PETALING JAYA: Racial integration among the younger generation in
Malaysia still has some way to go, judging by the results of a
nationwide survey of 4,400 Form Four students. Only 52% of the
teenagers said they had a friend of a different race.
In fact, mixing with other races was not something that concerned
many of the respondents. Only 12.8% felt that it was an issue,
while 63.9% were more worried about contracting a disease.
The Cognitive and PsychoSocial Profile of Malaysian Adolescents
(CoPs) study was carried out in August by a group of academics
from the Education Faculty of Universiti Malaya (UM). Prof John
Arul Phillips, a former UM academic and current dean of the Arts
and Social Sciences Faculty at Open University Malaysia, said
this was the most complete study of its kind because of the large
sampling.
“We went to 44 schools in rural areas, towns and cities across
Malaysia, including Sabah and Sarawak,” he said. A total of 16.6%
of the 16-year-olds surveyed also admitted to smoking. They cited
emotional pressure (27.6%), a desire to be accepted by friends
(25.5%) and wanting to be cool and macho (20.1%) as the most
common reasons for taking up the habit. Another 12.6% said they
were influenced by the mass media.
Other findings include:
·
8.8% reported using drugs;
·
10.7% never eat breakfast;
·
8% have never used a computer; and
·
3% said they were often not interested in studies.
The study also compared different groups of students. There was
no major difference in resilience and self-esteem levels between
males and females, but non-smokers were found to be more
resilient and had higher self-esteem. In addition, males reported
better relationships with their teachers compared with
females.
CoPs project leader Assoc Prof Dr Fatimah Hashim from UM’s
Education Faculty said: “There was very low correlation between
academic performance in PMR and psycho-social attributes such as
self-esteem, resiliency and family bonding.”
In the area of general knowledge, only 23.3% of respondents
identified Lee Hsien Loong as the Prime Minister of Singapore and
43.3% knew that Bill Gates founded Microsoft. However, 81% knew
that Manchester United was an English football club. Students
were poor in civic knowledge, too. For example, only 58.4% knew
that Parliament consisted of the Dewan Rakyat and Dewan
Negara
