Don’t lose track of your culture

Professor Tan Sri Dato' Dzulkifli Abdul Razak
My View - The Sun Daily
November 17, 2015

THE latest issue of China Daily (Nov 13-19, Asean Edition) carried an article (p26) titled "Rooted in the classics – Children are studying traditional culture to improve morals and maintain the Chinese identity (emphasis added)." It quoted the director of Chengxian Guoxue Institute in Guozijian, Ji Jie Jing, as saying: "Traditional Chinese culture should not lose its grip on young Chinese as it is good for their moral development and the cultivation of their character."

On page 4, there is another quote: "Whilst language is crucial for employability, confidence in the language gives you an edge over global peers."

I find these two quotes to be very interesting, at least intellectually, if not in practical terms.

As a Jaguh Kampung (My View, Nov 12), I find it even more interesting when the latter quote came from a global Malaysian as cited: "Idris Jala, minister without portfolio in the Malaysian prime minister's office on a survey supporting focus on students' English proficiency."

What is intriguing, how come a virtually homogenous nation of more than a billion population with some 5,000 years of civilisation and traditions, and an extensive "bamboo" network of diaspora, is still very concerned with the survival of their classics and traditions?

Yet, a small nation of 30 million of much shorter civilisation in a virtually captive heterogeneous nation is trying to boost confidence in another language to have an edge over global peers, presumably including the young Chinese who are well-rooted in their own traditions and self-being?

It implies that Malaysians are cock-sure of their own classics and traditional culture, although the reality seems to be the stark contrast, especially in recent times.

That both of the education blueprints have "national identity" and "national unity" as part of the student and system aspirations respectively, speaks volume of where we are on issues that seem to worry the Chinese more.

Indeed, as the article highlighted, instead of taking piano lessons or joining an overseas study tour, Chinese students spent their summer vacation doing traditional Chinese studies at China's highest education institute. Students clad in hanfu, as ancient students did, are exposed to introductory Confucianism, Chinese calligraphy and other traditional wisdom, values and literature.

In some schools, it is already "compulsory" to focus on Chinese cultural traditions, with experimental textbooks for the lessons beginning from 2009. The secretary-general of the China Traditional Culture and Art Centre reportedly said traditional Chinese culture "will inevitably be included in China's college entrance examination. That will provide a stimulus for students in primary and middle schools to learn traditional culture" and "their love in China's cultural legacy".

Beginning next year, China's Ministry of Education (MOE) announced, traditional Chinese culture will be "an official major in universities". This is on top of establishing well-endowed Confucian institutes around the world.

Against all these, how is Malaysia faring of late? On one end is to pilot a Dual Language Programme as a middle ground, while on the other, the Chair of Malay(sian) Studies internationally has been fledgling. Regretfully, we are still divisively framing this as a "Malay nationalistic sentiments about Bahasa Malaysia".

We forgot that it is the official national language that all Malaysians must be "nationalistic" about. Not just the Malays.

This is what separates China from us. They are more enlightened and conscious of who they are and their being. According to Ji: "In recent years, Chinese students' English learning craze (emphasis added) has, to some extent, led to the neglect of their mother tongue, especially China's traditional cultural legacy."

In our case, we are oblivious to such an erosion, instead choose to fuel similar "craze" officially, at the expense of our social cohesion and the demise of cultural traditions that are yet to be firmly rooted despite more than 50 years of Merdeka.

Hence, unlike Malaysia, the MOE in China issued a guideline in April last year, for teaching traditional culture from primary school through college (university). No less than President Xi Jinping echoed this view and voiced his disapproval on removing classic Chinese poems and essays from textbooks. He conjectured: "China's cultural genes should be planted in the minds of the young."

A former spokesman for MOE insisted that traditional Chinese culture should be placed at the core of Chinese language learning. He expressed confidence that students can "utilise ancient wisdom to solve current problems" as demonstrated by China's first Nobel Laureate in her research on the herbal anti-malarial, artemisinin (My View, Nov 3). Without it, Chinese would lose their identity in the trend of globalisation, quipped the dean of the School of Chinese Classics at Wuhan University.

If we think this is just Chinese paranoia, listen to Patricia Ryan, a native-English teacher of three decades, in her TED-talk (website) that has garnered more than 1.3 million hits entitled: "Don't insist on English!"