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A former employer once sponsored an NGO that sends young volunteer teachers to remote schools in rural areas. I was happy to be involved. I believe strongly in education, and credit it for lifting me out of poverty.
My own educational background is rather chequered. I went to study abroad on a government scholarship hoping to be the next Einstein. That unfortunately didn’t quite work out. There went the chance to understand how the universe works, have exotic particles named after me and perhaps get a Nobel prize or two. It felt like such a horrible fate. Bummer.
Upon having to leave university I told my professor, with great sadness, that my only option was to go home and become a millionaire.
Being a millionaire was really something special then, 40 years ago, and you would need to work hard to become one.
The value of money
Now millionaires are a dime a dozen, and many don’t bother to wake up in the morning for anything less than a few tens of millions.
Billionaires rule the roost now. They either make money from the new economy (digital this and that), old economy (property, banking and, would you believe it, rubber gloves!) and of course the oldest way of all: politics.
A billionaire in politics can always top up his account with a few hundred million whenever needed, don’t pay taxes for it, and have many apartments available to stash the money if banks can’t store it for them.
Your own family need not know about your billions unless they fight over your wealth in court after you die. Then Forbes magazine would have egg on their faces for not having you on their Malaysian billionaires list.
Getting a real education
What I brought back from overseas was a warped sense of humor – damn you, John Cleese! – which occasionally got me into trouble, and actually a pretty decent education.
I set a record at my university on how many times you can flunk exams, which likely will stand forever. But I aced at being in libraries, at the number of books bought and read, or public lectures, musical concerts attended, and museums and galleries visited.
Education comes from satisfying a curious mind with a thirst for knowledge. It’s great to have that and the qualifications too, the pieces of paper that we chase and which do count.
But if you have to choose between these two, choose education. There is a difference. I’ve seen many a person with fantastic qualifications but lacking any wide-ranging perspectives about things beyond their narrow focus.
There’s value in being specialised, of course, but in many such cases, they’ve been successfully trained rather than educated.
What’s the difference?
A broad perspective is needed to understand the world we live in, especially to lead at the highest levels. There you must have a mile-high view on everything, from society to psychology, history, science and technology, over and above your specialties.
Being educated also means possessing the ability to perform critical thinking, to take ideas and submit them to rigorous analysis before forming a conclusion, and then sticking to your conclusion because you trust your own mental processes and value your own personal worth.
By qualifications I’m not even referring to some of the almost worthless pieces of paper handed out nowadays because higher education has become big business, or perhaps because the education system is merely a factory system for producing such pieces of paper to meet KPIs.
They could very well be legitimate qualifications from proper universities whether local or abroad, especially if those institutions value rote learning or regurgitating knowledge rather than critical inquiry.
Learning a lesson in humility
Anyway, the school I visited was a government school somewhere off Taiping. The kids were mostly Malays, and their parents were typical kampung folk doing kampung stuff.
I was excited about speaking to the kids. They were who I used to be years ago. I knew their stories and I thought I could connect with them. It was going to rock and it was going to roll and it was going to be awesome.
But when I finished my talk, I had my tail between my legs. I just couldn’t connect with the kids. I pulled out all the tricks: spoke like a kampung boy, flattered and cajoled them, and almost begged for their attention. But nothing worked.
Working with an airline at the time, I thought it would be a given that every kid wanted to grow up either to be a pilot, an engineer or at least a flight attendant.
I thought I would be mobbed. Instead, I got blank stares from blank faces. It didn’t seem like they even dreamed of doing anything else but what their parents were doing – being a farmer, dispatch rider, office clerk or factory worker.
Life as they know it
Once, I heard a renowned educationist say that children can only aspire to what they know exists. In these kids’ lives, they didn’t know anything else existed apart from what they saw around them.
What role models do they see around them? They see politicians, religious leaders, civil servants or in some places, gangsters lording over everybody. All symbols of power and wealth, but none a symbol of excellence.
They don’t see the possibility of being a pilot, engineer, doctor, corporate executive or professor because they don’t see such examples around them, and they don’t hear about such people being talked about at home either.
They don’t get the constant reminder that nothing is impossible, that the sky’s the limit and dreams can come true if they work hard. That they must aspire for something higher and not just accept their lot in life.
I see them as just cannon fodder in the political wars, where the only thing of value they have is their votes. For that purpose, they’ll be kept docile, dumb and devoid of any dreams or desire to ask hard questions.
Living with crumbs
Apart from the tremendous waste of one of our most treasured resources, it is also a terrible injustice being perpetrated on them.
And they don’t know any better to feel angry or bitter about that. As long as a few crumbs come their way occasionally, that’s good enough for them.
A proper education for the people should have cured society of such raw exploitation. A proper education would have, but not if “education” comprises just the merest glimmer of literacy and numeracy, just enough for one to be functional but not enough to be critical.
Reminds me of the Matrix movies, where millions of humans are kept alive and fed dreams to make them feel as if they exist, while the only thing of value they have, their energy, is constantly being sucked out of them.
Substitute votes for energy, and you’d be describing what’s happening here very well.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.
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