already promised his interest and encouragement. It is clear that Wilkinson envisaged a departure from the previous policy of reserving special educational opportunities there were exclusively for Malays of royal or aristocratic birth. Ambiguity on this point, however, dogged the scheme from the beginning. Except for Wilkinson himself, who expressed these views more clearly elsewhere, it is know how much acceptance they found among other British administrators or among Malay rulers, who might well have been disposed to raise some objections.
2) Sultan Idris Training College (SITC)
Sultan Idris Training College (SITC), now known as Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris, UPSI, named in honor of the late Sultan Idris Ibni Raja Iskandar, was opened at Tanjong Malim, a small town just north of the Perak- Selangor state boundary, late in 1922. It had been some three years in construction but the result was striking; a fine set of teaching buildings and residential quarters accommodating 200 students and their teachers, with 80 acres of grounds. After that, additions were made until the college reached its maximum enrollment of nearly 400. The first teaching staff consisted of four Europeans, nine Malays and one Filipino who had been engaged in 1917 to teach basket work at the old Malacca and Matang colleges since closed (Ibid: 141). The students were drawn by competitive examination from village vernacular schools; the sons for the most part of peasant farmers and fishermen. In this SITC contrasted markedly with the only comparable educational institution in the country, the Malay College of Kuala Kangsa, MCKK, whose pupils as we had discussed, came mainly from the ranks of the aristocracy.
3) Zainal Abidin Ahmad (Za’ba)
Zainal Abidin Ahmad (Za’ba) made an addition to Roff’s and Swettenham’s view on Malay where in his article entitled, “The Poverty of the Malays”, published in Malay Mail, December 1st, 1923, Za’ba said the Malays as a whole are a particularly poor people. Poverty is their most outstanding characteristic and their greatest handicap in the race of progress. Poor in money, poor in education, poor in intellectual equipment and moral qualities, they cannot be otherwise but left behind in the march of nations. The word “poverty” as applied to them does not merely mean destitution of wealth riches. It means terribly more. The poverty of the Malays was an all-around poverty. It envelops them on every side. Intellectually, the Malays were poor in knowledge, in culture and in the general means of cultivating the mind. Roff added, Malays’ literature was poor and unelevating, domestic surroundings from childhood were poor and seldom edifying, outlook on life was poor and full of gloom religious life and practice was poor and far removed from the pure original teachings of the Prophet. In short, Malays cut poor figures in every department of life (Ibid: 150).
4) Abdul Rahim Kajai
During the 1930s the steady stream of Malay-language periodical publication swelled to a flood. The main characteristic of this vigorous activity was perhaps the increasing commercialization and professionalism of journalistic enterprise in response to a growing audience for