PUTRAJAYA: The Education Ministry (MOE) denied making amendments or conducting a review of the Form Three History curriculum and textbooks to omit some chapters relating to the Japanese occupation and the threat of the Malayan Communist Party and the Malayan Emergency of 1948.
MOE in a statement said the revision of the history of the subject curriculum was last implemented in 2017 in phases.
The ministry said the 2017 revision started back in 2012 involving history experts, university lecturers, history subject teachers and curriculum officers from the Panel of History Curriculum Experts and History textbooks.
According to the ministry, the first cohort studying the subjects of History and using the textbook with the latest revision history was the Form One students in 2017, who will be Form Four students next year.
“None of the sections was removed, omitted or abolished, but the section has been compiled and restructured so that the curriculum learned by students is more neat and systematic to help their understanding of the country’s history better,“ the statement read.
The ministry explained that history in its secondary school curriculum is now arranged according to the timeline of historical events and that the topics are taught chronologically from Form One to Form Five.
According to the ministry, the content of Form Three History textbooks consists of the Arrival of Foreign powers, where students are taught about the intervention and colonisation of Western powers and the response by local communities.
Under the ‘Intervention and Western Conquest’ title, pupils were exposed to the arrival of Western powers, the Straits Settlements, the Federated Malay States, the unfederated Malay states, Sabah and Sarawak and the impact of Western administration on the country’s economy and social situation.
Under the heading of Local Community Response, pupils are exposed to local opposition involving the first-level of nationalistic movement, the wisdom of the Malay Rulers which slowed down the process of Western colonisation. — Bernama
