cookie-cutter comments

Catastrophe has become such a marketplace word. The four syllables in succession ring and amplify your own localized version of bad news, making you feel like the world’s caving in.

Maybe it is.

I think there’s something deep-seated that gets moved when your own institutions of higher learning are given the once-over and then summarily dismissed. Cuts even deeper when it’s foreigners who are being dismissive. Head over to Jeff Ooi’s post about university rankings, and read the comments. Most deplore the state of universities in Malaysia, and I think we all know the reasons for such a low ranking.

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What is it about the need to assert a sense of “religious attachment” nowadays? Mission schools in Singapore have been doing this for ages, though I don’t know how it’s practiced in Missions schools in Malaysia. There are prayers each morning and they provide various other religiously-motivated programs.

What sparked the above is the fact that now ‘tudungs’ will eventually become mandatory for students to wear in the International Islamic University (IIU). How to think about it objectively? I don’t know; the situation’s pretty charged in ‘multi-religious’ Malaysia, I suppose, and any view could always be seen as partisan.

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