Azly Rahman's Blog, page 6

The smells of my kampung in Jay Bee

The smells of my kampung in Jay BeeOpinion  |  Azly Rahman Published: Today 3:30 am  |  Modified: Today 3:30 am A+     A- COMMENT | I am the city and the village and the house that I inhabit. I am what I am from the history that shaped me, including if the city is stinky and whether I grew up amongst those who died gangsta high in the hippie sixties. I spoke their language and learned how they have lived or not lived their lives. Had I been one of them, I would not have lived to tell you this story. In America where I had never dreamed I’d end up.I get my mental libido, amongst divine sources, through language. It structures my inner reality. That is the beauty of imagining what each word looks like and means in my ‘mind’s eye’. As a child, I was fascinated with words. As in the character in Jean Paul Sartre’s story, Nausea, I’d sit in the bus, look out of the window, and get high first on the rugged and gangsta lullabying motion of the monstrous vehicle that was the T Hakim bus service in my village, or the Johor-Singapore Express from the sinfully smelly town of Johor Baru to the Rochor Centre in Singapore.I’d read the words on signboards, read billboards, read name of streets. Sitting here now in my library amongst a few thousand books, a billion words, I’d close my eyes at times to go back to my life in a drug-infested Malay kampung in the sinful, smelly town of Jay Bee. In the high-on-pills ‘pil khayal’ Seventies. Of the Tasek Utara protest to a soundtrack of Deep Purple and the Rolling Stones.Johor Baru of the Seventies was the stinkiest, smelliest, sweatiest city in Malaysia. The bus station smelled like a concoction of petrol and piss. Of dust and dung and people walking around like mutating Americans in denim. Ah, her river of life - the Segget River (above) – smells like rotten eggs, budu (fermented anchovies paste), cincalok (fermented krill), kimchi and old Swiss cheese altogether to give Johor Baru, and its politics, that stinky, rotteny, cheesy, pungent stink.The kind of stink described in Sasterawan Negara Shahnon Ahmad’s great Malay late 1980s post-modern novel, Shit, written about that stinking period in our history.But names ease the stink, and I love names. The names of people in my kampung. The names of friends and elders.Apa nama? What's your name? Abong. Abu. Mat Kempong, Mat Lambong, Engeh. Mat Lantok. Mak Embon. Mak Piah. Mak Arah. Mak Som. Haji Leman. Haji Lihin. Pak Itam. Mak Itam. Mak Tekah. Mak Bone. Mak Embon. Mak Minah. Mak Munah. Kak Jah. Kak Ros. Kak Noi. Pak Ya Tukang Rumah. Pak Haji Dolah Daging Lembu. Pak Bilal. Pak Mudim. Pak Man Burung. Pak Mamek. Pak Man Porres (Osman who worked with the Forestry Department). Pak Ali Asko (Ali the Army man).Pak Man Batman (the shopkeeper who looked like Batman). Petom (raped by the huge water pipe that ran from Johor to Singapore and got pregnant). Adik Petom (Petom’s sister, later raped as well). Bhai Roti. (the Bengali man in a flowing dhoti who sold freshly-baked bread on a WWII German-Army-looking motorbike).Names of people with stories to tell me. And with their names and stories, I am going to rap and rhyme, and tell stories of my days in the Sixties in Sin City, Jay Bee.(Note: This is an edited version of the preface for Azly Rahman's forthcoming memoir.)

Those days of screaming and slaughter (Part 2 of my May 13 memoir)

Those days of screaming and slaughterOpinion  |  Azly Rahman Published: Today 12:27 am  |  Modified: Today 12:27 am A+     A- COMMENT | I saw a man in black on the ground with his eyes closed, kneeling. He had on a red headband. Another man, with heavy moustache and a similar head-covering, was standing behind him.He was holding a parang, the traditional machete used to cut bamboo. It looked sharp. Very sharp. Shining sharp."Look at this thick plank of wood," his voice thundered. "Look closely."The man with the parang, threw the block of wood up into the air. With one strike of the parang, he split the thick wood into two. It fell on the ground with a plonk and a clank and a plop.READ PART 1: May 13 - At Peace Lane before the storm “Very sharp this thing is, yaaah?!” his voice thundered. The crowd was gasping. I could not believe my eyes. What's next, I wondered.I looked at the other man kneeling, chanting some Arabic words I did not understand. As if praying for his life."Very sharp, this parang. Is it not?" The crowd murmured in agreement.The man took the sundered pieces of wood and laid them side by side. Suddenly, the man jumped up and wielding the parang, struck the two pieces of wood, breaking them into four.Everybody gasped."Very sharp, right?!"The man kneeling on the ground was still chanting religious verses."Are you ready to witness a miracle?" the man with the parang asked. There was so much authority in his thundering voice. "Are you ready to witness how the power of Allah Taa’la works? The power of the Malay warrior spirit?!’The crowd was getting excited and a few voices shouted back, “Yes, Allahu Akbar, God is great."I could smell the sweat of the people around me. I could smell Indonesian clove cigarettes.I could smell magic and mysticism. I could smell the foul breath of people. The smell from the dirty Segget river. The smell of anger and revenge.Should I leave and go home and watch TV? But this is exciting. I must stay. I must watch.Magical powers and mysticismAfter preaching about the magical powers he had, he announced, to the horror of the crowd, that he was going to use his parang to “slaughter” the man,“Gentleman, be calm and watch this. This parang that I used to cut the block of wood into pieces ... watch me use it on this man ... on his neck! Just watch. Nothing is going to happen to him.”Was I ready for this?He placed the parang at the nape of the man’s neck. There was dead silence.Shouting "Allahu Akbar", he landed a blow, three blows, on the kneeling man’s neck. I almost fainted. Miraculously, the parang bounced back every time. Yes, it did! I saw it. I did! I did! Not a single drop of blood from the kneeling, chanting man.The crowd gasped. I was not sure if they were shocked or relieved.“The power of what we teach. The power of God. The power of martial arts. This man is kebal (invulnerable)! This man is protected by God. Nothing will harm him, Not even bullets of the kafirs, non-believers!""Not any Chinese sword. Nor any keris. Nor any parang. This is how we are going to do the jihad. Allah is great. Takbirrrr! Allah is great.”The man roared. The crowd roared with him.I was puzzled, searching for an explanation. There was none. Why was the man not beheaded? Why didn’t the head roll on the ground like the chickens for my grandma’s curry? Why was not a single drop of blood spilled? How could that be freaking possible?How can I learn the art of invulnerability, even to a sharp weapon that was shown to have split wood into many pieces. How could that be? I wanted that power.That was the day, a day of preparation for men in black and red headbands to head to the capital to battle with the Chinese. The city was aflame. Vehicles were on fire. Shops were burned down. Bodies lay in the streets.I hate to have my memory go back to that day in 1969 when, as a very young child, I saw men in red headbands in Muar, Johor, with parang, kerambit, keris, daggers and all kinds of weapons, heading for the urban village of Kampong Baru, Kuala Lumpur, to meet at the residence of the then ‘menteri besar,’ Harun Idris, a politician known as a champion for Malay rights and dignity.My saddest memory of that day concerned my Mathematics teacher, whom I loved and respected dearly, and who adored me and praised me for my hard work. One day, after May 13, 1969, she threw my exercise book out of the classroom. I did not know why. I cried inside. I was devastated for weeks.I could not understand what was happening. I thought I was “the teacher’s pet,” as my classmates called me. I always tried to please my teachers because that was what my mother taught: respect your teachers all the time and do well in school because we are very poor people. Mother would cry every time I did not come home top of the class. She would sob. I would sob as well. There was a time I got Number 2 and I spent about two hours roaming around the village trying to figure out how to break the news to my mother, and what she will say after showing her my report card.But that day, Miss Chan was angry. My teacher Miss Chan was Chinese. My best friend in school, Fook Shiang, was Chinese. My grandfather’s friends who visited the house often were Chinese. My aunt’s Chinese!Grandpa adopted her when she was a few weeks old.This was not making sense. Fear began to engulf me.A fear of those days – of screaming and slaughter.

