KUALA LUMPUR: With names like 'Tundukkan Playboy Itu' (Dominate the Playboy), 'Budak Hostel Otaknya Sewel' (Hostel Kids Are Crazy) and 'Mr & Mrs. Sweet', Malay language novels are riding high on the bestseller lists in bookstores around the country.
However, with themes largely revolving around love, sex, ghosts and gangsterism, parents and teachers alike are up in arms over the effects that some 'pulp' Malay novels are having on the development and language of young Malaysians.
Parent Action Group for Education (PAGE) chairman Datin Noor Azimah Abdul Rahim claimed its predominantly shallow subject matter was an old issue which threatened to persist.
“This is very serious, our kids are reading sillier books and they will eventually get sillier and sillier,” she said, adding that there was already a sharp decline in creativity and problem solving skills.
She said the content and quality of books produced were directly linked to one’s world view.
Azimah opined that Bahasa Melayu was still too “young” to be a language of knowledge, while English was the language which most books and resources are available in, was sidelined.
“Allowing English to deteriorate is the real issue, not so much the reading culture of teens itself.
“As we are no longer proficient in English there is not much to read and nothing much to fall back on,” she said.
Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka language expert Hasnah Mohd Saleh said the novels would create a backward nation.
"Even the Doraemon-reading generation fared better. You can see the trend over the past 20 years among the Malay reading public. The reading material is shallow, they don't read books with depth," she said.
She added that teachers were not equipped to teach sex education and spiritual guidance, and parents also often did not do this.
"How are teachers expected to handle books like this when there is no sex education module," she said.
Hasnah said kids were getting more information and instructions about sex from the books rather than parents and teachers.
This, she said, was dangerous because not all books teach kids the right values.
The writers of such books, she claimed, also sidestepped their social responsibility by following market forces and not writing quality materials.
"As an author they too have a social duty to their readers... But these days the only thing they and their publishers have in mind is profit.
"Teachers and parents who try to read these books feel embarrassed by the subject matter," she said.
"The direct effect is that we as a nation have become more bangang (stupid) and backward.
"Most of the books draw both Malay and Indian teens, between 50-60 per cent of the youngsters who read.
"Our kids have becoming increasingly shallow over the past 20 years. They were much better off when they were just reading Doraemon comics, at least they were fueled towards invention.
"But now they only seem to be able to read light material and this has had an impact on the adults and the nation itself," she said.
She said the decline in the depth and sophistication of thinking among the young, coincided with the timeline when teen novels become mainstream.
"There is also an issue related to the rise in social ills with the novels increasing appeal to mainstream teen readers over the past two decades," she said.
She cited baby dumping, premarital sex and other cases of social ills having accelerated in these period.
Hasnah was of the same view as Azimah, saying that the inconsistencies in the education policy has led to the rise of the shallow novels.
She said that politicians and laymen meddled too much with policies resulting in English taking a backseat.
"When the ministry takes any initiative to strengthen English, it is condemned as putting the language on a pedestal while undermining Bahasa Melayu's status.
"As the language is still not the language of resources, this has hurt and continues to hurt the worldview of generations of scholars and students," she added.
Meanwhile, headmaster W. Razali W. Muda said over the past 20 years, the language in novels had also tarnished the Bahasa Melayu standards of students.
“We’ve seen the infiltration of “Bahasa Novel”.
Teachers often find examples of poorly written sentences in exams and homework as a result Internet language is also making its way to exam replies from such stories posted online,” he added.
So alarming is the content in these 'pulp' novels that Rahimah Razlan, 45, barred her kids from reading the books some years ago because she was afraid it would give them 'ideas'.
"They were 13 and 15 at the time and they claimed they got the books from a friend.
"I don't remember the title but I picked it up and thought it harmless at first somewhat like the Sweet Valley series. But then I flipped the pages and stumbled on a descriptive, full fledged sex scene," she said.
Rahimah panicked and called a friend. She said her friend too was having trouble controlling her daughter's reading material after she chanced upon a teen magazine in her daughter's school bag, which had an article about a group of teens being targeted by an incubus.
Rahimah said she decided to have the "talk" about the birds and the bees with her daughters.
"What scares me is that there are no safer options. Kids reading a book about love and ghosts are fine.
"But why don't we have a book like Harry Potter, it has the same themes, but it deals with the topic in a much better way," said the homemaker.
However, National Union of the Teaching Profession (NUTP) president Hashim Adnan said people should not read too much into the novels.“Light readings offer escapism for students from the reality of their workload,” he said.