The Minister for Youth and Sports, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, has said that the proposed national social service to provide a compulsory three-month character-building stint for an estimated 400,000 students immediately after their Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) examination may be implemented early next year.
Muhyiddin said: “Among other things, the programme will require all SPM leavers to attend and that they go through military-style discipline and training as well as participate in social service in their communities.
“Apart from building character and disciplining these students, we can ensure that there is no idle period from the end of SPM examination to the time the results are out.”
But the biggest shocker of all is Muhyiddin’s estimate that the budget for such programme is the massive sum of RM500 million annually.
The Government must seriously reconsider the national social service proposal as to whether there are no more effective ways to spend RM500 million annually to deal with social ills affecting youths, particularly the problem of “three-month idleness” of 400,000 SPM school leavers.
There seems to be a lot of confused thinking about the problem of social ills affecting youths which include the following:
2. Are there statistics to show that the incidence of social ills affecting youths are extremely highly during this “three-month idleness”?
3. The “three-month idleness” of students is not a present-day problem - but had been part of the educational system even before Merdeka. Why should the “three-month idleness” of SPM school leavers suddenly require a massive RM500 million programme to resolve when for 50 years, it was never regarded as a cause of social ills affecting youths?
4. If the “three-month idleness” of students waiting for SPM results is a serious cause of social ills affecting youths, isn’t there other ways to resolve this problem without a RM500 million budget annually - as enabling the students to continue with their preferred courses of study without any “idle” waiting, based on their school forecast results? In fact, private institutions of higher learning have already reacted to this proposal by saying that trhey would be adversely affected, as most of them admit Form Five leavers for foundation courses in January.
5. The most important question of all, however, is whether a RM500 million “three-month national social service” is the right answer to the problem of social ills affecting youths - whether the emphasis should be on character education and character-building of pupils before school-leaving age at the SPM level.
There had been a lot of finger-pointing as to who should bear responsibility for the escalating social ills affecting youths - the teachers, the parents or the government. Such finger-pointing serves no useful purpose as the problem of escalating social ills affecting youths must be the collective responsibility of the schools, the home, the community and the government.
The RM500 million national social service plan seems to be another one of the government’s “quick-fix” solutions stemming from the government’s attitude that it knows best - - which is not the case, as there are clearly limits to what the Government can achieve. Otherwise, the problem of social ills affecting youths would not have reached its present magnitude as the government’s Rakan Muda scheme had been conceived precisely to address social problems affecting youths. However, after budgetting about RM100 million for Rakan Muda, involving some one million youths, the country is back to square one with escalating social ills affecting youths.
What is needed is not a panic plan to spend RM500 million to introduce a national social service plan for the 400,000 SPM school leavers or to criminalise a social problem but to create a national consensus through a comprehensive nation-wide discussion and awareness that the home, the school and the community have a common task to address the problem of social ills affecting youths.
The other aspect which requires attention is what percentage of the youths in the country suffer from social ills as to justify a RM500 million programme annually to rectify the failure of character education and building before they reach school-leaving age.
There have indeed been a disturbing rise of criminal cases involving juveniles, with 2,082 cases in 1994, 2,152 cases in 1995 and increasing to 1,414 cases in the first half of 1996. The number of arrests of juveniles have increased from 3,247 in 1994, 3,560 in 1995 and increasing to 2,330 in the first half of 1996.
The inescapable question is still whether spending RM500 million annually on the 400,000 SPM school-leavers is the best response to the serious problem of social ills affecting youths.
The Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Dr. Mahathir Mohamad said yesterday that Malaysia’s teenagers need heroes to look up to in the midst of social problems facing them.
Will the RM500 million national social service programme help the youths to find such “heroes” to motivate them to become good citizens and productive members of the society?
(1/3/97)