Rudyard Kipling"
“When you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldier”
General Douglas MacArthur"
“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
Something like local elections
will do far more to improve and recalibrate the education system in
terms of engaging residents, especially the Malay community, rather than
policies that come from Putrajaya.
Activist and ex-MP Kua Kia
Soong alluded to this when he was advocating for local council elections
in 2018 that Pakatan Harapan had abandoned.
Activist and ex-MP Kua Kia Soong
He wrote,
“I have often stressed the fact that an elected local government can,
at a stroke, depoliticise education in Malaysia simply by building
schools based on the need of the local communities – and not have the
Education Ministry treat schools as a political football during general
elections.
“Few
Malaysians have noticed, for example, that the all-important role of
local education authorities in the Education Act 1961 is no longer
mentioned in the Education Act 1996.
“Local education authorities
serve to allocate funds and other facilities to needy sectors, and can
serve to dissipate politicisation of education.”
Dominance of the elite
And,
forget about the urban-educated opposition politics. When politicians
talk of rural folk, you have to understand that these are rural folk by
design.
While rich- and middle-income Malays ensure that their
children receive an education that would make them competitive in this
fast-changing geopolitical landscape, the system is designed to keep
“rural” Malays and working-class Malays bereft of the opportunities
available to that class of Malays who control or who serve in a
political system that enables their privilege.
When those Malays
in that survey said Malays must work hard and be proactive, what exactly
is that an indictment of? It was not of the Malay community but rather
the policies and ideologies of the mainstream Malay political elites.
The
question we should be asking is what is causing this apathy in a large
segment of the Malay community? Why is it that Malay students are not
interested in math and science? Why are families not supportive of the
educational goals of their children?
Anecdotally,
lower-income Malays who I have spoken to over the decades tell me the
reason why some of them do not place much emphasis on education is
because they are from large families and children are encouraged to
quickly become wage earners to support the family.
Furthermore,
the emphasis is on starting a family at a young age, which also hampers
the education process. Keep in mind that Malay women still make up the
majority in public universities so there are many variables to this
issue.
A permanently underprivileged base
When it comes to education, in the ketuanan
(supremacy) system, it is more about class than race. Mainstream
Malaysian politics is predicated on sustaining a jingoistic,
nationalist, but permanently underprivileged Malay base.
Of
course, the kind of class that this system of education engineers makes
them perfect as petty, mid-level bureaucrats or working-class drones,
steeped in religious and racial grievances, using the system at the
behest of their political masters, always hoping to jump to the next
level using corrupt means.
A new serf class was created post-May 1969.
You
can have a world-class education system, however you choose to define
it, but if the target audience is not interested, then you have bupkis.
All policies from successive governments are based on fear and loathing.
The
fear instilled in the Malay majority that their rights would be usurped
by egalitarian and progressive concepts, and loathing by the political
elites that those same concepts are needed to ensure a viable and
economically successful community.
What political elites fail to
understand is that apathy often leads to resentment stoked by religious
fires and then eventually violence.
This is a lesson that political elites all over the world have learnt too late.
