SITI Kasim dreads what the future holds for younger generation Malaysians after watching a video entitled “China’s Kindergarten Kids Are on a Different Level” which reckons that China can potentially surpass the US as an economic powerhouse because the Chinese way of teaching and thinking is of a different level.
In a nutshell, Chinese children are typically taught a national curriculum focusing on language, mathematics, art, music, physical education and general knowledge (including science and social studies).
This includes learning basic Chinese characters, Pinyin (the phonetic romanisation of Chinese), number concepts and practical life skills like cooking and washing.
In contrast, the human rights activist and lawyer can only recall Malaysian kindergartens inculcating hatred via anti-Zionist boycott, tearing/stepping/burning of Israeli flags or picking up (toy) arms as retaliation to the Israeli invasion of Palestine.
“What are the benefits of teaching such stuff to children of that age when they should be taught how to respect, love or understand the world better,” ranted Siti Kasim in her latest YouTube video.
“Seriously why isn’t the Education Ministry (MOE) monitor what is being taught at kindergarten or schools or even if the teachers are moulding them (the children) into the type of human beings that we wish to develop for the future.
“If such is the case, Malaysia be turned upside down and doomed for destruction … Malaysia will not go anywhere but will keel over and fall flat on its back if these are the types of future generation that we produce.”
More broadly Siti Kasim is very concerned that Malaysian children from kindergarten/pre-school to primary/secondary school as well as university will end up as narrow-minded adults who only see as the world from their lenses following years of indoctrination.
As an example, she pointed to her recent fear that public universities in Malaysia are fast becoming breeding ground for close minded and religiously radical undergraduates.
To recap, the Orang Asli advocate has a bone to pick with the Malaysian Higher Education Ministry after a rightist Universiti Malaya (UM) student group stood up against the “Is Malaysia a Secular or Islamic Country?” in which she was a panel member.
‘Little wonder that, UM in the Asian ranking sits at #68 in the Times Higher Education ranking (currently #64 as per the 2025 ranking list),” she lamented.
“This is sheer embarrassment to Malaysia and especially the tertiary institution’s alumni for the standard of our deemed most prestigious university is going down and down.
“Hi alumni/alumna of UM. Are you going to allow your university to become the shame of Malaysia? This is unbelievable. Luckily, I studied abroad (she is an alumni of Queen Mary University of London).”
Editor’s Note: The current Top 12 Asian Universities as per the Times Higher Education ranking are Tsinghua University; Peking University; National University of Singapore (NUS); Nanyang Technological University of Singapore (NTU); University of Tokyo; University of Hong Kong; Fudan University; Zhejiang University; The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Shanghai Jiao Tong University; University of Science and Technology of China; and the The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST).
While not denying that introducing Thai, Khmer and Vietnamese as elective languages in schools to boost ASEAN ties is a good idea, Siti Kasim is adamant that the emphasis should be placed on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) subjects or even to encourage our children to learn English.
On the overall, she remains pessimistic about the prospect of Malaysian education.
Frankly, I don’t know which direction we’re heading but seriously, I don’t see that we’re progressing well but rather from bad to worse.
“If there’s no change of direction, I honestly foresee that Malaysia’s is pursuing a path of destruction … There is still hope for the country to rise from the ashes on condition that the Madani government quickly rectifies the faulty system instead of only focusing on sticking to power.” – April 28, 2025
