The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion
The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion |
| Unplugging Education from the system Posted: 17 May 2014 04:27 PM PDT Alwyn teaches at a local university-college and blogs at wyngman.blogspot.com. For comments and questions, email alwynlau@gmail.com. Preparing the younger generation so they can contribute meaningfully to the country is one thing. Turning our universities into factories to feed the gods of Profit is another. You know how the Spartans taught their children that getting their heads chopped off "in service to Sparta" was the highest glory? We're worse. We teach our children that, even should the seas go dry and the mountains blow in the wind like leaves, we must keep aiming for that Warren Buffet-sized bank account. The social illusion encourages students to exalt the entrepreneur (no matter how much harm he's done) and to sideline the social worker (no matter how much good she does). If education sucks up to industry, then our children will never learn the art of bracketing. Bracketing? That's right. Putting two quote marks around our most revered words, e.g. "career", "work", "progress" and so on. We need to teach our children how to interrogate the story they're a part of. Jonathan Crary notes that because free-market capitalism cannot limit itself, the notion of preservation or conservation is a systemic impossibility. Isn't the very drive for higher GDP the No. 1 reason the planet is dying of cancer? The obvious answer towards environmental degradation is the ONE solution our high priests of businesses will not accept (and the same thing that got Jerry Maguire fired), that is, less output, less money. Industry is not going to take its foot off the gas pedal, thus the 21st century is the worst time for education to kow-tow to it. Universities must stop sacrificing their critical-creative faculties to the Righteous Ringgit. Recently, one of our local MacArthur Genius Award winners declared that Christians in Malaysia could outnumber Muslims by 2100. I'll try to out-claim him here: by 2100, if education doesn't stand its ground against the profit motive, Malaysia would have lost all its poets, historians and philosophers and the only artists we'll produce are Reshmonu wannabes. But what if the education system said "Enough is enough" and stopped being a slave to the financial system? What if parents stopped viewing "ability to earn" as the top factor in their kids' schooling? What if lessons, assessments, classroom activities and so on were motivated by the sheer love of learning instead of some projected future ability to boost one's bank account? A few consequences may follow: 1) Students would begin to decide for themselves what they really wish to be. They would learn to be suspicious each time a dude in a suit used the word "success" in proud serious tones. Again, this is only possible if Education tells Industry to back off a little, if the guardians of Education make a conscious decision that profit, stock value and financial security need to shut up (if only for a while). Instead of merely aspiring to become the "next" Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, our computing students would also be cognisant of how Microsoft and Apple have created misery for thousands of people (and if this sounds surprising, it only makes my case). Today, our kids know the price of a Nike cap but don't know the value of the dreams lost (in many Asian-Pacific sweatshops) to produce it. Our young adults believe it's "cool" to sit in Starbucks and pretend they're living in a GQ or Cosmo mag, but they have no idea of the arbitrariness and shallowness of cool-hunting itself. We are pleasurably disgusted at Miley Cyrus rubbing her pelvis against a giant penis, but are glib about how the 24/7 lure of the Web produces docile subjects who can't resist the abduction of their soul by social media. 2) Instead of "studying" to escape the hell of an inferiority complex occasioned by scoring fewer than the socially approved number of As, students would experience learning as indistinct from seizing life itself. Instead of seeing their Geography books like cursed manuals, they could plunge into it the way they dive into Harry Potter. Students may quit comparing the number of top marks obtained and begin appreciating quality in individual areas. Ali the tap dancer would be as highly valued as Arul the Maths wizard, Ah Kow the poet needn't malu because he didn't score high in Chemistry. It's an open secret that our country's (and if Ken Robinson is to be trusted, also the world's) exams largely test students on their ability to play the academic game, that is to become pseudo professors. Training whole generations of youth to regurgitate and memorise their way to a PhD? That's like populating a food court with nothing but sub-par chicken rice. Through an education weaned from the lure of business, students can smile at condescending remarks by people who believe that reading Jean-Paul Sartre or Jane Austen is pointless. They can explain to their critics that it is precisely such "point-lessness" that makes it fun, like driving a thousand kilometres to find the perfect laksa. Our young people may even come to suspect that what society calls "pointless" are just those activities that spit in the face of wealth-generation, and that to do only "purposeful" things in life is to become a human iPad. 3) Subjects like Philosophy, Anthropology, Art, Sociology and so on would be treated less like ancient diseases or white elephants. Again, Malaysian