YOUNG GENERATION NEEDS TO BE TAUGHT THE COUNTRY`S HISTORY

KUALA LUMPUR, April 15 (Bernama) -- Former prime minister Dr Mahathir
Mohamad said Wednesday the young generations, especially the independence
generations, should be taught the country's history to ensure that they do not
repeat past mistakes.

"I'm pleading for the teaching of history," he said, adding that an
American philosopher, George Santayana, once said: "Those who forget the lessons
of history will be condemned to repeat their mistakes over and over again" or
words to that effect.

"How do we know we are not repeating our mistakes now if we do not know of
our mistakes in the past. We need to know. We need to know how we came to be
colonised. We need to know how we barely managed to escape from being a
communist state.

"We need to know how our rulers were forced to surrender their states to
the British. We need to know how the British were forced to rescind the
MacMichael treaties," he said in his blog www.chedet.cc on the topic of "The
Generation Gap" Wednesday.

He said that with most of Malaysia's 27 million population being born after
1957-1963, it meant that "they had not known anything but being free, being
independent, being ruled by their fellow countrymen."

Stating that he was not trying to say that those who lived under colonial
rule are more appreciative of independence, he said: "What we should all be
concerned with is that we appreciate our independence and our freedom more,
whatever may be our political leanings."

"But I think we should know where we came from. Otherwise we would not know
which way we should go. We may think we are going forward when in fact we are
going backward, back to where we started. We would not be making progress," he
said.
-- BERNAMA