There is a need for greed in this post-colonial British country. It is the need for greed at a high speed that is killing the rakyat/masses fast.
From the need to monopolize plantations, public works companies, investment brokerages, private hospitals, television stations, media conglomerates, satellites beaming 100 channel televisions that turn kampong folks into soap-opera and Bollywood junkies, right up to airlines that need newer landing grounds that will also turn surrounding areas into Disneylands -- Malaysians are now addicted the fascination of monopolizing.
The game MONOPOLY by Parker Brothers must have been a good socializer to the idea that monopolizing and being greedy is good. For decades the ideology of monopolizing has shaped the consciousness of Malaysians and monopolizers are considered heroes of the Malaysian-styled laissez faire world of corporate-crony-crypto capitalism. There is even a Malaysian version of the game MONOPOLY that is based on the cities of Cyberjaya and Putrajaya.
MONOPOLY killed America and many other nations. The capitalist world is collapsing under its own weight.
In Malaysia, the game is "rent-seeking" monopoly and of "interlocking directorateships" especially in the GLCs government-linked companies.
The rakyat/masses are merely spectator happy to read about first Malaysian billionaires, world-class Malaysian companies, and who's who in the Malaysian corporate world.
The rakyat are happy that they now can fly cheap, that they are reading about how famous Malaysia is as a great "medical tourism" destination, and which Bollywood star will get a Datuk Seri-ship.
We are a nation, like Sisyphus -- imagining ourselves happy. In a country where the few monopolizes and the need for greed is growing at a great speed. It is as if the few wants to plunder the nation as fast as they can before the entire country, like the story of Firaun/Pharaoh and Qarun in the ancient scriptures, is swallowed by the weight of power, arrogance, and wealth accumulated.
God Bless my country -- right or wrong.
But the rakyat must rise against the greedy few.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
Tribute to those who died in the Malaysian National Service
What does it mean to be a patriot these days ... ?
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Is Malaysia's Bahtera Merdeka sinking?, Part 1
EXCERPT FROM A 2008 ESSAY
| Reflections on a sinking Bahtera Merdeka |
| Azly Rahman | Apr 14, 08 |
| Bonda senyum riang (Mother smiled with joy) (In receiving the ship of Independence) |
And Johoreans - the creators of Umno - must now be the ones crying out loud on board the Umno sinking ship. Little did they know that they accidently built in the seeds of contradiction and the antithesis of a patriotism into foundations of the Bahtera Merdeka.Malaysian Parliamentary Issues 2009: DNA Bill -- Background Readings #3
Editorial
Nature 449, 377-378 (27 September 2007) | doi:10.1038/449377b; Published online 26 September 2007
Genome abuse
Top of page
Abstract
Citizens are right to resist government pressure to expand population DNA databases.
Terrorism, crime and illegal immigration are fuelling state surveillance, and are being used to justify it to the public, who too often seem asleep to the risks of abuse. This is particularly true of national DNA databases, where in several countries there is an insidious creep to log not only serious offenders but also other classes of the population, such as immigrants and minor offenders.
So it was refreshing to see resistance articulated this month in France and the United Kingdom. Prominent French scientists led public protests against a government bill to use DNA tests on immigrants to see whether they are related to family members already resident in the country. Such protests might seem an overreaction. Many countries already practise DNA testing of immigrants, with varying rules for use. In 1985, the first use of DNA fingerprinting for legal purposes led to a Ghanian boy being allowed to join his family in the United Kingdom after he proved kinship (A. J. Jeffreys et al. Nature 317, 818–819; 1985).
But the objectors are correct to argue that the French proposal, far from promoting greater fairness, is aimed at erecting another obstacle to immigration. The scientific opposition is also linked to a strong bioethical and legal tradition in France of the concept of the family as a social unit, not reduced to mere biological ties, reflecting the reality that (as in all countries) many children are not the biological offspring of their legal father. Given this culture, there is no reason why only immigrants with a biological link should qualify for integration with their families in France. Furthermore, DNA testing of immigrants elsewhere has destroyed families by uncovering true biological relationships.
The scientists' case has enjoyed public and political support, and has embarrassed the government, which sought to defuse the controversy last week by postponing a final decision to 2009. The outcry has also thrown an overdue spotlight on issues surrounding such population databases — issues being tackled in Britain, which has the world's largest DNA fingerprint database. The National DNA Database contains samples of 4 million people or 6% of the population, and one in ten males. The Nuffield Council on Bioethics, in a landmark report this month, does a service by drawing attention to the dangers of proposals to expand the database (see http://tinyurl.com/2upt8x).
There is a widespread misperception, encouraged by governments and media success stories, that DNA evidence is infallible in clinching convictions or acquittals. The technology is sound, but errors or deliberate falsifications in sample taking and handling are not uncommon, and a match with a sample at the scene of a crime may amount to proof only that the person was present at some point.
Since 2003, DNA samples and fingerprints have been compulsorily taken from Britons arrested for criminal offences. But the government now proposes extending the database to include fingerprints and DNA from anyone arrested, even for minor offences such as dropping litter. And voices within the UK government and the judiciary have suggested that the entire population should be sampled. The US government, meanwhile, is proposing to extend its database to include DNA from anyone arrested by federal agents.