education is presently in trouble, not only because our system is too rigid and fails to excel, it's our definition of excellence itself. It's not merely our low-quality methods in clearing the path, it's our choice of path. This as evidenced in how and why we prioritise the subjects we want our kids to learn. English, Maths and Science? Important. Art, Morals and Physical Ed? Only for those who can't study. And don't even start about Philosophy classes. Isn't that for boring old men who wear white robes and waste time shouting at each other or the sky? I recall our beloved UM originally had a Philosophy Department but that got cancelled out and shipped away to Singapore. So now Lion-land is a world-class place for studying ideas on Being, logic and time, but Boleh-land sponsors seminars on Hatred 102. But if the Alsatian of Education wags its tail of Enterprise (instead of the other way round), things could look different. English can be recognised as important less because it's the world's commercial language (so folk keen on getting rich, duh) but because it brings about a richer learning experience and, in inter-disciplinary pedagogical partnership with Bahasa, may even nurture stronger personalities, more confident mind-sets. Given the daily outcry over our leaders screwing up of the country, our injustices and the general impression that Malaysian lawmakers often can't tell right from wrong, it's strange that Moral Education subject is seen as, at best, a timetable stop gap. We also need our students to learn about Political Theory from more than just Barisan and Pakatan – that's like learning about food nutrition exclusively from McDonald's and KFC. Maybe the most radical thing we can do for Malaysian education is to quit worrying about "marketability". The second most radical thing to do is require all dissenters to meditate on Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony or join Greenpeace or, if all else fails, be handcuffed to Ridhuan Tee for a week. – May 18, 2014. * This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider. | |
| Hanya binatang yang patut terancam dengan hak asasi manusia Posted: 17 May 2014 04:17 PM PDT
Apabila mendengar seseorang manusia mengatakan beliau membenci hak asasi manusia atau menganggapnya sebagai ancaman, saya seringkali tertanya, apakah mereka ini binatang? Kalau binatang membenci atau berasa terancam dengan hak asasi manusia, saya boleh faham kerana apa yang kita anggap hak kepada manusia mungkin boleh jadi sesuatu ancaman kepada warga binatang. Contohnya seperti hak kepada makanan yang menghalalkan manusia memakan daging, ini dengan jelas menyebabkan hak binatang terancam. Lebih parah lagi kalau agama digunakan untuk menentang hak asasi manusia kerana orang beragamalah yang seharusnya faham akan fitrah manusia. Untuk saya, hak asasi manusia itu seharusnya dihormati selagi ia tidak menganggu gugat kehidupan orang lain. Salah satu yang dipertahankan oleh hak asasi manusia adalah hak untuk beragama – menyebabkan umat Islam begitu selesa hidup dalam negara-negara yang menjunjung hak asasi manusia seperti United Kingdom (UK). Umat Islam di UK tidak kira mazhab dapat beragama tanpa diganggu gugat. Ada Sunni, Syiah, Wahabi dan Sufi. Masjid di mana-mana. Begitu juga surau, termasuk di kawasan yang terpencil. Mengapa ini berlaku walaupun UK itu majoriti rakyatnya "kafir"? Kerana penghormatan terhadap hak asasi manusia. Jika umat Islam dilayan begitu baik di negara-negara kafir seperti UK, mengapa di negara yang mempunyai majoriti Islam seperti Malaysia, layanan sama tidak diberikan kepada masyarakat bukan Islam? Apakah kita hanya mahu hak kita dihormati dan tidak mahu menghormati hak orang lain? Selasa lalu, Bernama melaporkan Perdana Menteri Datuk Seri Najib Razak sebagai berkata Islam kini diancam oleh "humanrightism, liberalisme, sekularisme dan humanism". Kenyataan ini diungkapkan perdana menteri, tidak lama selepas lawatan Presiden Amerika Syarikat (AS) Barack Obama baru-baru ini yang menggelarnya sebagai seorang "reformis." Najib berkata demikian pada pembukaan Majlis Tilawah al-Quran peringkat kebangsaan di Kuantan di mana beliau juga mencipta frasa "humanrightism". Beliau berkata kefahaman hak asasi manusia melampau boleh disederhanakan melalui undang-undang, Perlembagaan Persekutuan dan nilai-nilai budaya Malaysia. Sehari selepas dikritik kerana mengatakan "humanrightism " merupakan ancaman kepada Islam di Malaysia, tiba-tiba Najib mengatakan Putrajaya komited kepada prinsip dan nilai-nilai hak asasi manusia. Dalam satu kenyataan melalui e-mel kepada Persatuan Penggalakan Hak Asasi Manusia Hak (Proham), Najib berkata "sebagai rakyat Malaysia, kami percaya kepada hak asasi manusia, dan menyokong falsafah, konsep dan norma-norma dalam Deklarasi Hak Asasi Manusia Sejagat". Apakah Najib terlalu letih untuk berfikir dan hanya membaca sahaja ucapan disediakan penulis ucapannya semasa merasmikan Majlis Tilawah Al-Quran? Dan apabila kurang letih dan boleh berfikir seperti biasa baru beliau sedar kenyataannya itu mengarut dan boleh menyebabkan bencana kepadanya maka beliau mengubah nada? Menghormati hak asasi manusia itu sepatutnya menjadi budaya Malaysia. Apatah lagi negara kita ini mempunyai pelbagai kaum, suku dan agama. Jika kita tidak mampu menghormati hak sesama manusia, bagaimana kita mahu menjaga alam yang mempunyai makhluk dan hidupan lain? Bukankah kita saling memerlukan? – 18 Mei, 2014. * Ini adalah pendapat peribadi penulis dan tidak semestinya mewakili pandangan The Malaysian Insider. |
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