I remember May 13 , 1969- at Peace Lane before the storm

I remember May 13 - at Peace Lane before the stormOpinion  |  Azly Rahman Published: Today 7:16 pm  |  Modified: Today 7:16 pm A+     A- COMMENT | It was sometime in April 1969. Maybe earlier. Again, my gallivanting in my village brought me to a house nearby, where I saw a crowd in front of a wooden house. To reach that place I had to take several small streets or lorong (lane). In the neighbourhood, the street names signify the sense of being in a place most peaceful – of Malaysia in the late 60s. The Malay words used have a carnival of a magical feel. A sense of place. And personal history. There is Lorong Aman, ('peace'); there is Adil ('justice); there is Jaya, ('victory'); there is Bahagia ('happiness'); there is Sentosa ('contentment'); there is Budiman ('good-heartedness'); there is Merdeka ('freedom') and Rahmat ('blessings'). These are some of the names of the lorong in the Malay kampung I pass by often, to get me from one adventure to another. These are where the people of the “Malay race” lived since the village was opened as a new settlement, even before the British gave the country independence. These names I live in gave me a sense of what the words tell me to feel – peaceful, content, fair, free, and above all, a person who is budiman or of one possessing to-the-soul-good-heartedness. A note on the 70s. Growing up in the early 70s, different words to describe reality, practices, and possibilities were dancing happily around me. Perhaps those street names tune me to calmness. All these shaped the child’s mind, such as that of mine growing up with a fascination of names, as if living is about being taught names and being able to “read the self and the word” in order to be liberated. There were also words related to spirituality; words such as sembah-hyang, marhaban, berzanji, kenduri, berkhatan and bersugi gigi. There were also cool words related to Malay magic such as jampi serapah, tangkal, kemenyan, dukun, pawang, and, of course, the mambang laut-mambang darat-mambang udara trinity/trio. That was the smooth-sailing 70s. Back in the day people were happy wearing what ought to be simple fashion and accessories, the kebaya, baju kurong (not a straitjacket mind you), baju Melayu Telok Blangah, terompah, selipar chapal, selipar Jepun, manik koran and all kinds of Malay, Chinese, and Indian "bling-bling" to adorn oneself with cultural niceties. Growing up in the kampung, I was not attuned to hearing totally foreign words, imported from elsewhere to denote and connote the self, spirituality, and salvation, and “saving the soul of others”; words such as solat, dakwah, ushrah, tarbiyyah jihad, muzakarah, jubah, serban, hijab, purdah, burqah, niqab, Arqam, tabligh, Ayatollah, muktamaar, buah tamar, or even Daulah Islamiyah. Not that I knew or had even heard of until the beginning of the 80s when these words like Karl Marx would say, became technologies of the “body, mind, and spirit” that changed the social relations of production and the ideological landscape of the country and the consciousness of a segment of the Malay people. I passed through these lorong in a village of Malay-speaking people and in a place reserved for settlers of this ethnic group. These settlers nonetheless came from a variety of ethnic groups that would later constitute the “Malays”. There were Javanese, Bugis, Bawean or Boyanese, Madurese, hybrid Chinese, Arabs, Indian-Muslims, and a Sikh young woman Zaida whose parents were from the land of the Bengalis who later married one of my mothers’ cousins, Ali. There were Malays from different states that moved into this kampung Melayu: from Perak, Negeri Sembilan, Melaka, Selangor, and even as far as Kelantan and Kedah. But it was called a Malay kampung with only Malays allowed to be given land to live in. The Malay Reserve Land as the government designated it as. I arrived at the place where a crowd was waiting. I love stopping by and watching what is happening whenever people congregate, whether it is in my village or in the petrol-diesel-stinky-river-rotten egg-smelling town of Johor Bahru, about three miles from home. There would always be people selling something; ointments, batik cloths, T-shirts from neighbouring Singapore city or even aphrodisiacs prepared traditionally and packaged as the best sexual-magical-mystical pill that could help one not only sustain happiness in marriage, but marry two, three, and up to four wives. Power pills 10 times better than Viagra, I would imagine. My favourite stopover would always be at the Indian man in dhoti, smoking a cerutti or cheap-looking cigarillos from India, with a parrot that tells people’s future by picking up cards that would tell you when you will die! That’s my favourite place in front of a Chinese sinseh’s store where I would sometimes squat for an hour watching the parrot become Nostradamus. Yes, the parrot could also tell the exact date when one would die. I would be listening to such revelations and wonder if the man was actually reincarnation of the Angel of Death himself, and the parrot his sidekick doing the horrifying job of telling the truth. Satisfied but scared off with such a learning session, I would then head home with a plastic bag of fried bananas, 30 pieces of pisang goreng a pop costing me a Malaysian dollar, or one ringgit; those plantains-looking crispy crunchy banana fritters my mother loves. Always bring something home, as a gift or buah tangan or the fruits of thine hands, as Mother would always remind us. That would signify that even if you are out having fun listening to a parrot pronounce the date for death, we should be happy that we are still alive and be bearing gifts to the loved ones at home. So I stopped by the house on Lorong Aman, Peace Lane. Something was happening. It looked like it was a Malay martial arts demonstration. Men in black traditional Malay hero outfits, each with red headscarf with the Arabic words written from right to left that looked like it read Laailaha ‘ilAllah Muhammadar RasulAllah (There is no god but The God and Muhammad is the messenger of God) written on it. In white over red; purity over blood. Yes, words that I have seen on the flag of Daesh/Isis, or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria; that globalising, terrorising military entity and an informal creation of the American empire. There was a group of around 30 or so people, all men and some boys gathering and I pushed myself into the group to get a closer look. I was small enough to bonsai myself into the crowd of adults and to have the closest view of what I thought intriguing. It was standing room only. I was there in full and clear view of what was happening. I could hear some screams and religious chants. 
(Part 2 next week)