The Nuffield report is right to denounce the infringements on liberty and privacy represented by such extensions as being disproportionate to any possible benefits. Suspicion of involvement in a minor offence cannot justify taking a biological sample without consent. In the United States, the largest group likely to be affected is illegal immigrants — and there is no reason to suspect this group of being more likely to engage in serious crime.
DNA fingerprints themselves contain relatively little personal information, but the biological samples are open to misuse. Although supposedly limited to direct matching of individuals for crime cases, DNA data are already used for the much less scientifically robust practices of searching for family relatives of a crime's perpetrator, and to try to reduce possible suspects to ethnic groups.
History teaches us that it is a fallacy that only those without a clear conscience need fear a knock on the door at midnight. Governments' enthusiasm for DNA databases needs to be matched by commensurate statutory protection, transparency and oversight — and vigilance by citizens.
Malaysian Parliamentary Issues 2009: DNA Bill -- Background Readings #2
| Ancient DNA:
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| And the Blood Cried Out:
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| DNA and the Criminal Justice System: The Technology of Justice (Basic Bioethics) Amazon
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| DNA : Forensic and Legal Applications Amazon
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| DNA Fingerprinting Amazon
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| DNA in the Courtroom: |
| DNA Is Here to Stay Amazon
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| DNA and Other Polymorphisms in Forensic Science Amazon
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| DNA Profiling:
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| DNA Technology in Forensic Science (NRC I Report) Amazon
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| DNA Typing Protocols: Molecular Biology and Forensic Analysis Amazon
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| Evaluation of Forensic DNA Evidence:
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| An Introduction to Forensic DNA Analysis Amazon
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| The Forensic Cookbook: The Science of Crime Scene Investigation Amazon
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| Forensic DNA Evidence Interpretation Amazon
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| Forensic DNA Profiling Protocols Amazon
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| Forensic DNA Typing : Biology, Technology, and Genetics behind STR Markers Amazon
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| Interpreting DNA Evidence: Statistical Genetics for Forensic Scientists Amazon
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| Mind over Murder:
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| Sourcebook in Forensic Serology, Immunology, and Biochemistry Amazon
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| Weight-of-Evidence for Forensic DNA Profiles Amazon
|
Malaysian Parliamentary Issues 2009: DNA Bill -- Background Readings #1
TO: Malaysian Parliamentarians
FR: Azly Rahman
RE: Readings before the debate on the DNA Bill
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
COPYRIGHT 2008 Northwestern University, School of Law
JAY D. ARONSON, GENETIC WITNESS: SCIENCE, LAW, AND CONTROVERSY IN THE MAKING OF DNA PROFILING (Rutgers University Press 2007). 270 PP.
In [1910 in] London, Scotland Yard and the forensic scientists of the Home Office continued to puzzle over what had killed the victim found in the cellar at No. 39 Hilldrop Crescent....
At St. Mary's Hospital in London, William Henry Willcox, a famed forensic chemist and senior scientific analyst for the Home Office, took delivery of the five jars of remains held in the Islington Mortuary.... He was an expert on poisons and testified so often that reporters gave him a nickname, The King s Poisoner. (1)
The history of forensic science is intertwined with public relations, not only in the sense that all of the sciences earn trust in the "court of public opinion," but because juries must be convinced that a forensic expert's techniques are worthy of confidence. Getting forensic science off the ground was apparently not easy, as the "legal and medical journals of the first half of the [twentieth] century are filled with lamentations of juries' refusal to acknowledge scientific circumstantial evidence. Murder juries often refused to convict in the absence of eyewitness testimony...." (2) A public relations campaign, however, "carried out through magazine articles, World's Fair exhibits, short stories, books, and Hollywood movies" delivered the message that "disinterested, 'objective' science was the best weapon against crime." (3) The FBI's Scientific Crime Detection Lab was opened in 1932 as a model for similar municipal laboratories; an exhibit at Chicago's 1933 Century of Progress Fair explained that a medical examiner is "a non-political official, [an] expert in medicolegal pathology, who conducts a scientific investigation into the cause of death, whose work is purely medical [and] whose impartial findings are accepted by court and jury in criminal cases...." (4)
Even as some of the old forensic techniques--for example, phrenology, hypnosis, and truth serum--lost their luster, the field of forensic science has increasingly shared in "science's cultural authority as pure, unbiased, and objective," and the testimony of a forensic expert has been generally viewed as "unaffected by his or her own background, beliefs, and social and intellectual biases." (5) Lurking in the background of this effort to "transubstantiate opinion into fact," however, is our sense that forensic experts "ignore or deny that [their] truth was inevitably filtered and shaped by professional experience, interests, and personal biases." (6)
Nowadays, forensic science appears to be in crisis, (7) and its foundation is cracking, or, in the words of Professors Michael Risinger and Michael Saks, virtually non-existent:
Many of the forensic techniques used in courtroom proceedings, such as hair analysis, fingerprinting, the polygraph, and ballistics, rest on a foundation of very weak science, and virtually no rigorous research to strengthen this foundation is being done. Instead, we have a growing body of unreliable research funded by law enforcement agencies with a strong interest in promoting the validity of these techniques. This forensic science differs significantly from what most of us consider science to be. (8)
Notably absent from the list of flawed forensic techniques, however, is the field of DNA profiling. DNA test results, "as the gold standard of forensic evidence," have eclipsed
other forms of eyewitness testimony, confessions, or older forms of forensic evidence [which are now commonly assumed to be] ... erroneous or misleading. All other forms of criminal evidence are now invidiously compared to "DNA" with its strong connections with laboratory science and the impressive probability figures that accompany reports of matching DNA profiles. (9)
Nevertheless, even as we now equate DNA with "science" and "truth," we should not forget that "[j]udicial and popular notions of science are flexible and historically changeable," or that "until recently, latent print comparison (fingerprinting) was deemed to be an absolutely certain, unassailable, and error-free source of scientific evidence." (10)
Responding to such warnings, Jay D. Aronson's Genetic Witness: Science, Law, and Controversy in the Making of DNA Profiling offers an historical perspective on the recent search for a "forensic silver bullet--a foolproof technique that can identify absolutely the perpetrator of violent acts from the physical traces left at the crime scene and provide a tool for tracking ... criminals." (11) Aronson, an assistant professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University, explores the twenty-year process by which DNA profiling became known as "the best method of forensic identification ever created"--a...
