatriates so we’re told, and thankfully, it’s now compiled in a book for the rest of us. (I’ve since learnt that Mr Barber’s very first book in the series was Penang Under the East India Company 1786-1858. If you see it, I would be grateful if you let me know).
Where Monsoons Meet by Choo Foo Yoong, Lee Khek Mui and Low Swee Heong. Here’s a book that takes an alternative look at Malaysian history. Alternative, because it does not tread familiar ground but instead offers what the authors call ‘a people’s history.’ Readers might find it slightly subversive and will be taken aback at its Marxist-socialist slant, but that’s all the more reason to read it. First published over three decades ago, it was reprinted a few years back in time for Malaysia’s 50th birthday with a new foreword – ‘A comic history that’s no joke’ -by Amir Muhammad (read it here). It’s an unusual book presented in cartoon and comic format (in the style of the popular illustrated “….For Beginners” series) with sharp captions and wit that critique the officially sanctioned version of our history (in particular the British in Malaya). Which is why it is so appealing, because history should never be swallowed whole from a single point of view. The book is a gem and will allow for great conversations on perspectives in history, and an exercise in listening to all sides -even if it sounds uncomfortable!
This is getting to be a long post, and there are a few more books to introduce. I’ll save them for Part Two. Meanwhile, if you have a recommendation, I’ll be happy to hear it.
*CORRECTION: I misquoted the legend told in the book. It’s the Three Magical Princes and the legend of Bukit Seguntang (updated 22 Feb 2011)