Ramadan, Einstein and a memory

Ramadan, Einstein and a memory Opinion  |  Azly RahmanPublished: 23 Jun 2016, 12:05 am  |  Modified: 23 Jun 2016, 12:05 amItem 1Item 2
A+     A- Yes indeed the Muslim kids in Malaysia today have it easy during the fasting month; their conversations with Time is as speedy as the speed of the ‘Internet of Things’ (the IoT). Time is compressed in this global village characterised by the rapidisation of things. Relativity is the key word here as we speak of how the mind, body, spirit, and soul respond to the demands of the worldview of Ramadan.Technology to ease the suffering of hunger and thirst has today progressed in Einsteinian proportions, as how the advancements have been made since Einstein scribbled his grand theory of everything, of Relativity and Black Holes, Worm Holes, and quasars and pulsars and said, in his broken German-English accent to the world:“Here it is, my proof of the existence of black holes. One day (yes, about a hundred year later in 2015) and after the release of James Cameron’s movie Interstellar, you’ll have the proper instruments and a couple of great scientists mainly from Columbia University in the NYC to build that machine to see black holes. One day you’ll see my calculations come alive.”How fast technology has changed and our conversations with modernity and hyper-modernity in this post-post-post Age of Techno-humanism have advanced, too. For Ramadan, today’s Muslim kids can sit in an air-conditioned room the whole day and play video games and check their Internet phones every six minutes and go take a two-hour nap, and next go back to the AC room and next, it’s break fast - or Bukak Posa Time!Time is compressed. Technology has a life of its own, ‘a technologically-deterministic being’ it has become, as Marx predicted and alluded to in his magnum opus with Friedrich Engels, ‘Das Kapital’.I remember my childhood days of Ramadan when technology in my house in my gangsta Malay village in JB was still in its Neanderthal stage. One step backward and it was the Age of No Tech, Low Tech, and one more step behind was the Age of the Perak Man... the age of the early man who got lost trying to decide which way to go: Bota Kanan or Bota Kiri. He went bald thinking hard.He died waiting at the junction, at the crossroad of human evolution. He gave up. Although he was said to be a determined man who lived for hundreds of years (we need to check his birth certificate though), he gave up right there near Changkat Jering, now a dangerous highway. He was a brave man - he walked from Africa alone and didn’t know where he was going and ended up in Perak. Hence the name Perak Man.But that is another story of why he walked out of Africa. I saw him once in the National Museum in Kuala Lumpur, a few years back. He was lying in an enclosed glass bed, tired from the long walk to freedom. He was all bones. He was bald.Twelve hours felt like twelve monthsI remember my childhood Ramadan of the sixties. It was pure torture. It was a Buddhist experience of samsara. Of a life of suffering. Of denouncing water, food, and other childhood Earthly pleasures. Although the suffering was about twelve hours, it felt like twelve months of dying, of the experience of the Perak man’s marathon solo-walking. Herein lies Einstein’s Relativity.I had no iPhone nor iPad to play with, no PlayStation Seventeen to play games that have me shoot people. no blasting high-fi air-conditioning machine to ease the cells in my body and to freeze them pleasurably so that they would not wilt like raisins in the sun, as how Langston Hughes said about the self in his poem ‘Dreams’.And I didn’t have 700 channels of junk on TV to help me escape the reality of suffering and to bring me to this Hollywood or Bollywood nirvana.None of these I had. Nor was I as a kid fasting the full swing of 30-day delight as strong as our man, the Perak man. Every day of the journey, I felt my body slowly getting weak and turning into that Malay pancake called ‘lempeng’; a sorry state of beingness with the feel that by the Time the bilal hit the ‘kentong’ (sounding ‘tong... tong... tong...) or that bamboo ‘break fast announcement instrument from the kampong masjid yonder’ and next, by the time I heard the imam clearing his throat at the microphone like Matt Monroe or Louis Armstrong, ready to azan or ‘bang’ (not banging people’s head, mind you... but ‘bang’ means calling for the maghrib prayer - signifying the end of suffering,) and lastly... by the time she announced, “Lekas, boleh berbuka kita... orang dah bang tu...” (Let us now break our fast as the imam has called for prayer - by the Time all these happened, I thought I had already died, ready to be reincarnated the next day for another round of the hunger game.So - it seems like - in Ramadan death cometh daily. The madman Mansur Al-Hallaj said that, too, running around the street yelling, “Ana al Haq... Ana al Haq... I am the Truth... I am the Truth”.And then I would be alive again. Time. Time. Time. Relative is Time.As the Quranic verses go: “Time. Verily, Man is in a state of Loss and Utter Despair. Except those who do Good and Keeps the faith and remind others to do Good.” In other words: To promote peace and to keep peace and to build peace, after making peace with the self.So - with no AC, how did I ease the suffering? Here is what I did daily. The tempayan was my friend, I’d go to the bathroom and climb into the huge earthen-ware pot, turn on the tap, water would flow through the mouldy green hose, the tempayan/pot would fill up to the brim, and I’d be sitting in there as cool as the Perak Man in the Pahang River. Cooling myself with water coming to the level of my neck.“Liiikkk kau buat apa lama lama dalam bilik air tu, nak... Dah dekat sejam.”My mother would call out after an hour of wondering if I had drowned in the gigantic pot and died and perhaps transported to Africa and walked with the Perak man and get confused like him at the junction of Bota Kanan or Bota Kiri.“Lik mandi mak... sekejap lagi habis. Nak sabun badan ni. (I am bathing, mother. Now is the soap-ing part...)”Ultimate goal is the finishing lineI was happy for that Einsteinian hour in that day on the month of extreme test of spiritual endurance. For about twelve hours daily, I was both the Perak man and Siddharta Gautama or the ‘Buddha Matrieya’, wandering like Moses in an exodus for 40 years in the desert of my hyper-consciousness, in this Hunger Game called fasting - a game whose ultimate goal is the finishing line... to still be alive to hear the ‘tong... tong... tong...” sound of the masjid’s kentong. Mind-body-spirit game.I suppose Einstein would agree. Life is not about finding happiness. It is about evading pain. Not about suffering. But to find victory in the battle within. The jihad within - and only within. And that jihad is Love and nothing else. In memory of the greatest Love - my mother.Today, sixteen hours of my journey of the Perak man, in the blazing saddle heat of the New York Indian Summer Ramadan... I have felt nothing. I only eat one simple meal a day. A dead simple minimalist meal.Thank you to the memory of the Perak man. And of course the tempayan, the huge pot in the bathroom. And the sound of the tong tong tong... I could still hear - from more than a thousand miles away!

