THE genesis of the Sultan Idris Training College (SITC) would not be transpired had it not been by the royal consent of the Sultanate of Perak.
With the consent of Sultan Abdul Jalil Nasruddin Muhtaram Shah to allow the use of his late father's name Sultan Idris Murshidul Aadzam Shah who ruled Perak from 1887 to 1916 as the 28th Sultan of Perak on the newly established Teacher Training College in Tanjung Malim, marked the beginning of higher teachers' education in the colonial Malaya.
Historically, during the reign of the Malay Sultanate Kingdom, the palace had placed emphasis on Islamic and Quranic education and basic literacy especially among the aristocrats and the middle class.
As Jalaluddin Ar-Rumi, the 13th century Persian poet, illuminated the symbol of Quranic recitation — "If you look at the Quran with your eyes, you will see words. If you look at it with your brain, you will see the knowledge. If you look at it with your heart, you will see love. If you look at it with all your soul, you will 'see' God".
The Malay Annals chronicled that in the 15th century, Melaka had attracted not only traders but students to learn Islam. It was also reported that wali songo (nine saints) responsible for spreading Islam in Java, at least two – Sunan Bonang and Sunan Kalijaga, were said to have studied in Melaka.
Later, pondok and madrasah education systems were instituted in the Malay states as Muslim religious teachers returned home after studying in Mecca or Cairo. Hikayat Abdullah mentioned that these religious schools pre-date the British colonial secular model of education.
Portuguese and Dutch Conquests
During the Portuguese conquest of Melaka, not much public education had been developed for the masses, except for the missionary schools and the introduction of Roman scripts as an alternative to the Jawi scripts.
Active missionary work began in 1545 with the arrival of St Francisco Xavier. Interestingly, the Malay term "sekolah" may have been derived from the Portuguese word "escola".
Nevertheless, the Melaka Portuguese leaders were not interested in providing mass education to the people of the state; they were more focused on their own security and the economic activities and getting the wealth back to Portugal by ships – including the magnificent Flor de La Mar that sunk in the Indian Ocean in Nov 1511.
Melaka was once a famous international port and a trade centre where Tomé Pires – the author of Suma Oriental mentioned 84 languages were spoken in Melaka at the time. In the early 17th century, the Dutch East India Company began several unsuccessful campaigns to capture Melaka from the Portuguese.
At the time, the Portuguese had transformed Melaka into a strong fortress – Fortaleza de Melaka – controlling access to the sea lanes of the Straits of Melaka and the spice trade there.
In 1641, Dutch finally defeated Portuguese in the Battle of Melaka with the help of forces from the Sultanate of Johor. The combined Dutch-Johor alliance had effectively destroyed the last bastion of Portuguese power – banishing them from the Malay archipelago. During their rein, Portuguese and Dutch had more focused of building forts, administrative buildings, churches and their settlements.
British Colonial Education
Learning from the fatal mistake of the Portuguese and Dutch's occupation of Melaka, the ingenuity of the British was to use education as a means to docile the opposition to its colonialisation. The British built the first English school – Penang Free School established in 1816 and the first Malay school was built in Glugor, Penang in 1921.
The first Chinese school was established in 1915 and the first Tamil school was opened in 1895 known as St Francis Xavier Malabar Tamil School. In the colonial era, however, the ethnic-based education was not an equaliser but a great divider.
SITC was officially opened on Nov 29,1922 by W. George Maxwell, the Chief Secretary of the Federated Malay States with the first cohort of 120 male students and 14 teachers. Besides Malaya, SITC had attracted Malay students from Brunei, British Borneo and Singapore. On March 1924, SITC had graduated its first batch of 58 certified Malay teachers.
The first principal of SITC in 1922 was Oman Theodore Dussek and a series of British headmasters ruled SITC until 1958 when the first Malay headmaster was appointed – Zainal Abidin Ali. The grandeur of SITC was in its Victorian architecture but the illusion was its perennial search for self-identity.
From nationalism, vernacular schools, dual education to teacher training, the pioneer of SITC lecturers were four Englishmen, nine Malays and one Filipino.
