Live & Learn

The Malaysia Education Blueprint highlights the need for equity and unity in schools, with the aim of providing education for every child regardless of geography, gender or socioeconomic background. It also emphasises that schools are in a key position to foster unity with students learning to understand, accept and embrace differences through interaction with individuals from a range of religious and ethnic backgrounds. In fact, schools should be a natural setting to foster unity, and not divide students.

But in an increasingly polarised society, that is getting harder to achieve. Can our common goal of national unity truly be realised in schools?

We explore this with Dr Oh Ei Sun, Jason Wee of Architects of Diversity Malaysia,  Dipti Kumar of the Malaysian Collective Impact Initiative and UMNO’s Shahril Hamdan. 

This is an edited recording of the sixth webinar on Malaysia's education challenges, with a focus on Malaysia's Education Blueprint (MEB), and is a collaboration between BFM Media, Edunity Foundation and G25 Malaysia.

Kisah Tauke Mancis & Minyak Tumpah is a story of two communities and the relocation of a temple. The 2010 film takes a look behind its sensational headlines to understand how the dispute came to be, and reminds us how extremism can easily be fueled when we fail to understand the context of the dispute, and manage such situations beyond the emotions. We find out more from the directors of the film, Sheridan Mahavera Shakir and Siti Nurbaiyah Nadzmi. This film will be re-released this weekend on the Freedom Film Network's Youtube channel, as part of their ‘Weekend Watch with FreedomFilmFest.' Each thematic playlist has allowed us to revisit past human rights issues, and weigh their relevance in today's climate and context.

Image credit: Loyar Burok

We squeeze in one more episode of Law & Behold this year, a series meant to arm Malaysians with constitutional literacy, and done in collaboration with The Malaysian Bar, the University of Malaya's Faculty of Law and the Malaysian Centre for Constitutionalism and Human Rights (MCCHR). In this episode, we do a recap of important court decisions in 2021, discussing cases involving gender issues in relation to citizenship, media freedom and protection of human rights defenders, and also freedom of religion, while also reflecting on the state of human rights in Malaysia. Joining us to do this are Emeritus Professor Datuk Dr Hj Shad Saleem Faruqi (Holder of the Tunku Abdul Rahman Chair, at the Faculty of Law, University of Malaya), Firdaus Husni (Chief Human Rights Strategist, Malaysian Centre for Constitutionalism and Human Rights (MCCHR) and Kee Hui Yee (lawyer, Kanesalingam & Co).

Image credit: Yahoo! News Malaysia, MalaysiaKini, Shutterstock

Suara Rakyat Malaysia (SUARAM) recently released their 2021 human rights report. We take a look at the various human rights violations that have occurred throughout the year, here in Malaysia, and look at the changes that could potentially take place in 2022.

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37 year old Hoo Yew Wah, who’s on death row in Bentong,  received over 101,348 letters, emails and signatures from all over the world in support for his application for clemency and commutation of his death sentence. This was announced by Amnesty International Malaysia at a vigil they organised to commemorate Yew Wah’s recent birthday on 5 December and International Human Rights Day on 10 December. Brian Yap of Amnesty International Malaysia joins us to discuss.

Image credit: Amnesty International Malaysia

Bilingual proficiency is a key highlight in the Malaysia Education Blueprint as one of the 11 shifts of transformation. The shift outlines that school-going children are to be operationally proficient in the national language, Bahasa Malaysia, and also the international language of communication, English.

Part of the shift is also to upskill teachers in the English language, make the English language SPM paper a compulsory pass, and encourage children to learn an additional language by 2025. But have any of those goals come to fruition and if they haven't, why not? Where's the disconnect and what can we do to address this issue in order to make our students proficient in the English language? Tan Sri Yong Poh Kon, Chairman of Royal Selangor International Sdn and Afzal Abdul Rahim, Executive Director of TIME dotCom joins us to discuss.

This is an edited recording of the fourth webinar on Malaysia's education challenges, with a focus on Malaysia's Education Blueprint (MEB), and is a collaboration between BFM Media, Edunity Foundation and G25 Malaysia.

This year, FreedomFilmFest will be celebrating 10 years of documentary film screenings in Singapore, which has been co organised by Singapore's Function 8, and Malaysia's Freedom Film Network. Focussing on films that touch on often hidden or unheard stories of Singapore, this year's line-up has a mix of films from the Marxist Conspiracy in 1987 and The Online Citizen, to stories about sex workers, and a community of heavy vehicle drivers in Singapore. Today on the show, we first speak to Jessica Lee, a filmmaker and the director of the film The Shades of Love, which takes us on a short journey into the loves, lives and losses of sex workers in Singapore during the time of Covid-19. Following that, we catch up with Yusri "Shaggy" Sapari, a filmmaker and director of Trailer Boys, which follows the journey of Irfan, a key member of Abam2 Trailer Singapura, which is a community of heavy vehicle drivers from Singapore.  You can find out more about the films and the festival both here and here.

Image credit: FreedomFilmFest Singapore Facebook page

It’s International Anti-Corruption Day today, designated by the UN to raise awareness of corruption and the importance in combating and preventing it. Today, we’ll be discussing Malaysia’s never-ending struggle against corruption. How are we doing? Where do we go from here? Dr. Muhammad Mohan of Transparency International Malaysia joins us to discuss.

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The All Women’s Action Society (AWAM) and Save the School MY released a joint report recently on 770 testimonies of abuse, such as on period spot checks and sexual harassment.  From which they identified 1,145 incidents of abuse and 1,495 violations. This is gut-wrenching and highlights the severe rot within our schooling system. Schools are, after all, supposed to be a safe place for learning. So, what can we do about it? Puteri N Balqis of Save the Schools MY and Jernell Tan of AWAM join us to discuss.

Image credit: Shutterstock

In Parliament last week, Padang Rengas MP Nazri Abdul Aziz said that Kuala Lumpur is “losing its identity” with roads and buildings given English names rather than local ones. But what’s in a name for our local places? Elizabeth Cardosa, who is well known for her work in heritage conservation, joins us to discuss what names bring to the history and heritage of a place, and how much it matters to places like KL, for example, and its identity.

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