What Muslims need to do to protect Islam

What Muslims need to do to protect IslamOpinion  |  Azly Rahman Published: Today 7:17 pm  |  Modified: Today 7:17 pm A+     A- COMMENT | When politics becomes absurd, I go back to absurd literature to find solace. To philosophy to seek consolation. I am talking about the gathering of the ummah. I have no interest in even using that word. I'd rather stay home and read Anton Chekhov.But what must Islam be defended against? Who are the real attackers of this religion? What then must we do working through the political will of the present government that promised to resolve the issue of racial and religious extremism?Consider this - a philosophical, purely cognitive-spiritual Islam. How then must we educate? How must our policies to ensure peace and security be put in place?Last week, I tweeted these messages on the Ummah rally: "O' Malays! Anything better to do than attend another Ummah rally"? That sounds like a reason for a mammoth pre-Ramadan bazaar. During the Ummah rally , people would be shouting slogans they themselves do not really understand. A food festival sort of.During the rally, they'll say "Islam is threatened". Not really. Islam is used profitably, I think. Nobody's threatening anybody, actually. A rally is just to show that the country is marching towards the "Islamic State" joyfully. It's okay if the Ummah rally is to protest against the money stolen from 1MDB, Tabung Haji, KWSP, KWAP, and surau donations."There is an internal force of implosion spreading like wildfire, calling itself “true Islam”. It is a historic dilemma that can never be resolved, I believe. What it does is to claim that it is the true form of Islam that needs to be followed by all Muslims. It is calling itself an ideology that is defending Islam.Here are my thoughts on what thinking, feeling, life-appreciating-and-celebrating Muslims need to do.Islam needs to be defended against bullies like the Salafi-Wahabis and those closing the minds of Muslims globally, preachers who profit from religion by pretending to be holy yet filled with hypocrisy, Islam coming from countries plagued with sectarian violence, the mullah and mufti who use the word ummah to blind society, and Islamic rulers who aren't morally fit to govern Muslim society.The religion also needs to be protected against Islamic parties that profit from the ignorance and gullibility of village folks, preachers who do not have anything better to do than spread hate in nonsensical sermons, those who wish to drag Muslims back to the Stone Age and fugitive foreign preachers who are bullying the Malay-Muslims.The list goes on - Islam needs to be defended against those who use "Islamisation" to advance their political career, those in the Education Ministry who wish to spread Salafi-Wahabbism, those wishing to turn Malaysia into an "Islamic state", those who reject anything that is Western and those who do not like Western education.The state constitution is supreme - above religion. For Muslims, Islam is the "constitution of the self", not for the rest. Know thyself. Salafi-Wahabi ideology is a cultist form of Islam I am not familiar with. I know the history since young. Dangerous. Islam is, first and foremost, a personal philosophy, not to be turned into a state ideology. Or else, a mad mullah will take over.Muslims are more obsessed with hudud and green robes now. Move forward. Talk about hyperloops and green technologies. Is the education of today's Malays in danger of being infiltrated by the Salafi-Wahabi ideologues in the Education Ministry? Investigate.To say that Islam is under attack in Malaysia is to use a scare tactic. Before preachers open their mouth, they should study the anthropology of religion. It seems that one can be a celebrity Islamist preacher by running down other religions. Only in Malaysia. Even under the Pakatan Harapan regime.Malay-Muslims in Malaysia still follow blindly the Islamic State. They have not done enough reading of genealogy. Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan, Syria - these states under the influence of IS and Salafi-Wahabis are failed states. Malaysia, beware of IS.In Islamic countries, the problem is a wannabe mad ayatollah; in Latin America, Empanada-loving mad generalissimos. Each country is sovereign. Each has its own unique lunatic leader. No country is free from tyranny.What to do now? Malaysia is allowing home former IS followers and soldiers, even giving refuge to a most despised hate preacher. Horrible policy. This is the malaise of the new Malay-Muslim government.In the name of racial survival, the government is inching towards the IS and thus, endangering future generations. With the blessings of the Education Ministry, more universities may host that hate speech-monger. Absurd! We are weak in our critical thinking capacity. I’d say this now - Malaysia, deport any radical Islamist preacher who does not belong to our country before it is too late. Pakatan Harapan government - have the guts to maintain peace. IS is not dead. Its soldiers are merely returning home to carry out/orchestrate a localised-global war in Asia and in Southeast Asia. It’s a business of terror and spiritualism gone totally wrong.What would you die for? I asked this question in a lecture to American students in discussing terrorism. One must not die for anything. Not even for religion. Not even for God. One must live to know oneself. To know God.We must re-conceptualise the idea that religion is all there is to life. No. Spirituality reigns supreme. Even over the “self”. The lack of and ignorance towards the meaning of “liberal education” paves the way to the surrender of oneself to the jihadists.The word ummah itself is not only vague but misleading. No one Muslim is the same. To each, his or her own soul. Not answerable to some cult or something called the Islamic State.

Where is our 'Industry 4.0 educational leadership'?

Where is our 'Industry 4.0 educational leadership'?Opinion  |  Azly Rahman Published: Today 7:30 pm  |  Modified: Today 7:30 pm A+     A- COMMENT | After a year of governing with promises of radical change for equality, what have we seen in education?We will continue to see unsolvable issues in education, especially in the Pakatan Harapan government’s goal to sustain a new ideology: Ketuanan Melayu-Islam 2.0. We are in need of a new educational direction, mission, vision, and operating principles. That's a basic demand of the post-Industrial Age we think and said we are entering.Here is the question: Is it really rocket science, that requires a task force lingering for years, to solve the simple problem of certificate of equivalency for university entry?One that could be solved by merely adding this and that to the syllabus? To establish a quota of university entry based on, at least, the correct composition of the multicultural polity?UEC and systematic racismThe real issue is race, as you may have already known. Because, for example, in the case of the UEC, it is a "Chinese-Malaysian Examination". Agree? We need to stop politicising education, the gentle profession. Unless one is not clear what "Education" means. All we know today, still, is race, religion, wealth power and exclusionary politics. Forget about "Reformasi". It's all about the fight too, between dynasties, settling old scores, while the rakyat who had high hopes are still salivating for change.The hopes and aspirations of Malaysian educators of the Merdeka Era are different than that of today's "experts". They made more sense.I'm now reading narratives of the Brinsford-Kirby teachers on how they view themselves as Malaysians, teachers of a new nation. Without the commitment to forging a multicultural Malaysian identity, our Ministry of Education is just another enabler of race-religious hegemony.Why?I doubt if the UEC will be recognised by this Harapan regime. It is a race and political issue, unnecessarily. Maybe I am wrong.There was this interesting invitation for a chat between a Malaysiakini columnist and the education minister. I hope education is about genuine dialogue between the powerful and the powerless. Not defensiveness. I like forums and dialogue that create newer understandings, after overcoming limitations of knowledge in one's field. Will anyone who criticises our educational direction gets invited to a live chat? Is this something new, time-wasting policy? Every Malaysian has the right to critique educational direction. For their children's future. Not a politician's failing agenda.The "Bossku" movement signifies a major shift in Malay-Muslim psyche: Death of moral reasoning. Birth of corruptible soul. Antonio Gramsci, a good Italian, would be correct about hegemony if he were to analyse today's Malay society.Where is responsive leadership?We expect every Malaysian minister appointed, to know their stuff; from philosophy to practice of daily life of their field. A skilled minister will not need a huge "task force" to make decisions on matters simple yet producing profound implications. A minister-thinker will speak from philosophy, not fragments of ideas he or she does not have a foundational grasp of.We almost have to start anew with any government, educational system, etc. Transitions seem chaotic. Diseased. At times I like the idea of Year Zero of anything. Except the Kampuchean Revolution. 'Structural Adjustment' can be a meaningless word of change in any society that evolves based on class, race, and religion and who should control what. It is not a sustainable system.The May 2018 regime change was a hopeful moment designed by Humpty Dumpty. The idealists and moralists of yesterday have become the new ones mad hungry for power and wealth, going for the loot. When the poor are hungry and when their brain tired, feed them with dreams and nourish them with slogans. Of reformation.Can we reform a system that needs a new reconstruction through a deep-structuring revolution? Why is it so difficult for Malaysians to have an educational turnaround? And why do we continue to fight over which direction to take? Why is it Malaysians continue to be angry at the seemingly slow pace of educational change and the MoE leadership is on the defensive? Isn't the greatest problem in Malaysian education the need to "depolarise society" to define the meaning of progress equality?Any philosopher of education knows that if you have the wrong GPS you will go in the wrong direction. MoE has announced so many trivialities mistaken as priorities. The real issue is monumental structural changes we need to initiate.The MoE leadership, I sense, is struggling to define progress and nationalism in this new era of global nativism. People are angry with the MoE leadership simply because they expected changes for their children, as they voted for that.Rebranded apartheidI see the apartheid in Malaysian schooling not being mentioned, nor addressed. Maybe because there is no deep analysis being done? Or a denial syndrome at work. Because racial-politics still rules. I see no talks by MoE to train teachers to understand the need for cultural awareness and sensitivity in a racist society. I see no solution to the systematic racism happening as it relates to the university matriculation quota issue. It is a political game of inclusion and exclusion all over, rebranded. I hope there will be less talk on cashless society and other trivialities but more on increasing the child's cognitive abilities. Educational blueprints are not so important as they are merely elegant statements of, at times, nothingness. Show us a new one though. Announcing new innovations in education is fine, but we need to see old problems solved first, as top priority. We cannot continue to appoint politically-motivated leaders to lead education. Schooling is to create thinkers, not followers. Educational planning can begin with "Backwards Design" via the art and science of Educational Futurism, but not to design a backward society of racism.Malaysia is a crude-looking-plural-Islamist-capitalist society and sadly, schooling is reflecting and reproducing this. As I maintain in my numerous writings, an educational leader must, first and foremost, be a philosopher well-versed in praxis (thoughtful action designed to change society).Showing us an educational reform blueprint based on the fine-tuning of an irresponsive system, will not help appease the people. Often, structural changes will not work well, when we need to go back to the drawing board of educational vision and mission. At the ground level of teaching and learning, creating good instructional leaders is the top agenda. An educational leader, like an army general and the soldier, must have the experience of being in the trenches. To lead well.Many career and parachuted politicians get to lead ministries they are clueless about. We can't continue this reward-system.Are we still a secret government? Secret Council of Eminent People’s report, missing people, secret educational blueprint, secret political dealings?The way forwardRather than parroting Finland and Japan meaninglessly, without understanding cultural contexts of educational transfer and borrowing, why not craft a truly Malaysian educational reform ideology?And why should Islam only be the basis of our educational practice? Bring on the hybridity of cultural philosophies. Why not work on freedom to think and to be respected in class, regardless of race and religion. Why not eliminate any policies and practices that retard the development of talent of any child? These are elements of sustainability that need to be nurtured even at the "neural-connections-level" of Malaysian schooling. These are paradigmatic nuts and bolts, in fact, of a successful schooling system across life spans, across cultures. Did we not agree, at the onset of Merdeka, to have an independent, progressive, tolerant, and intelligent Malaysian society? The key word is “Malaysia” if we ever forget. Not bumiputera only."To engineer the evolution of a truly multicultural, emphatic, responsive, and progressive society". This is missing in our plan and a statement of change in contemporary Malaysia. Our politically-charged education will ensure the creation of more racial-religiously divisive society. Unsuitable leadership is driving this social change.But do we have visionary leadership to engineer yet another cognitive-systemic change?Or are we now enjoying the fruits of false promises? 