SOURCE: http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-34956006_ITM
How to radicalise our universities
| How to radicalise our universities |
| Azly Rahman |
My parents only managed to complete Darjah Tiga/ Standard Three/Third Grade of their education. They learned how to read and write well though. They had aspirations. High aspirations -- in an economic system that favoured the sons and daughters of the rich and famous and of the political-economic-cultural elite class. Poverty and the nature of 'human capital revolution' during the 1940s did not afford them the luxury of being in an ivory tower. One became a taxi driver and the other a factory worker in Singapore assembling microchips for a German multinational corporation. They would leave for work at four in the morning and come home at seven at night. That was the story of their lives. I am sure they had the dream of entering a place called the university. They spent their time -hard times- that took toll on their personal lives, raising their children to enter the university. But they had an intelligent hunch, they believed universities will make everybody come out smarter and able to think critically, creatively, and altruistically. They did not have the knowledge of political economy to decipher that universities are closely linked to the politics of the day. I still believe what my parents believed, that universities ought to make people come out smarter and able to solve problems in as many ways as they possibly can. Universities ought to make them able to articulate ideas, expound ideas, and make the graduates closer to the ‘masses’ and not to the ‘power elites’. Universities ought to make its graduates understand the meaning of human liberation. Universities ought to help humans have all the qualities mentioned and at the same time help them get a decent job. One that will evolve into a career and ultimately become a calling. Like my mother especially who would say, “Belajar lah pandai pandai Ah-Lik, nanti boleh masuk universiti." ("Study hard Ah-Lik, you can then enter the university")' I too believe in this mantra which says that universities must be the place to make one more intelligent. Cultures of Disability What has become of our public universities? Have we created cultures of disability in the way we teach our students how to think? The public seems to be feeling betrayed. Too often now in the emerging progressive media, we hear such lamentations:  “Our universities have lost their sense of historic and philosophical mission; we are seeing a university shackled by the ideology that has developed historical- materialistically out of the mold of Western and Eastern colonialism.”Our academic leaders are seemingly trying hard to please their political masters of the day; they seem to be imitating the role of the intelligentsia rather than of organic intellectuals. Their creativity and sense of democracy is ‘guided’ by a philosophy of instrumentalism, rather than radical multiculturalism. Our academic staff are overwhelmingly afraid to speak up on issues that matter most to the destiny of the nation: increasing authoritarianism, Oriental Despotism, rule of technocracy, the plundering of our national wealth by those in the ruling elites, destruction of our rainforests and our environment, blind following of the ideology of developmentalism, and the silencing of civil servants as well as academicians through dictates and documents that are archaic and styled perhaps after the rule of J.W.W. Birch, the resident of Malay settlement of the 1800s. Their minds are conditioned to obey. Our students are being treated like extensions of the Malaysian secondary schools and they in turn treat the university as a place wherein facts are merely to be regurgitated at the end of the semester examinations. Therefore they now expect to be spoon-fed all the time, even during job interviews. Our campuses are becoming a battleground of political leaders from the "pro-aspirasi kerajaan" (pro-government aspiration and 'pro-pembangkang' (pro-Opposition.) The words ‘aspiration’ and ‘opposition' are cleverly used to create the 'good guy’ versus 'bad guy’ dichotomy in Malaysian politics, masking the real issues. We need a brand new political order altogether. Our students are not skilled in reading between the lines, since they are skilled memorisers of facts and blind receptors/recipients of ideologies. Our classrooms are turning to be real lecture theatres wherein the lecturers and the professors are mostly not keen in engaging in dialogical, dialectical, and didactical teaching. Our university lecturers/professors think they are ‘sages on stage’ and not ‘Socrates the liberator’ and a guide on the side. They have become ‘modular-type’ instructors. Our universities are more interested in specialising themselves into this and that universities – Management, Multimedia, Agricultural, Technology, Social Sciences, the Arts, etc. etc. – undermining the value of a broad and strong foundation of the arts and humanities which should form the basis of any institution called a ‘university’. A ‘Universiti UMNO’ -- a little bit too much for an institution -- was once mooted. The more specialised the universities are, the better they can be ideologically controlled. This seems to be the nature of hegemonic system of thinking which is prevailing. Our graduates are being churned out in a diploma mill -some within three years only – we now have unemployed graduates by the tens of thousands. They were given the promise to finish early and they ended up without jobs. Our academicians do not produce enough bodies of knowledge; ones