Stereotyping in Brunei schools?

Warning: This is a LONG post that might contain racist sentiments. Please read with the professional objectivity and interest of an academia. These are real life experiences.

The answer is YES, there are a lot of stereotyping occuring everyday in Brunei schools, whether you are talking about stereotyping between teacher and students, students and teachers or student with students.

Now for those readers who would want to know what stereotyping exactly means, it is basically "an exaggerated belief associated with a category". (Allport 1954)

So, anyway, there are obviously negative stereotypes (Malays are never on time) and positive stereotypes (Malays are polite). However to clarify things better, we must understand that there are three main aspects of stereotyping which are:

1. Categorisation using identifiable characters such as ethnicity (like what I did above), sex or speech
2. Generalisation - attributes of individuals applied to others of the stereotyped group. For example, you find out that Girl A is "smart", and so you assume everyone like her is also smart.
3. The set of attributes are assigned to individual members of the group - Say you meet Girl A's cousins, Girl C and Boy D, you assume that they are all smart too because they are both members of Girl A's family.

Everyone has seen this happen. I am a living example. My father was a Math teacher in my school once upon a time and apparently he was a good one. My sisters who also went to that school were both great in Maths. When it was my turn, my Math teachers clucked their tongues, they shook their heads, and cried in disbelief because I couldn't do a simple algebra equation. They said, anak chigu Hamid saja, inda pandai Maths!1

They expected me to do well. They assigned a stereotype on me that I couldn't fulfill and that made me an outcast. Now, I was lucky. I was assigned a positive stereotype. For some others, the stereotypes assigned were not so rosy in appearance. I remember a classmate who was quite on the rebellious side (this is actually an understatement). One time, he yelled at a parent of a fellow student swear words at the top of his lungs. The reaction? That parent said "sah tah kau atu IBAN".2

If that shocked you, the reason for the argument in the first place will shock you. He was accused for stealing a pencil which was actually given to him as a present by the boy whose father had come to school. It was an automatic pencil, that lights up whenever you write something. So the teacher noticed him proudly using the pencil which was given to him and she remembered that it belongs to the other boy. She immediately thought that he stole the pencil despite him saying that he didn't. The other boy's father was called to school (teachers in the olden days like drama) and he were informed of the "theft". The frustrated accused boy eventually reached his limits and started swearing at the father and you know how it ended.

This boy was stereotyped because of his ethnicity. It didn't matter that he didn't really commit the crime. The teacher saw that pencil and him being of an ethnic minority associated with alcoholism and headhunting, was assumed to have stolen that pencil. The other boy was not consulted. He was a 'victim'. This is negative stereotyping. Racism.

Hewstone and Giles (1997) warns "we must be careful given that some minority groups come to develop a negative autostereotype in line with the heterostereotype of a dominant outgroup". For example, because of that incident and the fact that he is always suspected of that crime that classmate of mine will grow up being conscious of his ethnicity and the stereotypes associated with them, and actually conform to them. He begins to believe that the stereotypes are true.

Is stereotyping justified you ask? Sure if it is positive. If it is negative, throw it down the rubbish bin.

Unfortunately stereotypes are difficult to change. They have extensive social support. Hewstone and Giles (1997) states that "if society substantiates people's views that certain minorities are second class, then negative stereotypes will become entrenched". For example, the Ulu3 people and poor education, menial jobs. Furthermore, eventhough we know a lot of people from the Ulu (like the Ibans) do not neccesarilly live in a Rumah Panjang4, or do they go on mass headhunting trips in Kijangs5, the prejudice still persists at the back of our minds. Eventhough we know that a lot of Kedayans are highly educated people, we still have prejudice against people who drop their [r] pronunciation.6

Negative group images cannot be erased completely unfortunately. there are a lot of theoretical measures taken to combat this problem. Pettigrew (1981) suggest that positive stereotypes be increased by publicising the positive subgroups to show that the negative stereotype are not a homogeneous collective. But the answer is within yourself. Stereotyping is a human act, it is however inevitable. But so is compassion and understanding. Go for the positive. Not the negative.

As an ending note to this mighty long post, here is a question by Fishman;

"Why are we so often misinformed about groups, and about which sorts of groups, or concerning which aspects of groups, are we misinformed? Why is it so difficult to combat the misinformation with information?

1= Literal translation "you are supposed to be able to do Maths well, you are the daughter of Mr Hamid"
2= Very racist statement. Literal translation "No wonder you are an Iban." Iban is an ethnic minority which is always unfairly overgeneralised in negative stereotypes.
3= Ulu is the outskirts of a district. Rural areas.
4= A longhouse for an Iban extended family. Click this link to see a picture. For English readers, this is a more appropriate link for you.
5= There was an old rumor in Brunei that headhunting was making a comeback in the 90s. The rumor was oversensationalised over time, and it said that the headhunters were identified as driving a Toyota Kijang.
6= A distinct feature of the Kedayan speech.