How smart is rebranding Permata to Genius?

How smart is rebranding Permata to Genius?Opinion  |  Azly Rahman Published: Today 7:21 pm  |  Modified: Today 7:21 pm A+     A- "Why are so many students with excellent SPM results rejected from gaining admission into our matriculation programmes? Is there an ethnic quota, as in the days of the BN government rule, or is there a new system of intake designed by the newly-minted Pakatan Harapan government? Whether there is an ethnic quota or not, it is clear that many non-Malay students have been rejected and told to appeal. If there is an ethnic quota, then the rejection must have been based on this affirmative action plan. Then what is the point of appealing? If an ethnic quota is operative, then the government should announce the numbers allocated to Chinese and Indian students."
– P RamasamyCOMMENT | The above quote exemplifies the nature of the major issue on how the Education Ministry operates. Yet we speak of a programme called Genius, a mere name change of Permata. As if there is no major structural problem whatsoever we need to attend to. As if there are no educational philosophical questions we need to answer for a country with a multicultural polity currently in a socioeconomic quagmire.If we have Genius as a programme, will we have 'Mediocre' and even 'Morons' as its continuum? Hope not! Be careful with labels. Switching names from Permata to Genius will not address the problem of the conception of the child's intelligence, situated in the habitus of socioeconomic realities vis-a-vis social advancement through state schooling. Learn the lesson of the concept of the 'bell-shaped curve' in education. Be careful how we structure and propagate economic and cultural class structures via defining and harnessing intelligence.But why continue with that Permata project? Use the once massive elitist-elusive funding to educate the half-a-million teachers we have, to "teach to the intelligences" instead. Every child wants to be treated as intelligent and wishes to be educated as a potential genius. No need for Permata continuation. There is also the need to rethink the continuation of programmes such as Mara’s Junior Science Colleges, governed by another ministry, which began almost 45 years ago.I hope the Education Ministry is working on a radical restructuring of education for the gifted and talented. This ministry keeps on mistaking trivial changes with systemic changes. Go back to the drawing board, please. It is an important ministry dealing with our children’s future.'Pintar' and 'genius'. These are overused words in education. What Malaysia needs is to see that each child is a gift conceived culturally. Train Malaysian teachers to teach to the intelligences and to be culturally intelligent to see equality in education. In Malaysia, there is a Malay concept of baka that can be used to speak of a child from good stock. i.e., intelligence. A project revolving around this concept was started in Universiti Malaya by the educator par excellence Azman Wan Chik back in the mid-1980s, before Rosmah Mansor and her UKM team claimed that Permata pioneered learning for the gifted and talented. Success and intelligence, framed from a class perspective will usually favour the privileged, not those economically left behind. Don’t let the word 'genius' morph into 'genie' and then to 'djinn' and use that to replace pintar. We might have a Projek Permata Djinn! Jokes aside, you call your new programme Genius, but would you first define what that means and what you hope those children will achieve?There seems to be a problem with the word 'genius' when used in a national programme. Like the term 'world-class education' or something. Why are we seeing more and more of rebranding, and mere name changes of the programmes of the Najib Abdul Razak era?Issues of educational inequality, unfair university admissions policy and teacher training are more important than a reboot of Permata.Addiction to sloganismIn education, we are seeing an addiction to sloganism. Deep learning and how to treat each child as a potential genius are keys. Bahasa Baku, Smart Schools, Vision Schools, world-class schools, Permata, Genius – these are slogans. Go deeper, less rhetoric. From the indecisiveness over the Unified Examination Certificate, a poor vaccination policy, racist matriculation admissions policy – these are big issues. The advisory team in the Education Ministry needs help with ideas that can move the nation, I sense. You can't operate on an old Umno formula or a rebranded one.See each child, regardless of race, as a gift, a talent to be developed and you will not need a programme called Genius. Fix inequality. Because of racist educational policies, we've seen so many talents wasted , so many geniuses fester like raisins in the sun, as Langston Hughes says in 'Dreams.'Each child entering school wants to be called a "potential genius", a natural-born pintar a baka, a fitrah – all these signifying the human potential in a child, not labelled and graded like eggs in a market. The Education Ministry may still be trapped in an old paradigm of defining giftedness and talentedness. I suggest they do some research on the genealogy and post-structurality of the definition of intelligences as they are applied to education in a world plagued with the diseases of globalised capitalism.Are gifted, talented, high-achieving non-Malays still being discriminated against even in this new government? Why, if so? To develop geniuses one cannot measure achievement only in a few areas. They are many kinds of "smartness" to be observed. We cannot build a sustainable education system based on inequalities and advancement of racial superiority. This is an ideological disease.The non-Malays voted for Pakatan Harapan to have a better future for their children. Are they getting a rebranded discrimination system, educational apartheid cleverly rebranded? Refusal to think as a Malaysian, to craft that philosophy of multiculturalist social-justice, will signify a second collapse of this nation by way of schooling as a means of social reproduction inspired by the developmental shibboleth of kakistocracy, kleptocracy and wannabe-theocracy combined. Like many awaiting a blueprint, as Americans waited for the Mueller Report, I'd like to read in the forthcoming blueprint what the Education Ministry is committed to, in ensuring that children of all races are equally treated. Looks like, taken as a whole and in parts, this new government is merely a remaking of the old. It is like a bad sequel. I might be wrong. Maybe the elegant language masking hash realities will prove the government’s righteous intentions.We'll continue to waste Malaysian talents if we continue to allow race-based politics to define the way we school our children. Each child is a genius born as such in all his/her glory of cultural identity and diversity. Develop that as a philosophy. Because education is about social reproduction – a racist education system will continue to reproduce efficient forms of racism.Malaysia is so entrenched in race-based politics that we will need a 'Year Zero' to correct the ills of this nation. Meaningless it is to speak of a programme for 'geniuses' when racial discrimination still governs the definition and system of human capital evolution and filtration.High achieving non-Malays continued to be denied access to universities. That's not a genius policy. We cannot continue to promote mediocrity in education, to continue to advance this or that race. We are a nation of Malaysians and we still cannot get that idea to sink into our heads. If we are not careful, we'll create another 1MDB with the financial geniuses and robber-barons – Permata running another big looting such as that done by Ali Baba and his 40 elected thieves.Why not start helping deserving and high-achieving non-Malays to go far in life too? Just like we did with Malay children from very poor families through programmes such as MRSM, which have achieved their mission and need to be discontinued? Use the MRSM budget to train teachers to train children to be more intelligent so that we can feel the reality of a knowledge and intelligent society emerging. Not like today where universities still continue to glorify and honour foul-mouthed Islamic preachers spewing hate.We seem to have a structural problem to sum it all up. With no clear plan for a transition of power, with promises unfulfilled, programmes of the old regime merely tweaked and rebranded for continuing profitability, crafting of useless projects such as the F1 circuit races and racial and religious politics allowed to continue to define nationhood, Malaysian politics will see another dark spring ahead. We need political-economic-social reconstructionist geniuses to come up with a Year Zero plan for sustainability before we travel the path of such oil-rich democracies as Venezuela. Unless we allow our politicians to do the self-destruction for us.