that would challenge every aspect of the foundation of ideas which are prevailing today. We continue to produce knowledge base that is ‘instrumental reason’ and technocratic in nature; produced out of lecture theatres, tutorial rooms, and textbook-publishing houses that fail to critique the dominant ideology. Our universities are not only funded by the ruling coalition party that is under scrutiny for big-time corruption, wastage, and at the brink of being replaced, but also by corporations at home and abroad that are interested in seeing that the graduates are graduating from the mold of the corporate-government-industrial complex. Our universities are fertile grounds for the indoctrination of ideas and the funneling down of slogans – from the idea of a K-economy, Islam Hadhari to modal insan (human capital). We continue to be sloganised. Academicians diligently frame their research question, methodology, findings, conclusion, and recommendations to fit the citra-rasa/agenda of the ruling ideology of the day. Our universities ride the waves of Nationalisation, Islamisation, Information Technologisation, Globalisation, and now Bio-technologisation – because they choose not to stop and look at the waves first and ride them later. We have created cultures of disability in our public universities. Our politicians, especially those involved in education beginning from the time of Independence have not clearly understood the role of a university in a nation that is coming out of colonialism. Not enough radicalism has been cultivated on campuses. Because the developmental agenda of the nation is tied to the role of the universities, the latter has become an apparatus of the ideology of modernisation and hypermodernisation; two continuing processes of the development of base and superstructure that define what we are now, a neo-colonialist corporatist nation that is even more complexly tied to the international system of modern slavery ruled via the regime of globalisation. What inroads need we take to reconstruct our public universities? We must go back to philosophy for possible solutions. Cultures of Ability To enable our public universities, we ought to embark upon, borrowing the title of Nelson Mandela's autobiography, a ‘long walk to freedom’ by taking the following steps: Understand the philosophy and historic mission of universities; those in the business should be able to articulate the meaning and manifestation of a university.  Understand the meaning of hegemony and how it was crafted in the previous regime of Dr. Mahathir and how we ought to craft ourselves out of it. We ought to understand how not to get into any newer form of hegemony.We ought to understand how to be totally free and how to live a philosophical life that values the quest for meaning rather than the quest for political and material Epicureanism. Understand theories of knowledge and its application to all spheres of university education so that we may not merely turn our ivory towers into creating people and ideas that will turn this nation into a haven for economic exploitation of global multinational corporations. Our universities are increasingly influenced by market forces in that we become slaves to industries that are themselves slaves to technological inventions that do not have an end to their own progress. Our graduates in the scientific and technological fields are discovering that they are becoming victims to the onslaught of shifting technologies and the emotionless system of advanced capitalist formation that shift jobs and retrenches people in the name of corporate downsizing, corporate re-engineering, and in meeting the needs of specialised labor. This means that these major global corporations that dictate the needs of labor to be produced from our universities are finding it more profitable to either automate or to move their operations to nations that can sell human labor even cheaper. Understand the role of universities viz-a-viz for a truly democratic nation; in a democracy that values pastoralism and meaningful participation rather than one that advances protectionism and the plundering of public wealth. Study progressive reform movements that have helped advance the development of intellectual culture in universities. Create students who are radical enough to challenge not only corrupt practices but also challenge paradigms of thinking. This is the ethos that create frontier thinkers in any society. Learn to deconstruct ideology by understanding what the German philosopher Jurgen Habermas call 'ideologikritik', the art and science of understanding the structure of knowledge and the human-constituted interests which embody it. By understanding how knowledge, particularly instrumental/technical knowledge is constructed, and who owns and control its development, we can better understand how to deconstruct it to become more humane. |
Feed the radical students with more and more radical theories of social change, so that when they become leaders they will ignite peaceful revolutions that speaks truth to power and bring happiness to the poor.Malaysian Parliamentary Issues 2009: National Service Rethinking
TO: OPINION LEADERS, MALAYSIAN PARLIAMENTARIANS, EDUCATIONAL LEADERS, PARENTS
FROM: Azly Rahman
RE: OPINION PIECE FOR PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE 2009
"...Education, and perhaps education alone, must be the vehicle to meeting the objectives of liberating them. As I write this phrase I think of the philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau’s writing on the naturalistic approach to education in his work, Emile, or on Education.
