School politics & Student politics
Written: Friday, September 19, 2003
If you follow Malaysian news, you’ll notice that one of the major gripes that the opposition have with the government involves student politics. The man (excuse me while I put on my bell-bottoms and tie-dyed t-shirt) says that the students should stick to studying and forget about politics because they are only endangering their future by letting themselves be used by the opposition. The other side say that it is the students right to indulge in politics. Personally, based on what I have seen of student politics elsewhere, I’m inclined to think that both arguments are both right and they are both wrong but neither entirely. As an educator, my main gripe is with the way the students go about doing their politics. Allow me to illustrate.
Recently the establishment supporters won the student election at the university – the one I work in, where else? Of course, the opposition supporters suddenly go into a tantrum saying that democracy is dead, that is it is dead because they lost this time. Democracy was alive and kicking when they won last year and I suspect it will miraculously rise from the grave if they win next year. So one of the things they did was to stick their political newsletters under every door, including mine. However, they did it at a time when some of my students were sticking their assignments under my door – the ones who have not figured out how to find and use the pigeonhole. Since it was among assignments, I went through it as such. I looked at the English language bits of the paper. There was one bit that was supposed to be a poem, let me say that again SUPPOSED to be a poem. This bit had 24 line and 14 mistakes in three categories, grammar, idiom usage and logical coherence. On the next page, there were only 2 pages, there was an English headline which read “dead of democracy”. Hey, shouldn’t this be “death of democracy”?
It takes too long for me to elaborate the errors. Instead, I would like to comment on a line in this (arguably) poem. The line reads, “ People have to work and learn all day. NO time to be free”. It made me wonder, what exactly was this student fighting for? My years of reading, some of it involving political and philosophical books, have left me thinking that to be able to work for a living is a form of freedom, particularly if you are working for pay and you are allowed to choose the work you wish to do provided you prove that you have the ability to fulfill the requirements of the job. My reading have also taught me that to be able to learn, especially to do so in an institution like a university, if you wish to is a kind of freedom. So if its not work and not learn, this student must think that freedom must involve doing neither. If that is the case, then this student’s conception of freedom could be defined as such things as, sleeping all day or hanging around a shopping mall, or fishing for fun (note that fishing for a living would be work and therefore not freedom). Is this freedom or is it laziness? Perhaps, it is both.
So this student should be more precise in his demands and complaints. The freedom that he wants is the freedom to be lazy and to not have to do anything should he wishes to. Fair enough, thought I, he should be given this right. However, this student failed to read the other side of the rights issue, the right not to give things he desire. For example, the interviewer’s right to not choose him for a job, and so on.
I hope it was just a typo but I’m afraid the writer meant what he wrote.
Written: Friday, September 19, 2003
If you follow Malaysian news, you’ll notice that one of the major gripes that the opposition have with the government involves student politics. The man (excuse me while I put on my bell-bottoms and tie-dyed t-shirt) says that the students should stick to studying and forget about politics because they are only endangering their future by letting themselves be used by the opposition. The other side say that it is the students right to indulge in politics. Personally, based on what I have seen of student politics elsewhere, I’m inclined to think that both arguments are both right and they are both wrong but neither entirely. As an educator, my main gripe is with the way the students go about doing their politics. Allow me to illustrate.
Recently the establishment supporters won the student election at the university – the one I work in, where else? Of course, the opposition supporters suddenly go into a tantrum saying that democracy is dead, that is it is dead because they lost this time. Democracy was alive and kicking when they won last year and I suspect it will miraculously rise from the grave if they win next year. So one of the things they did was to stick their political newsletters under every door, including mine. However, they did it at a time when some of my students were sticking their assignments under my door – the ones who have not figured out how to find and use the pigeonhole. Since it was among assignments, I went through it as such. I looked at the English language bits of the paper. There was one bit that was supposed to be a poem, let me say that again SUPPOSED to be a poem. This bit had 24 line and 14 mistakes in three categories, grammar, idiom usage and logical coherence. On the next page, there were only 2 pages, there was an English headline which read “dead of democracy”. Hey, shouldn’t this be “death of democracy”?
It takes too long for me to elaborate the errors. Instead, I would like to comment on a line in this (arguably) poem. The line reads, “ People have to work and learn all day. NO time to be free”. It made me wonder, what exactly was this student fighting for? My years of reading, some of it involving political and philosophical books, have left me thinking that to be able to work for a living is a form of freedom, particularly if you are working for pay and you are allowed to choose the work you wish to do provided you prove that you have the ability to fulfill the requirements of the job. My reading have also taught me that to be able to learn, especially to do so in an institution like a university, if you wish to is a kind of freedom. So if its not work and not learn, this student must think that freedom must involve doing neither. If that is the case, then this student’s conception of freedom could be defined as such things as, sleeping all day or hanging around a shopping mall, or fishing for fun (note that fishing for a living would be work and therefore not freedom). Is this freedom or is it laziness? Perhaps, it is both.
So this student should be more precise in his demands and complaints. The freedom that he wants is the freedom to be lazy and to not have to do anything should he wishes to. Fair enough, thought I, he should be given this right. However, this student failed to read the other side of the rights issue, the right not to give things he desire. For example, the interviewer’s right to not choose him for a job, and so on.
I hope it was just a typo but I’m afraid the writer meant what he wrote.
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