Malaysia's highly centralized and tightly controlled system of education fails in educating and integrating the young. It is also ill suited for a plural society. Instead of the present rigid and uniform system, the writer calls for one that is flexible and diverse, but with a core of commonality. There should also be private sector participation to provide competition and spur innovation. Achieving this requires radically changing the ministry of education from one obsessed with strict top-down command, to a more democratized model with power and responsibilities delegated to the periphery. The minister is less a drill sergeant barking out orders to his raw recruits but more of a symphony conductor coaxing the best out of his skilled musicians. The reforms suggested here will make Malaysians fluently bilingual in Malay and English, science literate, and mathematically competent, as well as foster a common Malaysian identity.

Malaysia s highly centralized and tightly controlled system of education fails in educating and integrating the young. It is also ill suited for a plural society.

This book examines Malaysia’s educational landscape, providing a contemporary study of key themes that have emerged in this multicultural, multi-ethnic society, as it attempts to shift from a middle-income to a high-income nation. Combining contributions by scholars from various fields—such as economics, history, sociology, political science and, of course, education—the book provides richer insights into Malaysia. Offering a unique resource, it will be of particular interest to educators, researchers, students, policymakers and members of the public who want to be updated on the latest trends and challenges in Malaysian education.

These essays document the continued decline of Malaysian education at all levels. This has been going on for decades. This collection updates the author's earlier book, An Education System Worthy Of Malaysia (2003). Despite successive Administrations professing to transform the system, the rot continues. The challenges today are as monumental as they are obvious. The remedies offered by the Government are nothing but repeated assurances and earnest statements, coupled with endless expensive Blueprints and White Papers. The greatest indictment of the system is that Malays are abandoning the national stream. The rich opt for international schools; the poor, Chinese schools, much to the embarrassment of Malay nationalists. The former, which offers other than the Malaysian curriculum and pedagogy, are mushrooming. Malaysian high school students perform poorly in comparative international assessments like TIMMS and PISA. No surprise that Malaysians are now a rare species on elite campuses. Employers shun local graduates, and the teaching profession no longer attracts the best. The Ministry of Education, the largest in terms of budget and personnel, is blighted by inept management and bloated bureaucracy intent on pursuing narrow nationalistic and Islamist agendas. Each successive Minister is consumed with exploiting the prestige of the office to further his political agenda. Even when the rare, enlightened policies were instituted, as with opening up higher education to the private sector in the mid 1990s by then Education Minister Najib Razak, the process was exploited to become lucrative conduits for corruption. Najib granted nearly 600 permits in a space of about two years! More than half of those new institutions went out of business within a few years, stranding their students and crushing their dreams, quite apart from literally robbing them and their parents. The 2018 elections saw a new government with a Minster of Education who for the first time was not from the dominant United Malay National Organization (UMNO) party. An Islamic Studies graduate, his first order of business was to change the color of school children's shoes from white to black! The only saving grace was that he was canned just over a year later. In January 2020, the Ministry was back under Prime Minister Mahathir. By February 2020, his government too was out, and with that, the Ministry was split into two, one for K-11 and another for Higher Education. As an unnecessary reminder, it was Mahathir, as Minister of Education back in the 1970s, who started the decline. Today Malaysian education has been taken over by the language nationalists and jihadist Islamists with their sole agenda of making not only education but the whole of Malaysia "Malay" and "Islamic." The nationalists add their chauvinistic and very "un-Islamic" Ketuanan Melayu (Malay hegemony) aspirations to the mix. As a result, the school curriculum is heavy on ritualistic religion and strident nationalism, with indoctrination masquerading as education. This glaring disconnect between the Ministry's agenda and reality is obvious to all but those bureaucrats and policymakers. While Malaysia is in desperate need of teachers of English, not one of her public universities have a Department of English. Meanwhile four core subjects of Malay, English, science, and mathematics are neglected. Recognizing the establishment's inertia as well as incompetence, the writer advocates liberalizing the system at all levels by opening it up to the private sector via the voucher system a la Chile, and encouraging charter schools as per America. Provide parents and students with choice, and reward those schools that succeed in preparing their students for the modern interconnected world, as well as being the pivotal instrument for integrating young Malaysians.

The existence of an ethnic divide is a common problem in multiethnic societies, more so when these societies are straddled with contradictions reflected in their socioeconomic and political composition and configuration. The existence of an ethnic divide in the educational sector is most unfortunate since one of the fundamental purposes of schooling in multiethnic societies is to achieve a common process of socialisation and enculturation among the different ethnic group to achieve a strong sense of social cohesion. While Malaysia has aspired to provide a common or uniform system of schooling for the different ethnic groups since Independence, such an aspiration was however compromised by the co-existence of alternative pathways of education that are divided along ethnic lines. There are four dimensions underpinning these ethnic divisions, namely linguistic, preferential, religious and class. This monograph explores the emergence and subsequent developments of these alternative pathways of education and their impact on Malaysia’s nation-building process.

Malaysian-born M. Bakri Musa, a California surgeon, writes frequently on issues affecting his native land. His credits, apart from scientific articles in professional journals, have appeared in Far Eastern Economic Review, International Herald Tribune, Education Quarterly, and New Straits Times. His commentary has also aired on National Public Radio's Marketplace. He is the author of The Malay Dilemma Revisited: Race Dynamics in Modern Malaysia, Malaysia in the Era of Globalization, and An Education System Worthy of Malaysia. Safely beyond the reach of Malaysia's censorship laws, he writes freely and without restraint, save for common courtesy and good taste. He spares no individual or institution, easily skewering the sacred cows. He aims his dart at the most hyper-inflated targets, easily and effectively puncturing them to reveal their hollowness. These range from the obscenely ostentatious Malaysian weddings to special privileges, and from Prime Minister Mahathir to youths who do Malaysia proud.