From Liew Li Xuan

A school should be the safest place in the world for a child. Yet last week, Malaysia was shaken by the death of a 16-year-old girl at SMK Bandar Utama 4 in Petaling Jaya.

The tragedy shocked the nation. But beyond the crime scene and the grief, this is not just a story about one student or one school, it is a story about us and a society quietly falling sick.

This case is not isolated. Just days earlier, Malaysia was reeling from news of a rape in school that forced the prime minister to call for a renewed focus on values in education. Two violent acts involving minors in supposedly safe learning spaces within one week. That is not coincidence, that is correlation.

Something is deeply wrong. Our society is ill, our children are struggling, and our family education systems are breaking down.

What we are seeing is a chain effect: wounds multiply when homes fail to teach empathy, schools fail to nurture emotional awareness, and society normalises anger and humiliation.

We have raised a generation connected to the world, yet disconnected from themselves. They scroll through violence online, but rarely learn to process real-world emotions. They are taught to chase grades but not to handle rejection. They are told to behave, but not to heal.

Malaysia has long emphasised academic excellence, but character education, empathy, and moral reasoning are still treated as side chapters in a textbook, not life skills. Schools often run on autopilot, guided by exam timetables and administrative checklists.

Teachers and counsellors do their best, but they are human, too: overwhelmed, understaffed, and sometimes, unequipped to handle the emotional storms students bring into the classroom.

We talk about “student wellbeing”, but it remains a slogan rather than a structure.

If an individual can bring a weapon to school out of emotional frustration, something much deeper has failed long before that act of violence.

We must stop pretending that the problem begins in school. It begins earlier at home.

Too many children grow up in emotionally cold or unstable environments where communication means commands, not conversations. When love becomes conditional, and anger becomes normalised, children learn silence instead of empathy.

Parents, often caught in financial or personal stress, may unintentionally transfer that emotional chaos to their children. The result: youth who appear confident online but are lost inside.

When families neglect emotional education, schools inherit that neglect. When schools overlook warning signs, society pays the price. Violence doesn’t appear overnight, it festers in the small cracks we ignore – the lonely student, the angry comment, the untreated pain.

And when violence enters a school, it isn’t just a crime scene, but a collective failure. A mirror held up to every parent, educator, and policymaker.

We cannot keep reacting only when tragedy strikes. Prevention is not about more rules or punishments. It is about rebuilding values: honesty, empathy, communication, and self-control – the kind of values that keep a blade from ever being lifted in anger.

It is easy to blame the individual, school, or system. But pointing fingers will not heal anything. This is a wake-up call to look inward to the kind of society we are shaping.

We need to restore the culture of care where schools are emotional communities, not just exam factories. Where family conversations replace silent dinners. Where teachers, parents, and policymakers see each other not as separate actors, but as one ecosystem of responsibility.

The incident in Bandar Utama was not just a single violent act. It was a symptom of emotional neglect, moral decay, and a society that has forgotten how to feel.

If we do not act now, this sickness will spread deeper into our future, quietly, invisibly, and irreversibly.

The time for sympathy has passed. What Malaysia needs now is reflection, reform, and rehumanisation. Because beyond the blade lies a question we can no longer ignore: how much longer will we wait before we start healing our children and ourselves?

Liew Li Xuan is a youth advocate and founder of LifeUp Malaysia, an organisation dedicated to digital well-being, preventing cyberbullying and promoting scam awareness.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.