Ministry urged to right the wrongs in history textbooks
KUCHING: The Ministry of Education (MoE) is urged to rectify the wrong information about Malaysia’s formation in the national school Primary 5 and 6 history text books.
Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP) Youth chief Michael Tiang and its youth central publicity secretary Milton Foo, said the text books are currently used by students throughout the country, and what makes them even more disappointed is that they had held a press conference about the same issue in 2015 and now three years on, there is still no action taken by the MoE.
In a press statement issued here yesterday, Tiang said the errors and omissions found were mostly about the roles of Sarawak in Malaysia’s formation.
“Regrettably, after three years, the same errors in the textbook remain, and until today, there is no action taken to review the textbook. Today, we also discovered some serious mistakes in the Primary 6 textbook!,” he added.
In the Primary 5 textbook, Tiang said the mistake was found in the chapter about ‘The birth of a new nation’. “There is nothing wrong to teach the students about the process leading to Malaya’s independence in 1957. But it is absolutely wrong to call the Federation of Malaya ‘our nation’ in the textbook. “
Tiang also said everyone (in Malaysia) knew that Malaysia was only formed in 1963 whereas the Federation of Malaya was formed in 1957.
As for the Primary 6 history textbook, Tiang said they had discovered that the textbook mentioned that Malaysia consisted of 13 states in 1963, which is wrong.
The Federal Constitution and Malaysia Agreement 1963 clearly say that Malaysia was formed in 1963 by four territories, namely, Federation of Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak and North Borneo.
“The way the textbook was written is likened to altering the history between 1963 and 1976, and for me this is not teaching history. The rest of the chapter is all about the 13 states in Malaysia,” he said.
He added that when Sarawak helped to form Malaysia in 1963, it (Sarawak) was a sovereign state. However, in 1976, Sarawak was made to become one of the 13 states. He said the textbook should present the real facts to the students, and the government should set up a special review committee to look into the errors in the textbooks, which were actually designed and printed by the previous government.
“The present PH government must rectify these errors swiftly, instead of tolerating them.”
Tiang also said that they were definitely not setting up traps for the PH government because back in 2015, he and Foo also blasted the Ministry of Education of the previous government for not taking actions to right the wrong.