(Corrected at 6:15pm, 4 Sept 2010) THE student movement in Malaysia was once vibrant, independent and autonomous. “Mahasiswa jurubicara rakyat” was the students’ motto in the 1960s. However, the government enacted the Universities and University Colleges Act (UUCA) in 1971 to restrict students’ freedom and their rising influence. Thereafter, the student movement suffered a decline. [...]

MALAYSIA needs to stop building walls and start learning to innovate if show business is to grow and develop in the country. This and other show biz topics were discussed during The Nut Graph‘s Found in Conversation: Creativity and Innovation in Show Biz forum on 8 Aug 2010 in Kuala Lumpur. When asked about enhancing [...]

TO its credit, the government is trying to introduce sex education in schools. From mid-2009 till end of 2011, the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry and the Education Ministry are implementing a pilot project targeting 16- and 17-year-olds in five schools. “The ministry hopes to use the outcome from the project to advocate for [...]

VARIOUS concerns about Malaysia’s education system emerged from the The Nut Graph‘s latest forum, Found in Conversation: Creativity and Innovation in Education. But they all centred on a key and not unfamiliar complaint: that education is too politicised. Whether concerns were about the curriculum, the lack of critical thinking, obsession with scoring As, lack of [...]

WHEN the government announced plans for a 1,000MW nuclear plant, solar power is often dismissed as too costly to implement on a large scale. However, developments in the photovoltaic (PV) industry suggest that with planning, it’s not necessarily prohibitive. For certain, solar power alone cannot displace fossil fuels as an energy source. But it is [...]

Why is the government attempting to curb private healthcare costs when there is supposed to be a readily available and more affordable public healthcare system? Shouldn’t the government focus on improving the public healthcare system, making it an automatic price check on private healthcare? After all, why would someone pay RM30,000 for a heart bypass if they could get quality care for minimal cost at a public hospital?