Musings on a nation gone half-mad

Musings on a nation gone half-madOpinion  |  Azly Rahman Published: 13 Apr 2019, 7:10 pm  |  Modified: 13 Apr 2019, 7:10 pm

A+     A- COMMENT | Like all of you esteemed readers, I sometimes do not know what to make of the world we are living in. Especially that of our beloved country. But think about it, we must. The wealthy and the powerful are having a field day, during the remains of their day perhaps, in a world ever changing wherein information wants to be free and the cybernetic world can help the maddening masses bring mad leaders down. In my half-wide awakeness, these past few days, I thought of these:Malays and the syndrome of Harry HoudiniReading about the state of things, I see academics continue to sell their soul to the forces of idiocy, to the deep state of decadence guised as traditional authority! Academics loyal to the power of hegemonic-idiocy, possessed, diseased hearts and minds, unfit to be teachers of ethics in society.But that is their right to be intelligent or to be ignorant. Their right to give advice, to make things better, or to make matters worse. Their right to be ideologues, intelligentsia, or purely intelligent beings who will not sell their soul for any pound of gold. To be a sophist or to be a Socrates. In my musings, I thought of these: No society will need monarchs to protect it, if each member takes pride in being a natural-born aristocrat with a free spirit. Malays are too slow in releasing themselves from the shackles of feudal fear and mentality. Move faster. Question authority! Malay feudalism is merely a social construct borne out of a historical accident, lasting as long as the rakyat continue to surrender their mind, body and spirit. Modern-day slavery continues to define our economic condition. The system of social injustice prevails, like a cultural logic of late capitalism gone illogical. There is this cultural disease in Malaysia, manufactured. It is self-fear. Like a selfie of a one’s fear. Fear of other races instilled in the Malay mind is for the benefit of the powerful, political, and the feudal. For survival.
Malaysians must understand that today's war is not about race and religion, but about class: of the powerful versus the powerless. Of the have-a-lots versus have-nots. A long war ahead, to redefine the way of the world and act upon it. Too much bad history has plagued this most-obedient-people in the world. Only when Malays are taught critical reasoning, critiquing feudal ideology, and "liberation theology" will they be free.The political and the feudal deep states have been using the old British colonial strategy of divide and enslave in order to maintain the status quo. In the Malay tradition, the idea of blind loyalty to feudalism must be dismantled. It is unfit for Malay intelligence of the Industry 4.0 era, especially.In all cultural traditions, there are enabling and disabling aspects. Extract, reflect upon, revise and reconstruct those which are useless to the advancement of human cognition and liberation.There is now a battle of cognition over culture in the Malay psyche. I presume a liberated Malay mind will never kowtow to any monarch, politician, ayatollah, or any master of slavery. We must end this form of mental imprisonment.
We must, especially, set the youth free. But freedom for Malay youth does not mean freedom to join Mat Rempits or neo-Nazi groups. That will be suicidal freedom. There is this malaise in the south. This idea brought me to a related notion of hegemony and false consciousness. "Bangsa Johor" is an invented "nation" living in an oxymoron: being fearful of feudalism, yet showing absurdist freedom.Today’s grand hypocrisyIn countries ruled by "Muslim monarchs," you seldom find true Islam, mostly hypocrisy. Abuse of Islam is everywhere. Look around. In Malaysia, the more politicians claim Malay-Muslim parties will defend and protect Malay-Muslims, the more you find national robbery done nicely. Even the Pilgrimage Fund, the holiest of holy investment body, got robbed holistically, done religiously.
In today's political chaos, we need a Napoleon with the heart of Socrates, the mind of Plato and Cicero, to return. In today's politics, the Malay masses is the ageing Hang Tuah, blind-obedient, watching Jebat and the King fight over wealth. People are helpless, drained by the hope they held for 60 years. After a year of regime change, hope is slowly turning into yet another period of hopelessness. In the case of the recent U-turn decision on the Rome Statute, are you justified to pull out of the Rome Statute when one has always wanted to be known as a "Third World warrior"? Aren’t we tired of claims of political conspiracy and coup d'état when the real issue is of no principle and the leaders involved could not make a stand? However dumb and dumber a president is, at least Americans have two terms maximum to suffer. Malaysia?Let us take seriously the comical North-South Malaysian Cold War brewing. Today’s Pakatan Harapan–Johor government squabble is opening up an exciting dialogue on the role and responsibilities and limits of the monarchy. The debate on the balance of power, the nature and future of the monarchy, and the growing voice of the people in deciding who is abusing power and what then must the rakyat do – these are demonstrations of a mature Malaysian democracy. Cultivate this wisely, but surely. The wealthy and the powerfulWealth and power have intoxicated those who are supposed to make Malaysia a better democracy. Arrogance will be overthrown. Race, religion, and the royalty will no longer be conveniently used as weapons of disharmony when information is set free. It's crucial now that our education system be transformed to teach the history of the people more than the history of the monarchy. In the Age of Post-Humanism, The Age of Kings will give way to The Age of Reason and Malay Enlightenment.Over the decades, the intelligence and rationalism of the Johoreans have been eroded by this sense of false consciousness. Power and wealth held by the display of the sword, gold, and mental and physical enslavement cannot be sustained. There was never a "protection of Malay rights". Only a licence and reason to plunder, propped as an absurd symbol of tradition. The 1MDB fiasco and many others swept under the carpet or yet to be uncovered, are testaments to the magnitude of plunder.Never in my life have I humiliated my mind by kowtowing to any form of modern and traditional authority. Never will I.
I believe Johoreans should be obsessed with books, and not just with football. The latter can be a passage to mind control and mob mentality. Besides, there is no Bangsa Johor. There is only Rakyat Malaysia. Our goal as a nation is to treat each citizen with equality under the shadow of the Constitution's supremacy. Young Johoreans, who do not know history, are cemented with fear, football, and false consciousness. Free them! Thomas Jefferson revisitedThomas Jefferson, statesman, author, an admirer of the Enlightenment thinkers and, most importantly, the author of the American Declaration of Independence did not want King and Religion to be foundations of the new nation. In the case of what is happening in the Islamic world, we see chaos. Islam hates hypocrites. So, why do hypocrites appoint themselves as defenders and rulers of Islam? In difficult cognitive times like these, I seek refuge in the work of, amongst other philosophers, the humanists such as Rousseau, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot. And Marat and Robespierre.Will we ever get out of this madness? Like Harry Houdini, the escape artist? This is the question of our times. We are in a black hole.

