Suchergebnisse

A recent controversial pronouncement by the Sultan of Johor state on the language of instruction in Malaysian schools immediately brought renewed attention to the present condition of the education system in the country. The Sultan had called for English to be further encouraged as the medium of instruction. The issue represents the tip of the iceberg of controversies over the education of the young which have plagued the country since its very beginnings. For starters, it discouraged the newly independent Malaysia from adopting a monolingual education system as a means to unify its ethnically diverse populations into a one-nation, one-language community. Instead, decolonization politics resulted in the continuation of the British colonial state's multilingual school system that, after independence, evolved into Malay-medium primary and secondary national schools and vernacular Chinese and Tamil primary schools. Policy makers such as the pioneering educationist Aminuddin Baki, were already aware of the potential centrifugal effect of a multilingual education in encouraging schooling to occur along ethnic lines. The initial plan was to turn the Malay-medium national schools into the preferred education stream for all ethnic groups. Instead, various developments and exclusivist policies and programmes after 1971 accentuated ethnic segregation in the educational system. This essay highlights some key aspects of ethnic segregation in the public educational system, especially at the primary and secondary school levels.

Prior to the era of globalization, education in Southeast Asia was viewed in the context of the national state and it was deployed in the service of state and nation-building and national economic development. States monopolized education, and public-funded centralized education systems were established to teach literacy, transmit national cultures and promote social cohesion, and to produce literate workers. Globalization forces, however, dramatically impacted in varying ways and degrees the national education systems across the region. As states begun to see their citizens as resources to enhance the countries' competitiveness in the global market, it, among other things, led to the increasing demand for highly skilled and qualified human capital. The accompanying neoliberal ideology led to varying degrees of decentralization, privatization and internationalization of education, especially of higher education, in Southeast Asia. The chapters in this volume focus on a number of issues and challenges confronting the education sector in Southeast Asia, including: (i) the contrasting language in education policy in Singapore and Malaysia; (ii) the introduction of an English-medium private education sector in Malaysia; (iii) the internationalization of Thai higher education; (iv) access and quality issues in the massification of Malaysian higher education; (v) secondary school quality and higher education participation in Indonesia;(vi) equity, access and retention in primary school education in Malaysia; and(vii) reforms in the primary and secondary education in Myanmar

What is the relevance of civil society to people empowerment, effective governance, and deepening democracy? This book addresses this question by examining the activities and public participation of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the areas of religion, ethnicity, gender and the environment. Examples are taken from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. State regimes' attempts to co-opt the concept or reject it as alien to "Asian values" have apparently not turned out as expected. This is evident from the fact that many Southeast Asian citizens are inspired by the civil society concept and now engage in public discourse and participation. The experience of civil society in Southeast Asia shows that its impact -- or lack of impact -- on democratization and democracy depends on a variety of factors not only within civil society itself, but also within the state