I was in both the English and Malay debate teams in high school. I got the impression that the teachers invited me to join the respective teams not so much because of my oratory skills, which were probably only decent, but mainly because I was fiercely willing to argue the hell out of things back then.
Win or lose was simply not much of a priority. And of course there was the small matter of getting to meet equally smart students (boys, mainly) during debate tournaments (There were not much intelligent boys in my school then).
My first assignment when leading an English debate team was this topic — “Traditions are a waste of time” — and we were the proposing team.
I still vividly remember our debate team teacher laughing her head off when we were given the topic a few days before the tournament started. My friends and I were like headless chickens!
Being only 16 and raised around the usual (typical) Indian environment of "girls are not suppose to do this" and all sorts of other traditions, having to be the proposers for a topic like this quite simply boggled the mind. I couldn’t remember the arguments I used!
I did put up a good fight because even though our team lost I still managed to get the Best Speaker award — I told you I loved to argue. And yes, we were up against a team of smart and good looking boys from Malay College Kuala Kangsar, so maybe we got soft?
Anyway, that was when I was an innocent 16-year-old kid. After living 9 more years and having seen quite a bit more of the world and such, I’m not quite sure whether I’d be as apprehensive about proposing such a topic anymore.
Not that I’m saying that all traditions are a waste of time. They are a part of who we are whether we like it or not, especially for us Malaysians, but there are a few things that have the potential to do more harm than good now that the world’s drastically changing.
Let’s just take our general prudishness about anything related to sex, for example. We keep on shaking our heads at the ever-increasing cases of abandoned babies and are still blaming loose morals amongst the young for this unfortunate phenomenon.
We have this unreasonable expectation (or delusion?) that our young ones are all angelic and innocent, and should be protected from "dirty" things, so talking about sex with our kids is just a big no-no.
But seriously, when kids these days can freely watch things like "The Hills" or "Gossip Girl" on TV, can we seriously expect them not to get curious and not emulate what they see on TV?
Yes, tradition dictates that we should all be chaste and such, but it’s fairly obvious that kids these days are doing "it." Blaming loose morals or anything else along those lines is not going to change anything.
It would be a lot more helpful if parents (and the people that parents look up to, like religious personalities etc) were to stop being so delusional and at least consider more realistic damage limitation measures.
Talk to kids about sex. It’s way more dangerous for them to learn about sex from watching porn (which I’m pretty sure is how most of us Malaysians got our first sexual "education") than to learn about it from their parents.
You can of course remind or warn them not to do it, but at the very least you can let them know that if they are going to do it anyway to at least be safe about it.
Our traditional and dogged refusal to openly discuss sex may be silly, but it can and has led to problems, not just teenage pregnancies. We have seen the rise of AIDS amongst married women and their children, passed on to them by ignorant and unthinking husbands who have unprotected sex with prostitutes, and perhaps with other men.
And we all know how bad we Malaysians treat people with AIDS. I’ve actually read statements made by clerics in the national newspapers to not blame husbands (let alone refuse them) for wanting to have unprotected sex – because it feels better.
Don’t even get me started about the traditional place that women are expected to be in here in Malaysia, or how we are supposed to feel beholden to everyone, be it our elders and even our government, for I can write a way longer essay on each and every one of these topics. So yes, some traditions are a waste of time. What say you?