Indoctrination is an enemy of education. Indoctrination paves the way for authoritarianism and the funneling of “official knowledge” into the minds of the young as if they are empty vessels.
Indoctrination creates individuals and citizens who will either become cogs in the wheels of the postmodern-capitalist State, workers in the international system of production, or at best, intelligentsia in the nationalist State defined by the “best and the brightest few.”
Indoctrination creates docile youth who will be apathetic towards idealism and disinterested in exploring newer frontiers of social justice.
Indoctrination, in some warring countries, creates under-aged suicide bombers. ..."
Some time ago I wrote the essay below, asking for the radical reconceptualization and hence impelmentation of teh National Service.
DE-MILITARIZING THE MALAYSIAN NATIONAL SERVICE
by Azly Rahman
“Seorang remaja dari Kangar, Perlis … yang gagal melaporkan diri menyertai PLKN tahun lalu menjadi tertuduh pertama di negara ini dihadapkan ke mahkamah atas kesalahan itu… . Ini merupakan kes pertama membabitkan 4,269 peserta PLKN yang gagal melaporkan diri siri pertama latihan itu tahun lalu, yang dihadapkan ke mahkamah” reads an Utusan Malaysia report on The Malaysian National service. http://www.utusan.com.my/utusan/content.
asp?y=2005&dt=0319&pub=Utusan_Malaysia&sec=
Dalam_Negeri&pg=dn_02.htm
I cannot understand why the youngster from Perlis need to be brought to court for refusing to participate in the Malaysian National Service. This is wrong especially when the youngster is picked at random to begin with. It means that not only was he chosen by chance, but he was brought to court as an example to others that it is a government’s prerogative to force the youth to be indoctrinated in some army camp.
Why choose to display our poor understanding of the concept of education as such? Why chose the youngster from Perlis as a National Scapegoat? Is it because he hails from the remote state that is known for its soft-spoken-ness, laid-backness, silence and simplicity?
As one who has been for decades involved in the business of respecting, nurturing, and expanding the mind of Malaysians and Americans, this image of the creation of Spartans chills and troubles me. In my capacity as educator “in the classroom and outside of the classroom across the lifespan” as the slogan for Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, puts it http://www.tc.columbia.edu, I am concerned with the way we force-feed what we want our children to learn.
Our youth should not be subjected to a National Service –type of regiment but to a program of creativity and problem-solving based on the latest principles of humanistic teaching and learning.
There should be no “one-size-fits-all” formula, such as The Malaysian National Service formula, for the development of the mind of the youth.
As many educationalists are aware, the MRSM system is modeled amongst others, after the renowned Bronx School for the Gifted in Science in the city of New York; a school that produced Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners.
Half-baked philosophy
Just like the Smart Schools project, The National Service is based on a half-baked philosophy of teaching and learning.
The National Service is based on the philosophy of anti-humanism; a philosophy governing the government’s attempt to engineer the human mind. This is an example of how “education becomes a hotly contested terrain,” and how the young, creative minds are being endangered by those in power who lack the understanding of what education should mean.
When education is designed by those bent towards militarism, then we may evolve into a Sparta instead of an Athens, in the context of Ancient Greek history. Consider the training of a Spartan between 800 to 600 B.C:
Boys were taken from their mothers at the age of seven and put under
control of the state. They live in barracks, where they were subjected to
harsh disciplines to make them tough and given an education that stressed
military training and obedience to authority. At twenty, Spartan males were
enrolled in the army for regular military service (Spielvogel, 2005, p. 60)
Unlike the Athenians who cultivate the mind through the arts and critical inquiry, the Spartans had a different attitude towards intellectual development in that:
Spartan citizens were discouraged from pursuing philosophy, literature,
the arts, and or any other subjects that might foster novel thoughts
dangerous to the stability of the state. The art of war and ruling was the
Spartan ideal. All other arts were frowned on (Spielvogel, 2005, pg. 61)
I hope we are not evolving into a Spartan state, at the rate of how the government is planning to bring thousands of our youth to court for their conscientious objection to the national act of indoctrination ala the Spartan state.
Let us now analyse what the development of Malaysia as a “military-state” means so that we may find ways to de-evolve and to become more like Athenians.
The Malaysian National Service was conceived to make the youth of today more patriotic or nationalistic, particularly in the age of globalization wherein international cut-throat competition and outright violations of human rights is prevailing.
The youth of any nation will need to understand the meaning of the struggle for independence and in their generation, what independence and nationalism may mean. This is a daunting task; the youth of today resides in a world quite different from those who died in combat in the name of the fatherland/motherland.
The youth of today battles with video characters in virtual environments such as Halo-2, Final Fantasy X, and Grand Theft Auto; in short, they are not yet independent. The world of illusion designed by the cultural-industrial complexes from afar are what they dwell in. They live in a matrix of ideological installations, be they designed by those who author the place of dwelling, or the “houses we inhabit.”
But how do we achieve the objective of making them love the nation when we are actually now making them hate the nation, by threatening to throw them in jail?
How many thousands of our youth will be thrown in jail by the time the National Service program ends?
