ABSTRACT
Some of the education is indifferent to, or contemptuous of, ideas like economic development. Educational supply comes partly from the Westernized elite's understanding of modernization and partly from the hope to achieve that modernization. The social-mobility aspirations from kampong to town or from peasant to clerk are communal goals: Pasir Mas residents expect the education of their children to promote pride and competence in Malay culture and language. The competition in political and economic arenas is but tangentially related to the amount, kind, or level of education, and is obviously affected by factors largely beyond the control or influence of educational programs and policies. Education is exclusively a means of cultural transmission, contributing in some measure to maintenance of the significant meanings etched by Buddhism. Education produces or inhibits a generalized receptivity to novelty; a sense of civility; a transcending or narrowing of the bond of social identification; and enhancement of meaningful goals or a diminution of them.
