One of the time-honored traditions of the Malaysian public education system is this thing known as the ‘spot-check’. This is when, about once a month, prefects and the disciplinary teacher will go from class to class confiscating anything and everything under the sun.
The process, if it was ever filmed, would shock the nation. Students are commanded to stand up and move away from their desks and bags. The school gestapo prefects would then do a thorough search of each and every students’ belongings and possessions AS IF the whole exercise was a manhunt and one or two students had stolen the royal diamonds.
Now for the bad news.
The list of things being confiscated range from pencil sharpeners (those dangerous devices whose only purpose exist to produce weapons of war known as pencils) to scissors (bloody potential vehicles of manslaughter) to hair-bands and wrist-bands (which don’t meant school regulation colors and thus stand guilty of sedition) to hair-gel (which students include as part of their plot start a riot) to key-chains (which secretly contain heroin) and, of course, the most devious of items: the phone.
It doesn’t matter if students don’t even turn the phone on during school hours. It doesn’t matter if some (or many?) students use public transportation to school and thus require a phone to contact their parents en route. It doesn’t matter if it’s a crazy-cheap device meant merely for phone calls.
All this is irrelevant.
The only thing that means anything in the universe of spot-checks is the fact that the phone represents a hideous affront to all things good about formal education and therefore no angel and demon will stop the teachers and prefects from ripping it away from students.
Next question: How does a student get back his or her phone?
Well, she has to go to the school office, fill up a form and if lucky the phone will be retuned on the spot. If not, the parent has to go all the way to school the next day to retrieve it.
After which, most likely, the student will continue bringing the phone to school (especially if he continues to use public transportation) where it will most likely get confiscated again.
Why do our schools do this? What is the rationale and purpose of these fascist-like activities which brand every student a ‘criminal’ first then, later, effectively STEAL things from them whilst rendering them guilty?
Yes yes yes, I know there are such things as school rules or code. But is every parent or student supposed to know these rules, without which the child have his slightly longer than usual scissors taken away by force? Are these rules even logical? How does having a wrist band or a key-chain risk causing trouble? Are the school’s leaders afraid that students will fight over these things? Seriously? So let’s prepare our children for the real world by ensuring and policing how equal all their private possessions need to be?
Is it about uniformity and conformity then? Do we honestly believe that? So, for the sake of appearing ‘the same’, let’s subject teenagers to having their property ripped from them because, oh, a green watch threatens to unravel the universe of equality that is our public schools? Is confiscating a key-chain really about promoting uniformity or about disciplinary committees having nothing better to do?
What kind of message are we sending?
This may sound a bit dramatic, but spot-checks look like mass thefts by any other name. I mean, where do we draw the line and realise, in fact, that we are teaching our prefects — supposed the ‘cream of the crop’ among students — to take things away from innocent people without their consent? How is this all not criminal in an almost literal sense? In what other institution are a members’ possessions (of such trivial nature) forcefully removed by them from authority figures and the members themselves labelled guilty?
I can think of only two: Airport security and a prison. So, uh, are our students being treated like terrorists and inmates?
What other reason for these spot-checks and confiscations there? Are these spot-checks supposed to help with learning in a broad sense?
If so then the message appears to be that, uh, learning is best done in the absence of anything which promotes individuality. I mean, if a school feels threatened by a pink wrist-band, is there still hope for an educational institution?
Finally, notice that many private schools use i-Pads and tablets in class…yet our public schools are taking phones away from pupils.
I’m gonna stop here. But I hope as parents and teachers and educators we can speak out more. The whole world is moving into a digitalized era and rebelling against fascism — our public schools shouldn’t be taking the opposite route.
