Higher Education in Southeast Asia and Beyond #Issue 06

THE ROLE OF FALSAFAH PENDIDIKAN KEBANGSAAN IN SHAPING THE FUTURE OF MALAYSIAN EDUCATION
NEP at a glance
As a general framework, the NEP captures at
least five major premises:
1 | Ensuring education is a perpetual
endeavour and a continuous, holistic,
and integrated process;
2 | Improving individual potential
comprehensively to nurture an individual
who is balanced and harmonious, based
on the physical, emotional, spiritual, and
intellectual (PESI) nexus;
3 | Deepening faith and submission to God;
4 | Achieving kesejahteraan diri — an
indigenous concept of complete state
of being (sejahtera) in learning a
sejahtera way of life; and
5 | Contributing back by creating a
harmoniously developed family,
community, and nation.
Implicit in the above are the following
universal targets:
1 | Access to education
2 | Equal opportunity (equity) in education
3 | Quality of education
4 | Efficiency and effective delivery of
(sejahtera) education.
In other words, the NEP also supports the
above universal targets with emphasis on
sejahtera as its core concept and worldview.
First established in 1988 and later revised in
1996, the NEP reads as follows:
Succinctly, education in Malaysia is a
perpetual endeavour (continuous, holistic,
integrated) towards the development of
individual potential as a whole and their
integration in efforts to create individuals
who are intellectually, spiritually,
emotionally and physically balanced and
harmonious, founded upon faith and
submission to God. These efforts are
to produce Malaysian citizens who are
knowledgeable, virtuous, responsible, and
capable of achieving personal well-being
(kesejahteraan diri) and able to contribute
towards the harmony and development of
their family, community, and country.
The revisions do not alter the intent of the
original understanding of the NEP, but instead
they strengthen it even more by adding the
“competent” aspect in the revised version.
At the same time, the revisions broaden
the idea of citizenship with the use of the
word “people”. The result is to push the
boundaries of education to be more global
and to encompass humanity in meeting the
new demands of the 21st century, demands
that include globalisation, (neo-)liberalism,
internationalisation, climate change, and
global warming. Revising the NEP involved
scrutiny of planned programmes and projects
HESB | SEPTEMBER 2019 | ISSUE #06 | PAGE 19