In reinforcing the Malay language and Malay education, SITC was the training center for Malay teachers to fulfil the need of Malay schools whereas the Kirkbians and Brinsfordians were trained in Malayan Training Colleges (MTC) in England to become teachers in English medium schools.
Famous SITC Alumni
The products of SITC included teachers, linguists, historians, writers, poets, and nationalists – and a number of SITC alumni and teachers who became prominent figures in Malaya/Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore.
From Malaya, Pendeta Za'ba (Zainal Abidin Ahmad), Harun Aminurrashid, Ibrahim Yaacob, Ghafar Baba, Awang Had Salleh, Abdul Rahman Abbas – to name a few – were prominent educators, linguists, writes, and politicians.
From Brunei, figures such as Pengiran Mohammad Yusof Rahim, Jamil Umar, Marsal Maun, and Basir Taha and from Singapore – Sidek Saniff – a former Singaporean senior minister – were among the SITC graduates.
During his tenure as a teacher at SITC (1924 – 1938), Za'ba modernised the Malay language with the publication of a series of grammar books titled Pelita Bahasa Melayu. Za'ba was also a social critic that published several publications addressing the superstitious, pessimistic, oppressed, and colonialised mindset of the Malays.
As an astute linguist figure, Za'ba was conferred the title "Pendeta" (Grand master) in 1956 at the Congress of Malay Language and Literature. Among his famous books were Habits of self-reliance, Islam and religious tolerance in Malaysia, and Life in kampongs in Kuching.
As the second cohort of Kirkby MTC student, Tuanku Bainun is one of the Kirkby alumnae. As a competent and passionate teacher, Tuanku Bainun was the former Raja Permaisuri of Perak and she was also the ninth Raja Permaisuri Agong of Malaysia.
The mother of Sultan Nazrin Muizzuddin Shah, Tuanku Bainun was the first Chancellor of UPSI. In recognition of her educational contribution, an IPGM (Institute of Teacher Education) was named after her. And also the UPSI library with three million literary collection was named after Tuanku Bainun.
Centennial Celebration
The crux of SITC-UPSI's agenda was in making teacher education as a centerpiece of its mission. Overarching philosophy that guided UPSI is Ibu Kandung Suluh Budiman – knowledge acquisition and character building.
Other comparative philosophies such as Greek philosophy which is based on reason, virtues and wisdom; Japanese wabi-sabi philosophy appreciates imperfection; African ubuntu philosophy focuses on the relationship between an individual with his/her community; Chinese Confucius philosophy emphasizes morality and social justice; western Protestant ethics stresses on diligence, discipline, and hard work while the Muslim's ethics of wasatiah is focused on moderation and work-life balance.
Malay philosophy of humbleness as paddy — the more golden it becomes; the more down-to-earth, it prostrates.
In 1956, SITC was officially changed to Maktab Perguruan Sultan Idris (MPSI).
During MPSI (1956–1986), in strengthening the corpus of the Malay Language, Malay creative writing as a genre had been introduced by Harun Aminurrashid which resulted in the "birth" of prominent linguists, literary figures, poets, and educators such as A. Wahab Ali, Ali Majod, Kasmani Haji Arif, Awang Had Salleh, Hassan Ali, Othman Puteh, Dharmawijaya, Kemala, Suhaimi Haji Mohammad, Shahnon Ahmad, Suratman Markasan, Masuri S.N., Yura Halim and others.
In 1987, MPSI was upgraded and renamed Institut Perguruan Sultan Idris (IPSI) and new joint-courses were made available leading to a degree conferred by IPSI and a local public university.
10 years later, IPSI was upgraded to a full-fledged education university – UPSI on May 1, 1997 with the first cohort of 350 students.
With only 29 lecturers and six administration staff, UPSI started with only four faculties – Science Cognitive and Human Development, Languages, Science Social and Arts, and Science and Technology. In 2010, UPSI had nine faculties and two campuses – Sultan Abdul Jalil Shah (old campus) and Sultan Azlan Shah (Proton city campus).
