A New Education Minister: More of the Same?

So our Prime Minister has reshuffled his Cabinet, and our new Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin is now also our new Education Minister. Unfortunately, my sense of things is that this probably will not mark a significant change in direction for Malaysian education.

Datuk Hishammuddin Hussein didn't really turn things around, if you ask me; Kian Ming is impressed by his administrative competency and I would agree that he probably kept things from getting worse. But I think it is very hard to say that things improved under Hisham. The government took some very tentative steps towards tinkering with the school system, but nearly every complaint that held water five years ago is still valid today.

I am not optimistic about Muhyiddin because the Education Ministry seems to have become a political football; you often become Education Minister because you're expected to eventually become Prime Minister, and this certainly seems to be true in this case. There is still little sign that the government recognises what's wrong with our school system, let alone how to fix these problems.

The number one issue which Muhyiddin must address is that of teachers: they are overworked, underpaid, poorly trained, and mostly powerless. There is no incentive for bright people to enter the teaching profession, and even those who are selfless enough to serve barely earn enough to cope, especially in urban areas. Teachers are often expected to not only teach, but handle paperwork and take on administrative duties. Yet, they barely get much training, and they are so shackled by the system that they are assigned to posts that make no sense; it is unusually common for a science teacher to wind up teaching history, for example. Fortunately, this is beside the point, because teachers have no power to determine the curriculum; what they teach has already been decided by a handful of bureaucrats and Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka textbook authors, and they are just responsible for vomiting up whatever these people want them to say, so their pupils can dutifully do the same on their exams.

There are a lot of other wrong things with our education system, but all my experiences in the school system point to teaching as the main problem: we aren't treating our teachers right. And when we don't properly treat these mature adults who we actually pay to be in school, is it really surprising that we often treat our students and youth even worse? We have good teachers, but we don't trust them to teach. We have good students, but we don't trust them to learn. Is it then surprising that so few people in our schools want to teach or learn?

When you empower the good teachers, you also empower the good students. I just finished watching this fantastic lecture on molecular biology which illustrates this perfectly; the speaker is a Princeton University biologist who not only loves her field, but lectures clearly and explains obscure concepts in a simple way. And if you watch the whole way through, she gives credit to all the students who work in her lab, because everything she presented was first discovered by one of them: "when you learn things like about how the natural world works ... it was done by a child. Science is done by that demographic."

It is hard to imagine a Malaysian academic saying something like that, and that says a lot about the way we think about education. We have trouble with giving academics freedom, and we have trouble with giving students freedom. This is unquestionably true in primary and secondary school, where the curriculum is completely dictated by the state and federal governments, but almost as true in our universities, where faculty and students are less free to speak their minds than any ordinary member of the public.

When you get to the heart of it, the problem with Malaysian education is that we are afraid of setting our people free, to explore our world. The attitude of our modern education system and our modern education policymakers is that minds are something to be controlled, not freed. And for all the talk of reform on the part of our new Prime Minister — and even his two predecessors, both of whom promised scores of reforms in their own times — none have dared address this problem which cuts to the core of the rotten apple that is our education system. Certainly, the new Education Minister is no exception to this rule. Until someone in government recognises this, I will have a very tough time believing there will be any kind of meaningful change in our school system.

No Free Speech for Nobel Laureate

I want to reproduce a letter written by a friend of mine - Andrew Aeria - on the move by UM to scrap a talk that was supposed to have been given by Nobel Peace Prize winner, Shirin Ebadi. Just to clarify, the letter is written with a sarcastic tone, in case there is any confusion.

Congrats to the UM VC!
Andrew Aeria | Oct 23, 08 4:38pm
I refer to the Malaysiakini report Invite to Nobel laureate scrapped after 'protest from students'.

I am writing to congratulate Rafiah Salim, the vice-chancellor of Universiti Malaya for bravely and single-handedly putting Malaysian academia back into the international spotlight.

Well done, Rafiah. By caving in to some obviously hidebound ‘Iranian students’ and cancelling Iranian Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi’s scheduled lecture on 'Islam and Cultural Diversity' at UM, you gratuitously displayed to the world your university administration’s equally immaculate bigoted view of academic freedom and the pursuit of knowledge.

Certainly, as Malaysians who already are the most informed in the world and living in a diverse multi-cultural society, we have no need to listen to ‘nobody’ Nobel Laureates like Shirin Ebadi, right?

I mean, what else does Ebadi know and what else can she tell us about ‘Islam and Cultural Diversity’ that we in Malaysia, with the help of our ‘Iranian students’, do not already know? So, well done.

I also gushingly applaud Rafiah Salim’s robust defence of the emotional health of ‘our Iranian students’. After all, if these blinkered ‘Iranian students’ are unhappy about ‘nobody’ Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi’s views and don’t want to listen to her, let alone allow others to explore any ideas that are different from their intolerant views, then surely we in Malaysian academia have to dance a jackboot march to their tune even if it is reminiscent of the Third Reich, no?

Well, Rafiah, you and your administration have pretty good goosestep dance moves, that’s for sure. I’m certain that all those now ‘happy Iranian students’ will gladly give you a 45-degree full-handed salute.

And if you listen closely, you might hear them happily utter ‘Seig Heil’! What courage you display in protecting the fragile emotions of our ‘Iranian students’. Truly well beyond the call of academic duty. Well done!

In this excellent spirit of ‘Malaysia Boleh’ and to ensure Malaysian academia’s continued international prominence, may I humbly suggest that you now direct the UM chief librarian to identify and publicly burn all books authored by Shirin Ebadi and other Iranian scholars of ‘Islam and Cultural Diversity’ that the ‘Iranian students’ don’t like.

I am sure those ‘Iranian students’ can very quickly draw up an extended list of disagreeable books that make them unhappy for your immediate action. Indeed, why stop at Iranian scholars, Islam and Cultural Diversity?

Why not just burn the whole UM library down so that all in Malaysian academia (led of course, by ‘our happy Iranian students’) can return to the raw pristine beauty of our vain-glorious collective ignorance.

Indeed, I am sure those ‘Iranian students’ and your administration would gladly welcome such a move as a significant civilisational move forward; Malaysian academia’s leap of faith into the brave new world of the 21st century!

Hurrah!

Since when have Iranian students in our public universities started dictating policy? Does this mean that if Indonesian students protest a talk given by Habibie, such a talk will be canceled?

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for the right of the Iranian students to protest. But if they want to protest, they should be given a space, both physically as well as in different student newspapers, to protest Shirin Ebadi's presence on campus. But she should also be given the space to speak her mind in a way that is befitting of a Nobel Laureate. But this is Malaysia so we should not expect either to occur, apparently.