Long live the Rome Statute! Long live idiocy?

Long live the Rome Statute! Long live idiocy?Opinion  |  Azly Rahman Published: Today 11:11 pm  |  Modified: Today 11:11 pm A+     A- COMMENT | Long live the Rome Statute! Long live Idiocy! What kind of government and society shall we be? From a cashless society we want to be a moral-less society, in a world plagued with genocide and the disease of violent ideologies.The Pakatan Harapan government's U-turns on the International Convention on the Elimination of Racism and Discrimination (ICERD) and now the Rome Statute signify our entry in our own Age of Mass Ignorance. If opposing war, genocide, crimes against humanity is opposed, we have a government that needs to be deposed.Rome Statute as peace documentIn Malaysia, will all the rallies against Israeli atrocities, Rohingya massacres, & bombing of churches & mosques be banned? Seems that the more we want to have flying cars and a cashless society, the more we show ignorance on issues of war, aggression, and global morality.The Rome Statute is about stopping the rise of global fascism. What part of it does this PH government not understand? So shallow is our education system's curriculum on race relations and global issues this idiocy on Rome Statute needs to be exposed?From a self-proclaimed Asian tiger roaring in the UN condemning aggression, we have become a country mouse dying of ignorance of crimes against humanity. Most ridiculous arguments on "threatening Malay rights" are used to justify the defence of our ignorance on global issues!They say ignorance is bliss. In Malaysia, on the Rome Statute issue, ignorance is blessed. Will our diplomats now abstain from voting on global aggressions, in order to respect the rights of kampong warriors? Insane! In matters of universal human rights and global peace, no race or nation should be stupefied by its own leaders and rulers. What are we teaching our children? That it's OK to discriminate and to condone war crimes? I thought the "lawmakers" in the PH government are more globally conscious? Are they falling now into a deep state of unconsciousness?Resist mass idiocyCommitting to the principles of justice vis-a-viz international human rights in regards to the ICERD, the violation of human rights in Malaysia as in the recent missing person cases, and to the Rome Statute, is a no brainer. The most ridiculous logic we hear is that if you oppose war crimes, enforced disappearances, aggression, and genocide, your power as a national government will be challenged, and that the bangsa, agama, and negara will be in danger. There are principles crafted by the UN that are universal. There are those that are culturally-relative. But not the ICERD nor the Rome Statute. These are human principles that are meant to have us evolve into peaceful global citizens, by condemning mass murder and genocide.Bebalism or incurable idiocy is what's governing the new consciousness when it comes to speaking up against human rights injustices. Why is Pakatan Harapan losing the very principles that attracted people to vote for them? Insincerity? Hypocrisy? Idiocy?As one who has been teaching global issues for years, it will be embarrassing to tell my students how idiotic Malaysia is. O' Malays, revolt against any attempt by your leaders who attempt to spread ignorance and fear through issues of race and religion. Hitler mounted ridiculous arguments on race, crafting falsehood to turn it into truth, creating fascism, committing war crimes. Kingdoms that survive on the power of ignorance cannot last long, in an age wherein power and wealth are challenged and eventually get destroyed. The PH government seems to be surrendering to those wishing to see chaos take root. Did the people vote for cowardice? It has been my argument that education must address issues of polarization, class-based poverty, ecological destruction, and religious extremism.Utterly shameful and gutless it is for a country claiming to be progressive and a promoter of regional peace, and advocating the global principle of "prosper thy neighbor". What does opposing genocide, enforced disappearances, aggression, and war got to do with challenging "agama, bangsa, negara?" Are we going mad now?A few leaders of the Pakatan said that those who criticized the prime minster and the PH government for pulling out of the Rome Statute are cowards who cannot be trusted. How is that logical? Is the withdrawal due to confusion? Or cowardice? Why allow the tantrum of one man to deny the expression of the people of a nation? It is a basic expression of opposing violence as a global community, aspiring to be cosmopolitan citizens rather than trapped in the prison-nation-state of communalism, post-industrialism, ghetto-ism, and kampong-ism, is it not?What must we do for the next generation to get out of this intellectual quagmire and the structuring of mass bebalisma? We must turn to education as the only means for a sustainable personal, social, and cultural progress. Governments, monarchy, and those in power via whatever ideology come and go. But education should set us free. Not the illusion of knowledge and wisdom. Not the installing of fear. These will not. They will turn the masses into people who continue to support leaders who are now on trial for corruption.Educate for peace Students need to be taught how to develop critical thinking and apply those skills in evaluating international systems, environmental issues, and human rights. We need to help them demonstrate the global dimensions of crucial contemporary issues, so that they could develop relational and rational thinking on how to study and think about global problems and relationships of war and conflict and how to address them and find peaceful solutions.The urgent educational agenda is also to focus on global issues and how human rights, political-economy, ecological destruction, issues of power, wealth, powerlessness are all inter-related contributors to war and peace. Students need to be taught to recognize the interdependence of the individual and the community in creating the challenges and opportunities in a global society through the examination of sustainability, human rights and peace and conflict. This is necessary so that when they become leaders and rulers, they will not be ridiculous, and not become people with money and power, but with no soul and morals.Right now, this government is beginning to be a huge mess, unable to stand for the very basic principles of human rights, bowing down to some ridiculous tantrum not worth entertaining. What in the name of global sanity did Malaysians vote for?