Reinventing the world of teachers' education is not easy. The passing of the baton from SITC to MPSI to IPSI and finally to UPSI was immensely challenging. An echo of the pain of the past, the renaissance of SITC in the form of full-fledged education university (UPSI) has healed the wound and cleared the pathway to move forward.
Royal Support
By virtue of SITC being in Perak Darul Ridzuan, Sultan Nazrin, the 35th Sultan of Perak who graduated from Oxford and Harvard, has a strong tradition of putting high pride on education and intellectualism.
In 2012, Raja Permaisuri Perak, Tuanku Zara Salim was made the Second Chancellor of UPSI. She graduated with a First-Class Honours degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Nottingham and worked briefly with Petronas after graduation.
As a royal and an intellectual, Sultan Nazrin has always focused on the importance of knowledge, education, socio-economic development, ethics, good governance, and tolerance in nation building.
Being a Chancellor for two universities, and patron, chair, panel – for several honorary positions and honorary fellow in top universities such as Oxford and Cambridge and world organisations such as the United Nations, Sultan Nazrin is also the vice chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, University of Oxford.
Perak has produced top scholars such as Afifi Al Akiti – a Fellow at Oxford Center of Islamic Studies. On July 23, 2005, just days after the London bombings, Afifi al-Akiti wrote a significant document – Defending the Transgressed by Censuring the Reckless against the Killing of Civilians.
In the foreword, Gibril Haddad saw the document as a "fatwa" by Afifi Al Akiti as a prominent Malaysian Islamic scholar against any suicide bombings that kill innocent civilians.
Another famous Perakian was the late Yunus Raiss. In 1957, Kirkby-trained Yunus was back in his native land as a teacher at SITC for six months and then he got a teaching job at Sekolah Dato' Abdul Razak until 1963. Then, he went to England to sit for his Bar exam, became a magistrate and later a principal of Sels College in London.
Before the movement control order (MCO), UPSI's convocation saw Tuanku Zara handing out academic scrolls to PhD recipients and other honorary degrees with live orchestra symphony led by UPSI music professor as its conductor. It was an annual UPSI grand event that UPSI academics, graduates, and parents waited for.
It was an ineffable joy to hear the dulcet voice of graduates' singing the UPSI anthem – Ibu Kandung Suluh Budiman.
UPSI Achievements
UPSI has set the gold standard for teachers' education. UPSI's unique forte which is different from the other public universities in Malaysia is its vibrancy in teachers' education.
Since 1997 - seven UPSI Vice chancellors have had diverse visions such as making UPSI a premier teachers' training, visioning robust public service center for teachers' training, introducing Bitara model of education, establishing Overseas Lab School – Suluh Budiman School in Cambodia, envisioning UPSI as modern pondok, making UPSI as the number one Education University, emphasising UPSI as a referral point for Teachers' Education via the 3R (Relevant, Referred, Respect) concept, and also making UPSI as a pedagogical and co-curricular epicenter.
UPSI has signed MoUs with top universities such as Nagoya University, Japan and other education universities such as Universiti Pendidikan Indonesia, Philippines Normal University and other CAPEU (Consortium of Asia-Pacific Education) universities.
The centennial renaissance of SITC represents a coming-of-age story that echoes the transformation of Malaysian teachers' education in which UPSI is now leading. Almost 100 years of giant leaps to fortify teachers' education, with this year's Teacher's Day slogan "Learning for knowledge; Building a new generation".
Another giant leap is to gain international reputation as a global teachers' education centre. In the future, UPSI should establish a regional teachers' education center such as an Asian Institute of Teacher Education so that, it would be as famous or at par with the Yusof Ishak Institute of Southeast Asian Studies at National University of Singapore.
From the year 1922 until now, an almost 100-year SITC journey – is a relatively long period of time, but if we go along the memory lane of the classics – Seneca, the Roman philosopher reminds us that, "it not how long it is; but how good it is".
The writer is a Professor of Technical and Vocational Education, UPSI