Is the Pengetahuan Moral subject taught in schools ineffective in instilling moral values into the heart of our youth? Most would say yes, Hishammudin said yes. Because it is too narrowly structured, students could memorise the answers and regurgitate them in exam, which is useless. So the government is thinking of reviewing it, maybe adding some 'kerja khusus', reducing some of the nilai(s) and wa-lah. There you go, the 'modified' version of Pengetahuan Moral is ready to rumble. But how different could it be? No matter how you dress the syllibus with, teaching moral is still teaching moral.
Malaysia is not the only country facing this dilemma of how to teach moral values to its citizens. Many other developed countries, like Britain, Australian and New Zealand are in similar situation as well, though the scenario is somewhat different.
The lack of moral values among Malaysians is causing corruptions to happen. Leaders are practicing cronyism and nepotism, civil servants especially the police are taking bribes, business entities causing pollution to the environment, drivers are impolite, teenagers indulge in drugs, alcohol and adultery, and the overall citizens are hopelessly civic-minded creatures with negative habits like littering everywhere especially the river for reasons only God knows why. So this is indeed an indication of Pengetahuan Moral being an ineffective tool in teaching morals and ethics to our youth.
Whereas in many developed countries, the lack of moral values has led to enormous white-collar crimes. Although the civil servants no longer indulge in bribery nor do the citizens litter or behave impolitely on the road, but apparently they have moved towards more professional type of crime i.e. the corporate fraud. This is done through many ways but the most common would be creative accounting and earnings management.
Which is worse do you reckon? If a policeman could be receiving bribe worth RM50, a white-collar worker could be misappropriating asset worth $10,000 by simply doing some accounting tricks. It takes 200 corrupted policemen in Malaysia to match the severity of 1 white-collar crime in a developed country, and that is assuming the currency value is the same.
While we in Malaysia are complaining about pickpockets, polluted rivers, reckless drivers and corrupted policemen, the people in developed countries are worried sick about losing their retirement funds in the companies that they work for. Shareholders are at risks of losing their money to fraudulent act of the managers. ENRON, WorldCom, HIH – these are their worst nightmares, like how UMNO is ours.
Everywhere in the world is the same. Malaysia, Indonesia, China, Australia, New Zealand, the U.S., the U.K. – all countries around the globe have problems teaching moral and ethics to their citizens. Don't they also have Moral Education or Ethic Lesson in school? Apparently those lessons are ineffective as well, so why waste time trying to teach moral anymore?
Maybe the problem doesn't lie within the structure of the subject of Pengetahuan Moral. Be it the Malaysian-style (regurgitation) or the American-style (more pragmatic I supposed), it probably wouldn't make a difference. Maybe it's the nature of subject itself. Maybe you cannot teach moral, you cannot teach ethic. So why waste more of the taxpayer's money? Just get rid of it.
It is high time to acknowlegde that the reason why Malaysians lack of moral values is not due to ineffectiveness of Pengetahuan Moral as a tool to instil moral and ethics. It is high time to look into other factor that's causing it. Maybe it's the parents’ upbringing which is poor. Maybe it's the weakness of faith in one's religion. Maybe we don’t believe enough in Karma, or in punishment of God. I previously wrote here about how we should let the Ministry of Education off the hook and start probing into Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development when trying to address the issue of moral and ethics.
P/S: I'm very proud that the issue is being brought up to Hishammudin's attention by my ex-classmate Andrew Loh :D
Tags:
ethic
Posted at: 01:54 AM | Add Comment
