What ails our education system?

The reaction by certain folk to a recent movie and a comedy act shows just how shallow education is in this country.

REACTION to a popular local movie moved me to reflect on what sort of education could ensure a more sustainable, harmonious and peaceful future, at least for the next generation of Malaysians (frankly, I think it is too late for us adults).

I sincerely hope that my small contribution can shine a light at the end of a long meandering tunnel about an education system that has the wrong framework.

After 34 years in academia and much reflection and research, I have come up with three important objectives or purposes for education.

First, education must equip future generations with the basic means to survive within a sustainable construct of resources, products and services.

Second, education should provide the proper narratives, perspectives and attitudes concerning history, politics and events that would help forge a strong bond between different races, faiths and cultures.

The third objective or purpose I feel is important is to realign the human soul with a spiritual centre that would bring peace in life, suffering, joy and death as a complementary cycle of existence.

It is my personal opinion, judging by the problems we are facing in Malaysia, we have failed in the last two objectives and only achieved a partial success with the first one.

When we became independent we were suppose to concentrate on the first two objectives, with the first objective given slightly more push. As a result, we have framed our school and university education in a completely industrial mode to feed the country’s need for people to work in the industries that are suppose to bring wealth and prosperity. The second objective was firstly cared for but later on entirely abandoned to be replaced by a narrow construct of religious and moral education that has both no meaning or contribution to nation-building. At all.

Recently, a movie was made that praised the patriotism of one particular race – but at the expense of two others.

A few scholars, like Faisal Tehrani and Ranjit Singh Malhi, have said the movie is filled with historical inaccuracies, and I personally suspect with a racist tone to create a sensationalist political narrative. What happened? The movie made a record-breaking RM90mil in 33 days.

We not only have talents that do not understand the difference between a historical biopic and the inspiration of nation-building between races but we also have an audience educated in universities that fully support such ignorance and petty superiority complexes.

On another, still related, note, a professional artist-comedian was remanded because his comedic act that reminded one race of special privileges was considered an insult to that race.

I remember clearly the speech of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad at the Kongress Maruah Melayu in 2019 when he reminded his audience of the same thing and chastised that same race, and was also accused of insulting sesuatu kaum (a particular race), though he was not remanded in a lockup.

The inability of a community to accept criticism by a veteran political leader or understand satire is indicative of an education that is so shallow that it embarrasses me to be part of a world full of the most advanced technology and scientific understanding in the history of humankind.

Thousands of PhD graduates, thousands of professional qualifications, thousands of Q1 (top 25% of journals) papers, thousands of professors in universities and billions in research grants but we can’t even understand or appreciate a joke!

What, ladies and gentlemen, are we learning and, more importantly, what are we teaching our children?

To return to the second and third objectives of education: To achieve the second objective, ie forging a bond of brotherhood between nations and within communities in societies, I believe there are three important factors:

> Firstly, we must realise that knowledge creates “boxes” that can keep us safe for a while – and also imprison us forever if we let them.

We must therefore prepare our children with the necessary tools to open their boxes, to make them wider and to abandon them when the time feels right;

> Secondly, we must be humbled by the fact that we know very little about everything and must seek to learn many different disciplines like arts, heritage, history, cultures and beliefs of others instead of imprisoning ourselves in one field, one race, one faith and one destiny; and

> Thirdly, we must be able to recognise and appreciate that there are different types of knowledge ranging from wisdom and practice to philosophy and divine inspiration instead of just numbers, statistics and dry equations.

With regard to the third objective – to create a spiritual existence of peace with all things, I believe in the following four messages:

> Firstly, that our children and students must learn to accord dignity to others of a different race, faith, culture, socioeconomic status, gender and outlook at all times;

> Secondly, we must educate our children to appreciate and honour differences of ideas, of understanding, of ways of life because God has made differences in living things and nature to cause the necessary reactions to build, destroy and rebuild;

> Thirdly, we must also remind our children that humankind is one community as we can share life-giving blood and organs, so that we see all of humanity in all its sufferings and triumphs; and

> Lastly, we must educate our children that all our different heritages and histories point to the unchallenged fact that we need each other and would never be able to survive without one another.

In conclusion, I would like to remind all of us that change can only happen through each and everyone of us, and that change requires a critical look at our destiny as a society and as part of the human civilisation.

Once we know what we want in life that would benefit all of us, then and only then can we design an education system that would help us navigate life’s true challenges.

Perhaps then also we can make better movies that inspire a whole nation and not just one race at the expense of others. And perhaps also at long last we can be educated enough to actually understand and appreciate a joke about ourselves.

The columnist recently published a book on education, Issues and Ideas in Education for the New Malaysia (Gerakbudaya). Prof Dr Mohd Tajuddin Mohd Rasdi is Professor of Architecture at the Tan Sri Omar Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Policy Studies at UCSI University. The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.