Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.
– Malcolm X, civil rights activist
What has happened to our schools? That is the question we must ask after the death of 14-year-old Keziah Nisha, a tragedy that has shaken the nation and reopened a wound we have been too willing to cover with statements, meetings and assurances that everything is under control.
Let me be absolutely clear: police investigations are continuing and the circumstances surrounding Keziah’s death must be established through evidence, not social-media speculation. But allegations of bullying, harassment and racial taunts surrounding this tragedy are serious enough to demand not merely an investigation into one incident, but a merciless examination of what is happening inside our schools.
The Education Ministry has ordered the cops, relevant inspectorate and authorities to expedite their investigation. When so many people are questioned, surely we cannot dismiss the wider problem by pretending that bullying and racial cruelty are simply the work of a few “naughty children”.
That is why bullying must stop being treated as a disciplinary nuisance. It is not harmless teasing when it systematically humiliates, isolates, terrorises or destroys another human being, and racial taunts are not childish jokes when they teach children that ethnicity can be used as a weapon.
We send our children to school to acquire knowledge, discipline and values. We do not send them there to learn who is stronger, who has the louder gang, who can invent the cruellest insult, or which race can be mocked without consequences.
And yet, too often, the response begins only after something terrible happens. We hold meetings after the tears have flowed, announce investigations after public anger explodes, and promise zero tolerance after the nation discovers that tolerance, in practice, was anything but zero.
This is where the system must look honestly into the mirror. A school can have beautiful gates, impressive examination results and colourful mission statements, but if a frightened child cannot safely report abuse, then something fundamental has failed, or rather the nation has failed.
Teachers cannot be expected to become policemen, psychologists, investigators and social workers without adequate support. But neither can school authorities hide behind workload, procedure or bureaucracy when warning signs have been reported and a child feels unheard.
Parents must also be brought into the equation earlier. If a child repeatedly bullies others, the family should not receive a vague telephone call followed by a slap on the wrist and business as usual; there must be structured intervention, counselling and, where necessary, firm consequences.
A child who bullies needs intervention; a victim needs protection. A system that does neither is not being compassionate, it is being negligent.
The racial dimension is even more dangerous because Malaysia cannot afford to allow prejudice to take root in classrooms. If children are taught that insulting another person’s race is normal playground entertainment, do not be surprised when those same attitudes grow taller, louder and uglier outside the school gates, and eventually lead to racial riots.
That is why racial harassment must be treated as seriously as any other form of intimidation. There should be sustained education on mutual respect and shared citizenship, but there must also be consequences when those values are deliberately violated.
Do not give us another slogan. Give every school a transparent anti-bullying and anti-discrimination protocol, publish national data, identify recurring problem areas and allow independent scrutiny so Malaysians can see whether policies are working or merely collecting dust.
We must also examine the culture surrounding discipline. Too often, victims are advised to avoid the bully, change classes, stay quiet or simply learn to cope, while the aggressor remains comfortable and the institution congratulates itself because the matter has been “settled”.
That is backwards. The victim should not carry the inconvenience created by the perpetrator, and no child should be forced to choose between personal safety and continuing an education.
The problem is larger than bullying alone. We must ask what exactly we are teaching our children when education becomes obsessed with examinations, rankings and certificates while character, empathy, critical thinking and intellectual honesty are treated as optional extras.
A nation can produce graduates by the thousands and still fail to produce educated human beings. Knowledge without values can create clever people who lack wisdom, while an education system that cannot distinguish evidence from fantasy risks producing students who are confident without being properly informed.
This brings me to another disturbing aspect of our educational culture: the willingness of some people with impressive titles to make extraordinary historical or scientific claims without convincing evidence. We have heard sensational assertions about ancient people flying, teaching others “flying kung fu”, Romans learning shipbuilding from this region and speculation connecting ancient industrial history to extraordinary extra-terrestrial events.
Are universities mass-producing half-baked PhD graduates?
Let us respect academic freedom, by all means. But academic freedom is not freedom from evidence, and scholarship is not a licence to rewrite history according to whim, fancy, ideology or the desire for applause.
Our children deserve teachers and scholars who teach them how to question, verify, investigate and think. If we fail there, how can we expect young Malaysians to distinguish truth from propaganda, research from fantasy or genuine patriotism from the invention of convenient myths?
The same intellectual discipline is required in dealing with Keziah’s death. We must not exploit a grieving family or pronounce anyone guilty before investigators complete their work, but we must also refuse the convenient habit of waiting for public anger to fade before returning to business as usual.
When the investigations are completed, the findings must lead to action. If weaknesses are discovered, identify them; if complaints were mishandled, explain why; if individuals or institutions failed in their duties, hold them accountable, and if existing rules are inadequate, change them.
This is not about destroying teachers or humiliating schools. Most teachers genuinely care about children, and many are themselves struggling within an increasingly demanding system.
It is precisely because good teachers and responsible school leaders deserve support that the culture of denial must end. A teacher who reports a problem should be supported, a counsellor should have sufficient resources and a principal should never protect an institution’s reputation at the expense of a child’s welfare.
And our political leaders must stop arriving late to the crisis. Do not wait for another funeral, another viral video, another anguished parent or another national uproar before discovering that bullying is serious.
Education reform cannot consist only of changing syllabuses, introducing fashionable programmes and announcing digital platforms. It must begin with a simple principle: every child has the right to enter a school without fear of violence, humiliation, racial abuse or psychological terror.
If that right cannot be guaranteed, then all our talk about world-class education rings hollow. What is the value of excellent examination results if a child is too frightened to attend class, too ashamed to report abuse or too exhausted by cruelty to believe tomorrow will be better?
Keziah’s death must not become another name briefly mourned before the next controversy captures our attention. Let investigators establish the truth, but let this tragedy also force us to confront a truth we already know: bullying and racism thrive wherever silence, delay and institutional self-protection defeat courage.
So, enough with the speeches. Enough with committees that disappear into bureaucratic fog, enough with telling victims to be resilient while asking perpetrators to be more careful next time, and enough with leaders pretending that the system needs only another minor adjustment.
Act now. And I say we need a national reset in education, a system that places safety, accountability and human dignity alongside academic achievement. Stop bullying, stop racial hatred and stop treating warning signs as somebody else’s problem.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of Sarawak Tribune. The writer can be reached at rajlira@gmail.com
