BACKGROUND
The Ministry of Rural and Regional Development has entrusted the Department of Orang Asli Affairs (JHEOA), now the Department of Orang Asli Development (JAKOA) to oversee the educational programs for OA. The OA education was formalized in 1952 (Edo, 2012). Since then, educating the community has been one of the Government’s priorities (MOE, 2013). After almost 50 years, in 2001, the Orang Asli literacy rate was only 51% (MOEM 2008) compared to the national rate of 93.9% (SHUAKAM 2006). Moreover, majority of the OA students will drop out of school after completed their studies in the primary school with only 2% have been successful in advancing their higher education (Ms Ita is one of them graduated from UUM).
Why is it so hard for the OA to access to education? Our group was assigned to find out the challenges and barriers to OA education. Let's have a quick look.
CHALLENGES AND BARRIERS
Health, Family and Culture
40% of OA children by age 2 are malnourished. The brain development for children is very important for their future development. When the basic need (food) is not met, education became irrelevant.
The older generation are sceptical about sending their children to school because they already sufficient with their traditional way of life (hunting, fishing, live with the natural resources in the jungle). As such, the parents viewed their children's attendance to school and the academic result not as important as an helping hand at home. Extra expenses in school and communication barriers also hinder OA from continue study. Further, some OA children with no birth certificate are unable to enrol in national school.
Location
Some OA village located in very remote area and the journey to school is too far and inaccessible. This was worsen during bad weather. Hence, the children unable to attend to school regularly and punctually. This will certainly affect their studies. Although some schools provide shuttle services, but a return trip takes 3-4 hours and the service is irregular with bad maintenance of the vehicles.
The Relevance of Education to OA
Younger generation OA learn through informal learning experiences (life skills in the jungle, spiritual ceremony) from older generation. The children are unable to apply the knowledge they learnt from school at home. As such, there is a discontinuity from the educational needs as expected in the school and what is expected at home. This made them felt lack of motivation to be in school.
School and Learning Environment
The government continually emphasizing ‘‘the need for integration and assimilation of the Orang Asli within the mainstream society’’. Thus, teachers work hard to ensure OA children able to "fit" into education system rather than exploring how the present education system can accommodate their needs.
There are about 78 hostels in the peninsula for school-going OA children who live in remote villages. There are unfortunate cases happened in hostel that worried the OA parent. Further, the young children who feel insecure being away from parent will rather dropout and go home.
OA children experienced the sense of being different for the first time when they were in school. School activities are time-regulated, competitive, at a different language and in an enclosed classroom but the environment in the village or jungle is so different.
Peers, Teachers and Pedagogy
OA often being called names or taunted at their behaviors for being "Orang Asli".
Some teachers have negative attitude towards OA children. The teaching method is inappropriate to the status, ability and way of thinking of OA children.
The teaching approach in mainstream may not suitable for OA children in view of their background.
Ms Ita, an Orang Asli from Semai tribe was invited by Dr Kim to share her work with the OA in Tapah, Perak. Despite all the above challenges and barriers to education for OA, she has completed her degree with UUM with perseverance and positive attitude. She told us that although her parents were illiterate, they are very supportive in her education. As such, she do believe education can help the OA community to have a better life but with appropriate method and curriculum.
Malaysian CARE is a non-profit Christian social work organisation registered in Malaysia since 1979. They are committed to serve the poor and needy irrespective of religion and ethnicity. Read more about their Rural & Urban Community Development here:
We was informed by Ms Ita that there are actually 18+1 OA tribe in Malaysia in which TEOQ tribe was not in the list. According to JAKOA, there are 178 thousand OA population in Malaysia but a statistic released by another NGO shown 270K population. Nevertheless, they are the minority group in Malaysia whose voice were not represented, right being neglected and their natural resource from the jungle was taken away by others.
Besides the awareness program of land's right, Malaysian Care is focus on the empowerment and OA's rights in the following areas:
- Education (both parents and children)
- Economic
- Social
- Political
- Environment
- Basic facilities
- Culture
- Religion
The education challenges and dropout issues discussed by Ms Ita were similar to our previous discussion. She added that, the top management of JAKOA are not staffed by OA people and only 5% of the staff are OA. Hence, the non-OA staff definitely cannot understand the needs and struggle better than OA.
Ms Ita also reiterated that OA community is humble and peaceful. One of the reason a family move away from a place is because of conflict. They don't fight.
The community learning centres were set up in the OA village. As such, there will be no problem in accessibility for the children. However, there is still no water supply and electricity in the village (after 62 years of independence and millions (maybe billions) of allocation... this is not from Ita, I just curious) and the villagers have to carried the water manually from a far away river! The schools were led by OA teachers which were trained by Malaysian Care so that they can deliver the knowledge in mother toungue and are more culturally sensitive. The name of the programs are in OA language i.e Deek Penanty (House of Knowledge), Si Nui Bor & Benaneq (Youth Camp) etc to create sense of belonging among them.
Thank you Ms Ita for the insightful sharing and presentation. She is a brave and dedicated girl with a big heart to give back to her own community. The road to an equitable quality education is still a long way to go. All the best to Ms Ita and OA community!
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| Ms Ita (Front row: 5th from the right) |
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