Of flying cars, cashless society and educational priorities

Of flying cars, cashless society and educational prioritiesOpinion  |  Azly Rahman Published: Today 9:23 pm  |  Modified: Today 9:23 pm
COMMENT | Flying cars? Cashless system in schools? Slow down, fix society. Set sustainable priorities. Privatisation and Malaysia Inc 2.0 could still turn out to be a disaster.I thought of these conversations below for a future when we have a full-fledged society where everybody can own flying cars, thanks to the visionary work of the Pakatan Harapan government’s Entrepreneur Development Ministry. Wife: Abang Jib, Mah dah lambat nak pegi dandan rambut, la. Macam mana ha, bang? (Jib, I am running late for my salon appointment, what to do?) Husband: Tak pe' pakai Ketabang (kereta terbang) abang saje la ari ni. (Just use my flying car today.) Mother: Tak balik Raya tahun ni? (Not coming home for Hari Raya this year?) Son: Ehhh mesti balik, mak. Atan dah beli Ketabang. Flying car. Tak ade' jem jem lagi. (Ehh of course I am, mom. I've bought a flying car. No more jams.)To the ministry proposing the idea, not supporting your flying car project doesn't mean we'll be left behind on Earth. Improve public transport first, reduce the production of cars, then maybe talk about flying cars made of bamboo.My fear is mat rempit will modify their Honda Cubs into world-class flying bikes. Then we'll need space police for galactic drag racing! If all you need is four huge fans and some bamboo for exhaust pipes, mat rempit can build the best 'Ketabang' prototype. For sure, Johor mat rempit will have no problem racing flying cars in space. They love the nightlife when the sky is dark. Nasi kandar joints will fight for the monopoly of Ketabang, to speed up delivery far and wide. Who will control the smuggling of goods and people on the borders of Kelantan and Perlis with illegal flying cars abundant?Harsh realism and techno-fantasyHumour aside, these are my thoughts: how much would it cost to 3D-print a model of the flying car displayed at the recent Langkawi International Maritime and Aerospace Exhibition (Lima)? A million ringgit?I don't know what went into the model, but a good alternative for the use of that money is to train people to understand drone technology, as well as to understand its philosophical and social implications.We saw this kind of fantasy of becoming an advanced techno-society with the Multimedia Super Corridor, the biotech craze, AI and all that jazz, yet our education system has not been producing the critical mass of people in tune and culturalised with the idea of science and technology for society. If this prototype cost a million Malaysian dollars, what would be the long-term cost for the real stuff?Do our policymakers playing with high tech toys even understand the meaning of technological change, of the global rat race in technological innovation, or even the meaning of technology and techniques?Do they realise that changes in science should be founded on socialistic principles rather than innovations, forever be governed by greedy companies only interested in shoving everything new down our throat, yet unaware of the social and class and racial implications of technological change and determinism? Be wise.Don't just say that we will be left behind on the ground when cars will be flying. Realism is the word here, not blind fantasy. We have wasted so much as a nation since independence with our continuing dependency on what it means to be a 'technological' society.It seems that Malaysia wants to be known as 'highly developed' with these new toys and gadgets that are supposedly natural to the 'advanced Industry 4.0 nations,' yet our social structure and scientific mentality still leave much to be desired.Go back to the drawing board, to the critical discussion of our national needs and priorities, and most importantly, our understanding of what it should mean to be a developed society. Else, we'll become mere characters in the remake of the 1970s movie The Gods Must be Crazy.What is “progress”?Planes, trains, automobile, smartphones, flying cars – these are not the only markers of progress. The ability to be more human is. I once had a conversation with a key officer of the then-Science and Technology Ministry. He asked me to explain the meaning of 'technology'. I asked him to do it instead. He could not give a satisfactory answer, yet he was advising the minister who was driving the policies.We now hear of people in the government talking about the ecology of technological innovation, or the ecosystem that goes with any new proposal for innovation, such as the next car project. What about for flying cars too?When the Russians launched Sputnik, America panicked and revamped its education big time. What is our educational direction? During my early graduate school days, I wrote a long paper on the rhetoric and reality of US education reform entitled "A nation at risk." We don’t seem to have such urgency nor a rigorous public debate on matters concerning technological changes.Malaysians adopted blindly the idea of MSC and biotech, and now this so-called Industry 4.0. Nobody asked what it means. There is no discussion on evolutionary markers vis-a-viz technological changes our country is going through as we plan this and that innovation, borrowing fast-paced ideas lock, stock and barrel without understanding its genealogy and trajectory.One must understand that the introduction of any technological artefact produced by foreign corporations will change the social relations of production.Technology needs to be developed and adopted using the principles of sustainability in a world too dependent on borrowed technology. "Tiada rotan, akar pun berguna" (No cane, a root will do); that's the Malay wisdom of using appropriate technology and available resources.Huge profits are in the mind of the developers and suppliers of Malaysia's flying cars, not practicality and sensibility. A decade or so ago, we sent a Malaysian as a space tourist on board a Russian rocket. We wanted to be called an 'advanced nation.' Politicians announce a project and design a plan who will profit, then tell the people how the country will benefit.Massive corruption in the previous regime showed how much the phrase 'progress and development' was abused. People accepted the word 'progress' uncritically because they couldn't see alternative history.Science should serve society, technology should surrender to humanity. Not to corporate greed and politicians who love money. Reuse, reduce, refuse, and repurpose – these are elements of a more sensible ideology called sustainability.Cashless system?And then there is this story of proposed innovations in schools. To have us evolve into a cashless society.We need an explanation of how the ecology of today's schooling may contribute to fantasies of the creation of a post-hypermodern Malaysian society. My advice is to get the curriculum ready to meet the challenges of a sped-up society. We need more dialogue like this, not just say that we need to create schooling as a location for experimentation of a 'cashless society'.No, I am not against innovation, but worry about the political economics behind the introduction of those who will benefit financially. Our politics is structured as such. Leading to the world’s worst corruption case in recent times: the 1MDB.I thought our new educational direction was based on Rousseau, Dewey, Freire, and Montessori, not Wahabi ideology. Resolve the issue of the Unified Examination Certificate, and set the education 'GPS' to lead us to harmony and enhanced cognitive abilities. Set priorities.We want to read about plans to increase student and teachers' thinking capabilities, not more fluff. Improve the learning ecology of schools and of deep-learning strategies.We are at a critical juncture, not only in our national development, but also the nature of globalisation and technological revolution. Perhaps we do not have among our critical thinkers examining and guiding us on the interplay between culture, technology, class, and society anyone who can remind us of the roads to be taken in our euphoria of wanting to be known as 'advanced', 'high-income' and 'progressive'.We remain trapped by the drama of the players with wealth and power, and there is not enough critical sensibility governing our country.What must we do? Although we have a new government, we have high hopes turning into shattered dreams.