Construction of nationhood through education in Malaya: revisiting the Barnes and Fenn-Wu Reports |
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| Authors: | Moses Samuel Mahmud Hasan Khan |
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| Institution: | 1. Faculty of Education , University of Malaya , Kuala Lumpur , Malaysia;2. Department of Linguistics , Macquarie University , Sydney , Australia |
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| Abstract: | This article provides an analysis of two colonial reports, the Barnes and the Fenn-Wu Reports on education in the British colony of Malaya. The popular stance on the Barnes and the Fenn-Wu Reports is that one is an effect or reply to the other. We argue on the contrary that the two reports construct a common argument on nation-building which becomes apparent through a dialogic reading of the reports. We show how the two reports, written in the 1950s, reflect the anxiety of the colonial rulers in constructing a nation and the ethnic communities (the Malays and the Chinese) in pre-independent Malaya. These communities were constructed not without their inherent antagonism as well as their reciprocal vulnerabilities in a future political state. This act of articulation is predominantly a political act constructed through a complex web of interdiscursivity and intertextuality. The spectres of the Barnes and the Fenn-Wu Reports continue to surface in education and nation-building discourse in modern-day Malaysia. |
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| Keywords: | nation-building colonial discourse Malaya ethnicity articulation |
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