Will we need to build bigger juvenile detention centers to house them and will we then, as a nation, evolve from a Third World dependent corporatist state to a “prison-industrial complex” if more and more youth of today refused to be indoctrinated?
We must make our youth nationalistic, but must we make them hate the nation, through the fear tactics we are using?
We step back and reflect upon this issue of national importance; or else we will lose the young, curious, intelligent minds of tomorrow.
The meaning of education
Education, and perhaps education alone, must be the vehicle to meeting the objectives of liberating them. As I write this phrase I think of the philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau’s writing on the naturalistic approach to education in his work, Emile, or on Education.
Indoctrination is an enemy of education. Indoctrination paves the way for authoritarianism and the funneling of “official knowledge” into the minds of the young as if they are empty vessels.
Indoctrination creates individuals and citizens who will either become cogs in the wheels of the postmodern-capitalist State, workers in the international system of production, or at best, intelligentsia in the nationalist State defined by the “best and the brightest few.”
Indoctrination creates docile youth who will be apathetic towards idealism and disinterested in exploring newer frontiers of social justice.
Indoctrination, in some warring countries, creates under-aged suicide bombers.
The British writer, essayist, and humanist, George Orwell writes on the dangers of living in a world of double-speak in his novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four in that double-speak characterizes the nature of the indoctrinated mind. One parrots the slogans the government creates in one’s public speeches.
Education, comes from the Latin word, educare meaning ‘to draw out’ (the potentials) from within the individuals we consciously plan to educate.
Malaysia is at a critical juncture in which the youth has been shaped by the forces of ideological and material production and their identities formed through a complex process of socialization and the ongoing globalization that had come forth since the beginning of human movements.
Those who own the means of controlling the minds and consciousness of the youth, controls the process of indoctrinating the youth and making them docile and domesticated, in the name of nationalism.
Educators, I now speak to you -- understand the complexities of how thoughts are formed and the mind is expanded, before designing a program as grand as the Malaysian National service.
For whom does the National Service serve?
If it is to serve the intellectual development of our youth, we must de-militarize our agenda and next, understand our youth of today. We must understand the culture of our youth.
In many a graduate school of education in the United States, ‘Youth Cultures’ is currently offered as a course to help understand the phenomena of identity formation of the youth and how best to design the most effective instructional methodologies to affect changes.
Again, this is not an easy task. It is a historical issue; that the idea of “the Malaysian youth” need to be understood in all its complexities; its anthropological, psychological, and cultural origins.
Professors in Army Uniform
The Malaysian National Service is an attempt to redesign/reengineer the human self. It is a cybernetic attempt to reconfigure the neurons in order to affect ideological changes.
The National Service was probably planned by university lecturers in military uniforms who works in collaboration with the Ministry of Defense to create patriots. The university professors were probably, in their early years deeply involved in an extra-curricular activity such as “PALAPES” and decided that they like it and thought that it would be a good idea to transform this after-school interest into something of a grand scale of nationalistic significance that will propel them to fame.
Hence, you may find for example, some Vice Chancellors doubling up as Colonel or Brigadeer General, running the university like Third World generals such as Soeharto or Sani Abacha. It is therefore easier for people in governments to buy the idea of nationalism sold by professors-in-uniform than that articulated by deans of faculties of education who actually know a lot more about human cognition than mental colonialism.
The irony of this genealogical aspect is this: The National Service is actually borne out of the life long interest of lecturers who simply love the uniformed bodies. It is akin to a politician’s visit to a “Smart School” in California or Vancouver and decided that by the year 2010, all 10,000 Malaysian schools should be smart, without analyzing the long-term implications for digital divide, let alone the issue of technological dependency.
What would it be like if the National Service is run by those who love the Arts and Humanities and Philosophy? Would we create Athenians more than Spartans? Would our youth be trained by thinkers and artists and humanists than drill sergeants?
Military-styled education instills discipline but does that through fear and force. Even if it is designed to be gentle, it remains an education program installed to have the youth follow rules and regimentation so that it will be easier to make them good workers and followers of regimes.
Education for the development of the human mind, and to recognize and to further develop the genius that is in each and every child, is a gentle act of showing the way towards human liberation.
The ultimate aim of education is, I believe, not to control the minds of human beings but to liberate them from the shackles of ideological, supernaturalistic, parochial, or regressive religious belief systems, but rather to move beyond the sociology and politics of knowledge.
In short, education is meant to make our youth think and create new artifacts and newer and better designs of living built on humanistic and ethical foundations close to our hearts. Freedom, of course, must come with responsibility.
What then must we do?
The answer lies in the role of the Malaysian public universities. Let the faculties of education take over the business of expanding the human minds. They ought to be the rightful champions of the meaning of education. These individuals ought to be the Athenians; those who know better than the Spartans.
But professors of education, you must speak up for the youngster from Perlis!
For, he is the first victim and a silent reproduction of the emerging militaristic state.
