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Education, British Colonialism, and a Plural Society in West Malaysia: The Development of Education in the British Settlements along the Straits of Malacca, 1786–1874

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Peter Wicks
Peter Wicks*
Affiliation:
Academic Services at Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education, Toowoomba, Australia
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Extract

In the modern history of West Malaysia, people from four of the world's major cultural traditions—Malay, Chinese, Indian, and British—have met, settled, clashed and sought to co-exist. Although the British who came as colonizers have now gone, the complex relationship between the formal educational system of the colonial era and the divisive pluralism of contemporary West Malaysian society continues to attract considerable academic and political attention. Recently published monographic studies on aspects of West Malaysian educational history have focused on the period following British “Intervention” in the Peninsular Malay States of Perak and Selangor in 1874, and one of these studies explicitly attributes the “seeds of separatism” in contemporary West Malaysian society to the educational policies implemented under British colonial auspices during the period between 1874 and 1940. Since this article is concerned with an earlier period than the recent monographic studies, it cannot be employed to test or disprove the arguments of these works. The article does, however, examine the origins of West Malaysia's cultural pluralism in the century prior to 1874 and portrays this pluralism as the consequence of a multiplicity of circumstances, not merely British educational policies.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , Summer 1980 , pp. 163 - 187
Copyright
Copyright © 1980 by History of Education Society 

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References

Notes

1 The relationship is discussed from varying scholarly perspectives in the following recent works:- Chan, Chai Hon, Planning Education for a Plural Society. (Paris, 1971); Koh, E.K., “Education for Unity in Malaya—Problems and Prospects,” Unpublished paper presented at the Comparative Education Centre, University of Maryland, April, 1970; Chang, Paul M.P., Educational Development in a Plural Society: A Malaysian Case Study (Singapore, 1973); Seng, Philip Loh Fook, Seeds of Separatism: Educational Policy in Malaya, 1874–1940 (Lumpur, Kuala, 1975); Stevenson, Rex, Cultivators and Administrators; British Educational Policy towards the Malays, 1875–1906 ( Lumpur, Kuala, 1975); and Kee, Francis Wong Hoy, “Education, Society, and Development in Malaysia,” Asian Profile, 5, and 6 (December, 1977): 565–578. For more polemical viewpoints, see bin Mohamad, Mahathir, The Malay Dilemma (Singapore, 1970); and the Revised Report of the Royal Commission on the Teaching Services, West Malaysia (Lumpur, Kuala, 1971), Paras. 6.1 and 6.2, p. 24.Google Scholar

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90 Mackay to Colonial Office, p. 4.Google Scholar

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97 A small Malay teachers' training college was opened in Taipang, Perak, in 1898, and closed two years' later. A larger training establishment opened in Malacca with 24 Malay students in December, 1900.Google Scholar

98 CO 273, Vol. 64, No. 243. Ord, to Kimbeley, , 17th January, 1873.Google Scholar

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