Jester, joker, anarchist, tailor, sailor, tinker, toy NST (News Straits Times) May 18 2006 : EDUCATION THE NEXT SHIFT : 40 PERCENT ENROLMENT OF MALAYSIAN STUDENTS IN INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS, UP FROM THE PRESENT 0.05 PERCENT. Two key reasons for the Education Ministry's decision: To stop the brain drain of the country's best and brightest. To promote Malaysia as a regional education centre.

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Now, I will be the first to admit that I was a closet suicidal throughout twelve years of public school education, that I did not learn a thing facts-wise, that my brain was stunted and stifled by rote-learning, and that my coping strategies involved pretending I was an elf in The Lord of the Rings. It was and still is, a miserable excuse for 'education'.

But I was forced to share the same compound with the Ah Lian and Ah Beng kids from Sungai Buloh and Jinjang, the gangsters - both indian and chinese, and the middle classes, and even a rich kid or two. Spend enough formative years together, and you get to know people for who they are, not the 'type' they are. This is the one salvation of the Malaysian education system.

The last day of school was probably one of the happiest days in my life. To this day I refuse to step back into those gates, whatever the reason. Yet somehow, out of this, at least two good things have emerged, and ironically, they are exceptionally good things. One is that in spite of everything, I have survived and (in my mind) flourished somewhat by being exactly who I want to be, which is sort of an ultimate FUCK YOU to the school system. The second, and this is a much sweeter, gentle and tempering thing - is a few people with whom the understanding of friendship grows deep and true as the years pass, that I come to love with a practical, non-sentimental intensity.

But to bring us back to the rage at hand, I am appalled by the idiocy of this decision that 'comes after a year of much discussion and soul-searching, and should be welcomed by Malaysian parents'. Yes, Hishammuddin Hussein, you odious little man, you just happened to leave out what we all know : ONLY RICH PEOPLE SEND THEIR KIDS TO INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS. So now instead of 0.05 percent of the student population being totally detached from the reality of the rest of Malaysian youth, it's going to be 40 percent! As for stopping the brain drain, you think the moment these kids step out of the warm, landscaped, multi-lingual, multi-developemental, computer-aided, reading-listed, oh-so-exclusive environment of a private school that they are going to want to stick around this dunce-infested rock of the rest of us Malaysia Bolehs? Explain that, ya infernal lubber!

In the end, there is the invidivual and the society. If I was a parent, of course I should want the best for my child. I should want them to be nurtured, encouraged to think, and to gain a sense of confidence though the growth of their own abilities - all the things that school should do for you. But I am not a parent, so I can only speak as a child, still a child - I would not want to have those things if they are confined within a wall built of priviledge, money and exclusivity. The developement of an individual is not complete if it is apart from society, no matter how well-rounded the education programme. In the end, I believe my parents made the right choice for me - yes they threw me into a vicious and impersonal sea, but they also fitted me out with a life-line of books - and I have sailed ever since. Poorly, I know, but with alot of knowledge that is my own.

The heart of my argument is that I grow both wary and weary of the proliferation of gated communities in this country. Physical walls are economic walls are mental walls are walls in the mind, in the person and the public. Is there a way to exist between the high and the low? So often we are aiming to bring down the high or bring up the low, and perhaps it is an ill-advised gypsy-trait in myself that is suspicious of such purposes because it is an exercise of power. Am I a socialist at heart? Or... gasp, communist? Sometimes I suspect the secret goal of my existence is simply to avoid being pinned down - forever, a jester to the grave.

Leaving you, dear reader, with a passage from Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed :

With the myth of the State out of the way, the real mutuality and reciprocity of society and individual became clear. Sacrifice might be demanded of the individual, but never compromise: for, though only the society could give security and stability, only the individual, the person, had the power of moral choice - the power of change, the essential function of life. The Odonian society was conceived as a permanent revolution, and revolution begins in the thinking mind.


This post dedicated to E.H. - If they caught us last night - kanasai. You're sick, no, YOU! YOU ARE SICK.  ¶ 10:50 AM