Our education system must source universal storehouse of knowledge

AS I see it the Malaysian education starts with the basic knowledge of writing, reading and arithmetic, plus in the later half the other very basic learning about the world of the various fields.

Secondary education is where the students begin absorption of knowledge to equip them to understand the coming challenges of adult lives.

With two major areas for specialization - arts and science streams, and religion for those in the religious schools - they are (supposedly) trained for the workplace in which their learning would equip them to comprehend and adjust to the new workplace knowledge and skills requirements.

Specialization in their chosen fields takes place at the tertiary levels. Here, two major differences occur between those who go to local government universities and those who go overseas for their diplomas, degrees or doctorates.

Those who attend local government universities are to some degrees bound by the national education policies by which the various curricula are decided, while those going overseas to non-religious colleges or universities have the full freedom of choosing their fields and majors.

Today, we have the understanding, or belief, that those who graduate abroad are better qualified and have wider cross-cultural exposures and so have a more bird’s-eye view of the world.

This, of course, is not necessarily true, but employers, generally speaking, tend to have a preference for them as potential employees.

On the overall, despite the careful planning for the primary and secondary education levels, our education system at the tertiary level is quite haphazard.

The questions therefore are: (1) What kind of education does the Malaysian government want for Malaysians?, (2) What are the real objectives of the Malaysian education policy?

Azman Mohd. Yusof, in a 1998 paper for the Graduate School of Policy Science, Saitama University , reported that “In 1979, a report from the Special Cabinet Committee chaired by the then Minister of Education Dr. Mahathir Mohamad (Mahathir’s Report) was finalized after a sixyear study.

The objectives were to achieve national unity in a multiethnic society besides increasing the sense of patriotism, to produce skilled manpower for national development and to further extend the policy of democratization of education in order to strike a balance in all aspects of education between rural and urban areas.”

The report had then become “a guideline for reforming the education system in the recent years. In 1995 and 1996, the Education Act was amended to give sufficient need to meet the challenges in the 21st century besides making Malaysia as a center of excellence to the world.” Needless to say, the last part has never been achieved.

Since the first recommendations under the Razak Report of 1956 (produced by the first committee headed by the then Education Minister Tun Abdul Razak to formulate an education policy for Malaya), things have changed a lot, with steps taken outside the policy guidelines. Infusion of religious bents and the subtle move towards monoracial faculties in the public universities are two of them.

The next are the moves away from Western-based education, in part to supposedly instil patriotism, and towards religious tertiary qualification from the Middle East .

The question is: Can we, as stated by the 1979 Mahathir’s report, “achieve national unity in a multiethnic society besides increasing the sense of patriotism, to produce skilled manpower for national development and to further extend the policy of democratization of education in order to strike a balance in all aspects of education”?

For one thing, the system we have now promotes parochialism - a lot of knowledge of Malaysian matters but very limited on world knowledge, especially in history and literature.

A lot of study on works of local novelists and poets but little or none on Shakespeare and Robert Louis Stevenson. There is no way this situation empowers us to “meet the challenges in the 21st century besides making Malaysia a center of excellence to the world.”

And to top it all there is the very serious deterioration of our command of English!

In 2013 it was reported that, “As Malaysia strives to grow its economy to catch up with richer Asian countries, doubts are rising about whether its education system can provide the types of graduates needed to fill high-skilled jobs considered key to economic development.

In a recent report, the World Bank pointed out the “urgent need to transform Malaysia ‘s education system’ for it to produce the type of workforce required by a high-income economy.”

Despite all the political and financial problems diverting leaders from coming up with another education system manifold better and more effective than what we have at present, sooner or later, we have to do the absolutely necessary, or the dire situations we are already in will worsen further.

One way to bring us out of the rut and rot is to give the public universities a much more multiracial faculty with international inputs. Racial discrimination on entries to institutions of higher learning must be ended by embracing pure meritocracy. Our foundation of knowledge MUST be the storehouse of universal learning. Let’s learn the skills of the West to beat them at their own games!

The government must decide whether to develop one race or the whole country.