- 著者
-
左右田 直規
- 出版者
- Japan Society for Southeast Asian Studies
- 雑誌
- 東南アジア -歴史と文化- (ISSN:03869040)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.2005, no.34, pp.3-39, 2005-05-30 (Released:2010-02-25)
- 参考文献数
- 42
This paper intends to examine the interplay between the official construction of “Malayness” in colonial educational policy and the formation of Malay ethno-national identity in British Malaya. For this purpose, it uses as its case study the Sultan Idris Training College (SITC), a Malay teacher training college that was established in Tanjung Malim, Perak, in 1922.The SITC played an important role in the reproduction of ethnic, class, and gender relations in British Malaya. As in the case of the Malay College, Kuala Kangsar (MCKK), the SITC was a residential school, modeled on public schools in England, in which the college authorities aimed to have total control over the students' studies, their extra-curricular activities (sports, cultural and recreational activities, military training and scouting), and their lives in the student dormitories called “houses.” Unlike the aristocratic MCKK, however, the SITC was designed to train Malay rural male teachers so that they would be able to educate Malay village boys to be “intelligent peasants.”SITC-graduated teachers were expected to become local agents of the British colonial authorities for the inculcation of desirable values among rural Malay children. The formal curriculum for the SITC was Malay-centered and ruralbiased, with an emphasis on the Malay language and the history and the geography of the “Malay world, ” as well as on practical education such as gardening, basketry, carpentry, etc. Furthermore, it was also male-biased when compared with the curriculum for the Malay Women's Training College (MWTC), which stressed domestic science for Malay girls.Though the SITC was a product of British colonial education policy, it left enough room for its teachers and students to utilize their shared experiences and to reorganize their acquired knowledge in order to construct Malay ethnonational identity. The SITC had some well-known Malay teachers and a European Principal all of whom were active in propagating Malay nationalist sentiments.SITC students could obtain knowledge on Malaya, the “Malay world” and other parts of the world not only during regular classes, but also from daily communication with their teachers and college mates, as well as from various kinds of reading materials such as books, magazines, and newspapers. Some of the students secretly participated in political activities. As a result of this local appropriation of colonial education, the SITC produced a number of Malayeducated nationalist intellectuals. This was not what British colonizers originally intended or wanted to be the product of the educational system that they had imposed.