Tiang (left) and Foo holding the Primary 5 History book that MOE needs to rectify with regards to the formation of Malaysia.
KUCHING: Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP) has discovered that one of the chapters in the Primary 5 KSSR History syllabus for national schools and national type schools was totally replaced by the birth of Malaya instead of Malaysia.
Its Palawan branch secretary Michael Tiang said judging from the title of the chapter -‘Lahirnya sebuah negara yang baru’ (The birth of a new nation) – one can assume that it is about the birth of Malaysia but it is not the case.
“In the whole chapter ‘Malaya’ was called ‘Negara Kita’ or Our Country. Where ever in the chapter you see the word ‘Negara Kita’ it was meant to be Malaya and not Malaysia,” he told reporters at a press conference at the party headquarters here yesterday.
Stressing that the confusion must be rectified, he said: “Most of all, in the whole chapter you cannot find the word Malaysia but the words ‘Persekutuan Tanah Melayu’ or Malaya Federation.”
He strongly pointed out that Sarawak, Sabah and Malaya came together to form the Federation of Malaysia 52 years ago.
“How come our Ministry of Education (MOE) cannot get our history right?” he questioned.
He noted that this year was the first time the misinformation was included in the KSSR syllabus after it was implemented in 2011.
“After five years of implementation of KSSR the whole syllabus is about Persekutuan Tanah Melayu independence. We know that history is old story and you do not have new story every year but when we come to new curriculum system, our Independence story becomes different,” he further questioned.
Stressing that history should be factual and accurate, Tiang said the chapter failed to mention about Sarawak and Sabah.
“It not only failed to mention Sabah and Sarawak but the syllabus failed to mention Malaysia and I want to remind the public that this is our national history syllabus and yet our national history syllabus does not get our national history right. This is a shame,” he lamented.
However, he believed that the omission was a grave mistake made by MOE.
“No country will write their national history wrongly so this is unbelievable,” he further said.
On a related matter, Tiang explained that their participation in the walk to recognise the independence of Sarawak on July 22 in Kuching, Miri, Sibu and Bintulu was to call for the state government to recognise the date and declare it ‘Hari Sarawak’ (Sarawak Day).
“The main objective is to promote and create awareness among Sarawakians about our Sarawak Independence History.”
He further said SUPP had made a call for July 22 to be included in the national history syllabus so Malaysian students know the complete history of the nation.
“Because we know that July 22nd was never taught in school and today we were very shocked to find out that not only July 22nd was not taught in school but also the whole formation of Federation of Malaysia was not taught in our national primary school syllabus,” he further bemoaned.
Tiang revealed that in March this year Malaysia Chinese Language Council (MCLC), an organisation formed by Chinese schools to monitor and evaluate the contents of Chinese school syllabus, had submitted a report to MOE pointing out 81 errors in the Primary 5 History syllabus.
“Unfortunately, in the report there was no mention of the error about the birth of our country, which left out Sarawak, Sabah and the Federation of Malaysia altogether,” he said.
Tiang said SUPP would look into the possibility of recommending Sarawak representatives to be included in MCLC or any supervisory /advisory institution to MOE.
SUPP Youth Central publicity and information secretary Milton Foo was present at the press conference.