IF a student is compelled to send a letter to the prime minister to complain about bullying and racism in his school, it can only mean one thing. Those who are put in charge of educating others themselves need an education.
Yes, that is how bad it has become. Our education system needs reengineering. But where does Education Minister Fadhlina Sidek begin? We suggest she start with the most critical of all questions: what is the purpose of education? Here, everyone becomes an expert. To the industrialists, the role of institutes of learning is to turn out skilled workers to man their factories.
Can't blame them for focusing on employability. After all, they are all employers. But this is to take a very narrow view of life. We just don't spend all our lives shuttling from factory to factory.
Ask the academics. They, too, have their ivory tower views. Science, maths and humanities. And in that descending order. Still, a silo view of life.
We think it is more. And the more is this: the purpose of education is to make the student a good human being. All else will follow from this. A good human being will know how to place everything in its right place. Pigmentation of skin won't bother the student.
Neither will the faith of another. Out of such an institute of learning, a student will say: "To you yours and to me mine." Because he is taught there that we humans are created in different hues to get to know each other.
Ponder for a moment. Isn't this what everything on Earth and in the Universe is telling us? Only a good human being can be a good citizen, not the other way round. And this is no new advice either.
Professor Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas has been dishing it out since the 1970s, but ministers of education come and go, giving the purpose of education a willing or unwilling miss. Small wonder, the cry for education reform grows louder with every change of government.
Unachievable ideal? Not if we get the delivery right. Admittedly, we have a delivery problem. But the issue is not just with the teachers. It starts in Putrajaya and ends in every nook and corner of the country where the state education departments and schools are.
Take the letter on bullying and racism. If only the warden or teachers had listened, there may not have been a need for the letter to reach that far.
We are not surprised. Educators, to use the word broadly to mean everyone involved in the process of education, are not delivering. Even listening is so hard for them to do. We saw this in the case of Cikgu Mohd Fadli Mohamed Salleh from SK Gombak.
All he wanted to do was to get the ministry to change the school syllabus. Instead of listening to him, everyone from the minister downwards were allegedly raining threats of dismissal or disciplinary action on him. Again, the prime minister had to intervene.
Not only are educators not doing their job, parents aren't either. Bullies are bullies because of what happens at home. Home is also where racism makes it ugly appearance.
Nip it there, you would nip it everywhere. Like it or not, parents are the first teachers. But this doesn't absolve Putrajaya from getting the purpose of education precise and the teachers, its delivery right.