doa anak
~Ya ALLAH, berikanlah aku kesabaran dalam mendidik anak-anak ku. Jadikanlah anak-anakku anak yang soleh, baik pekerti, berhati lembut, baik budi bicara dan cerdas akal fikirannya, peliharalah anak-anakku dalam cahaya keimanan-MU ya ALLAH. Sesungguhnya hanya Engkau pemakbul segala doa. Amiin~
Some Malays also attended these schools. Aristocrats, simply because they live near where the school was built anyway, and urban Melayu dagang (immigrants) like recent Syeds, mamaks, Aceh, Jawa - also took advantage of the schools. These are the only Melayus who experienced secular education early on and benefited from it.
The Melayu dagang and the aristocrats came to the realization early on - say 50-100 years ago - that secular education paid off and they were the Malay people's first lawyers, modern bankers, doctors, senior civil servants, guru besars and so on. Given the head start, they were also in a position to compete for Colombo plan scholarships and the like. Further proof that secular education gives you opportunities.
Unfortunately secular education never quite benefited the general Malay population in the same way I mentioned above. In fact the first time something like western education reached the marhaen was through sekolah melayu that - surprise surprise - was an evolution of older schools that lebais and kadis ran.
They leave school and work for bigwigs who went to UM or got a Colombo Plan scholarship. In their minds, the bigwigs didn't become bigwigs because of education, but rather, their being a kerabat, connected, or mamak/jawa/insert melayu dagang. In short, they see it as darjat and there was nothing you can do about it unless you marry into one. And worryingly, this state of affairs has continued all this while. I am concerned it is becoming even worse.
It is no wonder that marhaens look up to ostat, rowdy ketua bahagians, artis, and other questionable characters because these are the only groups where there is some sort of 'meritocracy' for the common melayu. A marhaen could realistically become any of these with effort. Not true for white collar professions, business, or big time politics.
I often feel that the first angkasawan should have been the other totok Melayu guy to inspire the marhaen. A Sheikh angkasawan is exactly the phenomenon I'm trying to say. Marhaens see him as a Sheikh, not a Melayu who worked hard. So they're not more inspired to work hard because in their minds, it wasn't Sheikh Muszaphar's time in asrama or his medical education that made him, it was him being a Sheikh!