Tajuddin Rasdi, who teaches architecture at UCSI University, said this was the way to acquire “real knowledge”.
“Universities are supposed to teach students to be critical and to question everything,” he said. “In discourses, you have to have people with differing views. That’s how you discover new points of view.”
Unfortunately, he said, this was not currently happening in universities in the country.
“Today, if the university is against the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) movement, it will hold a seminar that is anti-LGBT. How are we to see the other side of the coin then? That is not knowledge, that is conditioning.”
Tajuddin said “conditioning” meant that one was not encouraged to think for oneself, as if one was a slave.
“You condition slaves to think in a certain manner and do certain kinds of jobs.
“If the university is meant to condition the students and you expect the students not to do the things that you have proscribed, then you will never have development. You will always be on the hind leg of progress.”
He was commenting on the decisions made by two universities to penalise student activists Anis Syafiqah and Asheeq Ali for their participation in the #TangkapMalaysianOfficial1 rally on Aug 27.
Universiti Malaya’s Anis (and two others) was suspended for six months and fined RM400 while Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia’s Asheeq was suspended for a semester and fined RM200.
They were found guilty of acting in a manner detrimental and prejudicial to the interests and good reputation of their universities, acting in a manner detrimental to public safety and violating university regulations by organising and participating in the rally.
According to Tajuddin, a student goes to university to discover new things.
“If you are here just to get a job, to get a degree so that you can become an architect, then you are a trade student in a trade school.”
Tajuddin said in Malaysia conditioning would begin at the start of a child’s formal education.
“The Malaysian education system tries to standardise the student,” he said. “They tell you to wear this kind of uniform, this kind of haircut, this kind of shoes.
“In the US, they don’t go for standardisation. They go for individual expression, and that is the key to their creativity and success in industry, science and so on.”