FROM: Azly Rahman
RE: OPINION PIECE FOR PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE 2009
"...Education, and perhaps education alone, must be the vehicle to meeting the objectives of liberating them. As I write this phrase I think of the philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau’s writing on the naturalistic approach to education in his work, Emile, or on Education.
Indoctrination is an enemy of education. Indoctrination paves the way for authoritarianism and the funneling of “official knowledge” into the minds of the young as if they are empty vessels.
Indoctrination creates individuals and citizens who will either become cogs in the wheels of the postmodern-capitalist State, workers in the international system of production, or at best, intelligentsia in the nationalist State defined by the “best and the brightest few.”
Indoctrination creates docile youth who will be apathetic towards idealism and disinterested in exploring newer frontiers of social justice.
Indoctrination, in some warring countries, creates under-aged suicide bombers. ..."
Some time ago I wrote the essay below, asking for the radical reconceptualization and hence impelmentation of teh National Service.
DE-MILITARIZING THE MALAYSIAN NATIONAL SERVICE
by Azly Rahman
“Seorang remaja dari Kangar, Perlis … yang gagal melaporkan diri menyertai PLKN tahun lalu menjadi tertuduh pertama di negara ini dihadapkan ke mahkamah atas kesalahan itu… . Ini merupakan kes pertama membabitkan 4,269 peserta PLKN yang gagal melaporkan diri siri pertama latihan itu tahun lalu, yang dihadapkan ke mahkamah” reads an Utusan Malaysia report on The Malaysian National service. http://www.utusan.com.my/utusan/content.
asp?y=2005&dt=0319&pub=Utusan_Malaysia&sec=
Dalam_Negeri&pg=dn_02.htm
I cannot understand why the youngster from Perlis need to be brought to court for refusing to participate in the Malaysian National Service. This is wrong especially when the youngster is picked at random to begin with. It means that not only was he chosen by chance, but he was brought to court as an example to others that it is a government’s prerogative to force the youth to be indoctrinated in some army camp.
Why choose to display our poor understanding of the concept of education as such? Why chose the youngster from Perlis as a National Scapegoat? Is it because he hails from the remote state that is known for its soft-spoken-ness, laid-backness, silence and simplicity?
As one who has been for decades involved in the business of respecting, nurturing, and expanding the mind of Malaysians and Americans, this image of the creation of Spartans chills and troubles me. In my capacity as educator “in the classroom and outside of the classroom across the lifespan” as the slogan for Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, puts it http://www.tc.columbia.edu, I am concerned with the way we force-feed what we want our children to learn.
Our youth should not be subjected to a National Service –type of regiment but to a program of creativity and problem-solving based on the latest principles of humanistic teaching and learning.
There should be no “one-size-fits-all” formula, such as The Malaysian National Service formula, for the development of the mind of the youth.
As many educationalists are aware, the MRSM system is modeled amongst others, after the renowned Bronx School for the Gifted in Science in the city of New York; a school that produced Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners.
Half-baked philosophy
Just like the Smart Schools project, The National Service is based on a half-baked philosophy of teaching and learning.
The National Service is based on the philosophy of anti-humanism; a philosophy governing the government’s attempt to engineer the human mind. This is an example of how “education becomes a hotly contested terrain,” and how the young, creative minds are being endangered by those in power who lack the understanding of what education should mean.
When education is designed by those bent towards militarism, then we may evolve into a Sparta instead of an Athens, in the context of Ancient Greek history. Consider the training of a Spartan between 800 to 600 B.C:
Boys were taken from their mothers at the age of seven and put under
control of the state. They live in barracks, where they were subjected to
harsh disciplines to make them tough and given an education that stressed
military training and obedience to authority. At twenty, Spartan males were
enrolled in the army for regular military service (Spielvogel, 2005, p. 60)
Unlike the Athenians who cultivate the mind through the arts and critical inquiry, the Spartans had a different attitude towards intellectual development in that:
Spartan citizens were discouraged from pursuing philosophy, literature,
the arts, and or any other subjects that might foster novel thoughts
dangerous to the stability of the state. The art of war and ruling was the
Spartan ideal. All other arts were frowned on (Spielvogel, 2005, pg. 61)
I hope we are not evolving into a Spartan state, at the rate of how the government is planning to bring thousands of our youth to court for their conscientious objection to the national act of indoctrination ala the Spartan state.
Let us now analyse what the development of Malaysia as a “military-state” means so that we may find ways to de-evolve and to become more like Athenians.
The Malaysian National Service was conceived to make the youth of today more patriotic or nationalistic, particularly in the age of globalization wherein international cut-throat competition and outright violations of human rights is prevailing.
The youth of any nation will need to understand the meaning of the struggle for independence and in their generation, what independence and nationalism may mean. This is a daunting task; the youth of today resides in a world quite different from those who died in combat in the name of the fatherland/motherland.
The youth of today battles with video characters in virtual environments such as Halo-2, Final Fantasy X, and Grand Theft Auto; in short, they are not yet independent. The world of illusion designed by the cultural-industrial complexes from afar are what they dwell in. They live in a matrix of ideological installations, be they designed by those who author the place of dwelling, or the “houses we inhabit.”
