Confucius believed that education could bring out the innate goodness that he claimed exists in all of us. Han Fei-Tzu, however, thought the idea of innate goodness a fallacy, but even he allowed that education could help produce a more moral human being.

Many enlightenment intellectuals preached much the same thing that the path to human perfectibility is best paved by education.

The earliest ideas on education, therefore, tend to focus on moral development, though ideas of morality change along with the socio-economic development of society (later on that).

For example, the growth of mass schooling in England coincided with the transformation of that country into a modern industrial state.

Yet, until about 1850, educators tended to be at least as concerned with cultural transmission basically a set of 'moral' values as defined by the ruling class than with the teaching of occupational skills.

The establishment of the so-called 'Literary and Mechanics Institutes' was aimed not only at introducing Science and later Mathematics to the unwashed masses, but also to turn them away from sin.

The working class was seen as composed largely of undisciplined individuals who, according to Thomas Wyse, were idlers, drunkards, quarrelers, rioters, aiders and abetters at every outrage (Educational Reform: or, the Necessity of a National System of Education, London, 1836, pp. 310 -11).

Religion takes a back seat

However, as the harsh realities of a dog-eat-dog exploitative world confronted the poor and disenfranchised, religion began to take a back seat.

Even establishment writers like Daniel Defoe, who generally agreed with the idea that a novel should teach morality to its largely middle-class readers, introduced tongue-in-cheek the immortal Moll Flanders as someone who "was born in Newgate, and during a life of continu'd variety for threescore years, besides her childhood, was twelve year a whore, five times a wife (whereof once to her own brother), twelve year a thief, eight year a transported felon in Virginia, at last grew rich, liv'd honest, and died a penitent".

We can forget the 'penitent' part it's a sop to the then powers that be, and is as fake as the 'sad' ending of Mozart's Don Giovanni.

Indeed, to many an oppressed worker, religion seemed a poor substitute for class struggle. This militant attitude frightened the English ruling class, who began to look for something that could take over the pacifying function of religion.

The answer was English Literature. As Terry Eagleton pointed out, this discipline was seen by Matthew Arnold as a possible means of transmitting upperclass values, via the middle class, to the lower class.

The moral didacticism of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park is a good example of how the materially-deprived reader might be appeased with appeals to some universal concepts of aesthetics and morality.

The theme of many romance novels popular during the nineteenth century have survived to the present day, and it illustrates wonderfully the Cantonese saying 'yao cheng yam sui pao' (with love, water is sufficient to satisfy your hunger).

What happens 'out there'

Still, all the moralising of the Victorian age could not prevent London from becoming a giant whorehouse: it was, at an age when the works of male and female authors had to be separated on library shelves, probably the prostitute capital of the world.

In other words, despite the almost universal belief in education as a cultural, and concomitantly, a 'moral' transmitter, it is at best just one of the ways that might achieve the purpose. Other factors, such as socio-economic conditions, are often more important in the cultural modification or transformation of society. Europe's Industrial Revolution, for example, had resulted in the kind of breakneck urbanisation that not only uprooted whole families, but also their centuries-old agrarian cultures.

Today, we have seen how corporate use of the computer has spread to the home, and how entire nations are forced to become 'computer-literate'. The computer not only changes the way we do business: it also transforms the way we live our lives. Many of us now depend on the computer not only for business transactions, but also for research, news, email, and entertainment.

Nations are using computers for weapons development and war. A whole new computer vocabulary has cropped up. Few inventions in history have transformed societies as quickly and as thoroughly as the ubiquitous computer.

What happens in the world 'out there', therefore, often has a greater impact on our children's education than vice versa. We may try to produce moral pupils, but the life they see and experience in the real world would more often than not determine how they behave rather than the precepts taught in the classroom.

We can tell our pupils that it's important to keep promises, but they aren't likely to believe us when they hear that their country's "great leader" has reneged on promises made to Suqiu almost as soon as the general election was over.

We can say "honesty is the best policy", but some kids might ask why then should their parents pay an arm and a leg to some politicians in order to obtain a business licence. The older ones might even wonder what a certain minister was doing with baskets of banknotes when he visited Australia.

It is equally hard to tell pupils to resolve their problems through debates and discussions, and not through violence or coercion. For there will be those who would ask why some people are thrown into jail just because they disagree with the government, or because they belong to the opposition. Of course, we can lie and tell them that people such as Internal Security Act detainees Hishamuddin Rais and Tian Chua are terrorists, but then that could conflict with our claim that it's a sin to tell a lie.

Children are no fools

If morality cannot be taught within the schoolroom vacuum, neither can concepts such as national unity. Every education major has been warned, one time or another, that schoolchildren are no fools, that the best way to gain their respect is to level with them.

We cannot blame minority children for being cynical about a country that classifies them as non-bumiputra, with all the discriminations that entailed.

Nor can bumiputra children love their minority friends when some ministers keep calling the latter foreigners, pendatang (immigrants), with intermittent invectives such as "extremists", "chauvinists", and even "communists".

Not to mention, of course, some occasional brotherly slogan such as "drenching our kris in Chinese blood".

In short, before the ruling party thinks about educating children with moral values, or imbuing them with a sense of unity, it should first learn from the remark: "Physician, heal thyself."

For until the ruling party cleans up its act, discards racially divisive policies, no amount of social or educational engineering such as the "Vision Schools" scheme or the suppression of vernacular schools or religious schools can build good citizens or foster national unity.

Indeed, a reverse outcome is more likely as communities trained to be divisive send their children to study within the same compound. Such schools would then become, in effect, war zones.

L CHUAH is a self-proclaimed literature hog who is interested in applying a multi-disciplinary approach to world affairs.