KUALA LUMPUR, March 29 — Minister in charge of national unity Tan Sri Joseph Kurup today urged the Education Ministry to punish a teacher for allegedly promoting racial and religious stereotypes using a primary school's moral examination paper.
The minister in the Prime Minister's Department also denounced the typecasting that was exposed by a local actress, and said the incident merited careful investigation by the Education Ministry.
“This recent incident as exposed via social media warrants concerns from the relevant authority, especially the Ministry of Education, because if the case was genuine and left unchecked, the younger generation will be seriously misguided into accepting racial and religious stereotyping as justified and allowed.
“And the teacher who came up with such a misguided notion should be disciplined for such misleading and plain wrong teaching of our kids that one can just assume one's religion by merely looking at one's name,” he said in a statement.
In a post on the Instagram photo-sharing service yesterday, actress Sarah Lian shared a picture of a moral test paper apparently from a national school in Petaling Jaya that asked students to associate names to different houses of worship.
The names were Devi, Hock Lee, Kamal, and Steve. Students were required to write the appropriate name under pictures of a church, a Hindu temple, a Chinese temple, and a mosque.
In the photograph, the student — a daughter of Lian's friend — linked Devi to the church, Steve to the Hindu temple, Kamal to the Chinese temple, and Hock Lee to the mosque. The examiner marked all four answers as wrong.
Lian criticised the question as “racist” and “archaic”.
Malay Mail Online is seeking clarification from the school in question.