But how do we achieve the objective of making them love the nation when we are actually now making them hate the nation, by threatening to throw them in jail?
How many thousands of our youth will be thrown in jail by the time the National Service program ends?
Will we need to build bigger juvenile detention centers to house them and will we then, as a nation, evolve from a Third World dependent corporatist state to a “prison-industrial complex” if more and more youth of today refused to be indoctrinated?
We must make our youth nationalistic, but must we make them hate the nation, through the fear tactics we are using?
We step back and reflect upon this issue of national importance; or else we will lose the young, curious, intelligent minds of tomorrow.
The meaning of education
Education, and perhaps education alone, must be the vehicle to meeting the objectives of liberating them. As I write this phrase I think of the philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau’s writing on the naturalistic approach to education in his work, Emile, or on Education.
Indoctrination is an enemy of education. Indoctrination paves the way for authoritarianism and the funneling of “official knowledge” into the minds of the young as if they are empty vessels.
Indoctrination creates individuals and citizens who will either become cogs in the wheels of the postmodern-capitalist State, workers in the international system of production, or at best, intelligentsia in the nationalist State defined by the “best and the brightest few.”
Indoctrination creates docile youth who will be apathetic towards idealism and disinterested in exploring newer frontiers of social justice.
Indoctrination, in some warring countries, creates under-aged suicide bombers.
The British writer, essayist, and humanist, George Orwell writes on the dangers of living in a world of double-speak in his novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four in that double-speak characterizes the nature of the indoctrinated mind. One parrots the slogans the government creates in one’s public speeches.
Education, comes from the Latin word, educare meaning ‘to draw out’ (the potentials) from within the individuals we consciously plan to educate.
Malaysia is at a critical juncture in which the youth has been shaped by the forces of ideological and material production and their identities formed through a complex process of socialization and the ongoing globalization that had come forth since the beginning of human movements.
Those who own the means of controlling the minds and consciousness of the youth, controls the process of indoctrinating the youth and making them docile and domesticated, in the name of nationalism.
Educators, I now speak to you -- understand the complexities of how thoughts are formed and the mind is expanded, before designing a program as grand as the Malaysian National service.
For whom does the National Service serve?
If it is to serve the intellectual development of our youth, we must de-militarize our agenda and next, understand our youth of today. We must understand the culture of our youth.
In many a graduate school of education in the United States, ‘Youth Cultures’ is currently offered as a course to help understand the phenomena of identity formation of the youth and how best to design the most effective instructional methodologies to affect changes.
Again, this is not an easy task. It is a historical issue; that the idea of “the Malaysian youth” need to be understood in all its complexities; its anthropological, psychological, and cultural origins.
Professors in Army Uniform
The Malaysian National Service is an attempt to redesign/reengineer the human self. It is a cybernetic attempt to reconfigure the neurons in order to affect ideological changes.
The National Service was probably planned by university lecturers in military uniforms who works in collaboration with the Ministry of Defense to create patriots. The university professors were probably, in their early years deeply involved in an extra-curricular activity such as “PALAPES” and decided that they like it and thought that it would be a good idea to transform this after-school interest into something of a grand scale of nationalistic significance that will propel them to fame.
Hence, you may find for example, some Vice Chancellors doubling up as Colonel or Brigadeer General, running the university like Third World generals such as Soeharto or Sani Abacha. It is therefore easier for people in governments to buy the idea of nationalism sold by professors-in-uniform than that articulated by deans of faculties of education who actually know a lot more about human cognition than mental colonialism.
The irony of this genealogical aspect is this: The National Service is actually borne out of the life long interest of lecturers who simply love the uniformed bodies. It is akin to a politician’s visit to a “Smart School” in California or Vancouver and decided that by the year 2010, all 10,000 Malaysian schools should be smart, without analyzing the long-term implications for digital divide, let alone the issue of technological dependency.
What would it be like if the National Service is run by those who love the Arts and Humanities and Philosophy? Would we create Athenians more than Spartans? Would our youth be trained by thinkers and artists and humanists than drill sergeants?
Military-styled education instills discipline but does that through fear and force. Even if it is designed to be gentle, it remains an education program installed to have the youth follow rules and regimentation so that it will be easier to make them good workers and followers of regimes.
Education for the development of the human mind, and to recognize and to further develop the genius that is in each and every child, is a gentle act of showing the way towards human liberation.
The ultimate aim of education is, I believe, not to control the minds of human beings but to liberate them from the shackles of ideological, supernaturalistic, parochial, or regressive religious belief systems, but rather to move beyond the sociology and politics of knowledge.
In short, education is meant to make our youth think and create new artifacts and newer and better designs of living built on humanistic and ethical foundations close to our hearts. Freedom, of course, must come with responsibility.
What then must we do?
The answer lies in the role of the Malaysian public universities. Let the faculties of education take over the business of expanding the human minds. They ought to be the rightful champions of the meaning of education. These individuals ought to be the Athenians; those who know better than the Spartans.
But professors of education, you must speak up for the youngster from Perlis!
For, he is the first victim and a silent reproduction of the emerging militaristic state.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
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