I think most of us will agree that Moral studies are one of the most useless subjects we learn in school. Well it is not to say having higher moral grounds is not useful at all but we got to look at how this subject is being taught to students. The intentions are good but the execution of this subject can be pretty mind boggling.
During my time in secondary school, moral studies are taught in such a way that mind boggling would be an understatement. I was pretty dumbfounded at times when we are required to provide answers in the correct ‘imbuhan’ form of the nilai nilai murni. For example, when the marking scheme requires us to put Hemah Tinggi as our absolute answer, we absolutely need to put just that.
We cannot put Berhemah Tinggi because it is technically wrong to answer in such a way. Tell me folks. What exactly are we learning here? Are we learning about word structures or are we learning moral studies? Sometimes it felt like I am learning how to be a grammar police more than how to be a better person itself.
If you think logic prevails when answering this paper, you will be sorely mistaken as reasoning and common sense is virtually non existent. Another example of questions I used to read in my moral studies goes something like “You accidentally hit a cow in the kampung, what should you do under such circumstances?”.
The typical answer will be “You report to the kampung fellas and you say sorry for your mistakes” but how many people are man enough to follow this solution? If you are keen on following this solution then I will laud you for having the biggest balls in Malaysia because it is an open secret that hitting or damaging villager’s property is like offering yourself to the sacrificial altar unless you have a financial or necromancing solution to it.
But knowing this is moral studies we are dealing with, we will answer with the most morally unchallenged answers we could ever think of, although we won’t do that in real life. Aren’t we supposed to bersikap jujur and is it not defeating purpose of learning moral in the first place if we need to lie in onder to get the ‘morally’ correct answers?
