Let me first clarify: when I use the word “housewife,” I don’t mean it as an insult. I use it to describe a role — one that involves care, connection, and cohesion. A housewife keeps the household intact. She tends to the welfare of the children, the husband, the pets, sometimes even the parents and in-laws. She ensures that everyone remains connected — bringing them together at the dinner table, or organising occasions that maintain family unity.
It’s an important job. Someone has to do it.
If the education system today only required someone to play that kind of nurturing role — to take care of teachers, administrators, and departments, and to hold them all together — then perhaps Fadhlina Sidek would be the right person for the job.
But Malaysia’s education system today demands far more.
A System in Crisis
In recent months, our schools have been shaken by a series of horrifying events. From violent bullying to sexual assault, from students attacking teachers to even murder — the headlines have become grimly repetitive.
In Kajang a month or so ago, a 14-year-old boy punched his teacher for reprimanding him — an act caught on video and shared widely on social media.
Then came the heartbreaking case of Zara Qairina Mahathir, a 13-year-old student at a religious boarding school in Papar, Sabah. She was found unconscious below her dormitory building and later died of her injuries. What was initially dismissed as an accident has now turned into a national tragedy, as her family alleges bullying and harassment by senior students.
In Alor Gajah, Melaka, four Form 5 students were arrested for the gang rape of a Form 3 girl inside a classroom — in broad daylight.
And most recently, in Bandar Utama, Petaling Jaya, a Form 4 student was stabbed to death by a junior. The 14-year-old suspect reportedly stabbed multiple students before being subdued.
How can this be happening — in schools, the very places meant to safeguard and shape our children?
A Weak Response from Leadership
In response, Minister Fadhlina announced that a “special committee” would be formed to investigate the stabbing.
Let’s be honest: when politicians form committees in the face of crises, it usually means one of three things —
a) they don’t know what to do,
b) they need time to figure it out, or
c) they don’t want to bear full responsibility.
At a time like this, that is simply not good enough.
Education in an Age of Upheaval
We are standing at the edge of a new era.
With AI transforming how knowledge is produced and shared, the very need to go to school is being questioned. What once required physical classrooms — reading, writing, counting, learning about the world — can now be done with the device in our hands.
AI can now act as a personalised tutor, adapting to each student’s learning needs. That accessibility to knowledge is not only making the old schooling model obsolete, it is also having deep psychological effects on our children.
The younger generation is no longer shaped by the worldview of their parents or teachers. Their sense of reality is increasingly defined by screens, algorithms, and global cultural flows — unfiltered and often unmoored.
When the older generation is not the ones that are shaping the worldview and frames of references of the younger generation, and if the younger generation do not receive a structured guidance on how to develop a sense of self that can be properly fitted in a world as they are aware of it, a misalignment between ones sense of self and ones self of ones world is bound to occur.
When there is no alignment between how young people see themselves and how they see the world, psychological cracks appear. We are already witnessing the early signs of that breakdown — from anxiety and depression to violence and alienation.
If navigating the social media era itself was hard, the AI era will be far more disorienting.
We need a leader who can anticipate these shifts, who understands that education is not just about managing schools, but preparing society for an entirely new kind of future.
Not a Time for Symbolism or Sentiment
Unfortunately, Fadhlina has not inspired that confidence.
Let us be honest, an education minister who sings birthday songs to the prime minister might make a good housewife to the education sector, but in an an age when the ground beneath our feet is shifting, to have somebody who seems like their strongpoint is in managing relationships and sentiment, is woefully inadequate to meet the requirements of the time.
The uncertainty in the future can either provide untold opportunities or great risk - either way, we need with vision vision and courage to lead the way.
I will put it bluntly - Fadhlina is not that person. Education departments officials already know it, teachers already know it, parents already know it and Fadhlina herself already knows it.
Because this is the case, if even today, Fadhlina is receiving widespread criticism in her capacity as the education minister, as the challenges grow — technological, psychological, and moral — she can expect worse in the future.
This is not a matter of personal dislike or political bias. It is a recognition that the task before us has changed. The education system no longer needs a caretaker. It needs a strategist, a reformer, and a visionary.
Someone capable of leading our children — and our nation — through a future that no one fully understands yet.
Everything has its place.
If you put your pet cat in your house and the guard dog outside of your house, you will have a loving and safe household.
If on the other hand, you put your pet cat outside to guard the house while putting the guard dog inside the house to be a part of the family, all that is going to happen is that your pet cat is going to be burdened by anxiety, your guard dog by depression and instead of having a safe and loving household, all you will have is a restless and irritable household, that will be mired with the suspicion and doubt that something is not right, and they cannot be at ease and at peace because something is not right.
Fadhlina is not in the right place. This is not good for her and not good for us as well.
TheRealNehruism (nehru.sathiamoorthy@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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