History of Malaysia's Gifted and Talented Education -- early notes with reference to the MARA Junior Science College (MRSM) system

BRIEF NOTES AND SELECTIONS ON THE HISTORY OF MALAYSIA’S GIFTED AND TALENTED EDUCATION WITH REFERENCE TO THE MRSM (MAKTAB RENDAH SAINS MARA/MARA JUNIOR SCIENCE COLLEGE) SYSTEM

By Azly Rahman

(Originally written as part of a proposal to the Stanford University School of Education, 1997)

A nation’s greatest asset is its intellectual resource cultivated through the process of education. From the times of Plato to the post-modernist revolution in cognitive psychology, the emphasis burdened onto the enterprise of education is to create individuals able to function intellectually and productively in society. Key to this ongoing cultural and social struggle is the development of thinking skills and personality traits “desirable” and socially apt in the process of educating or “drawing out the best out of the child” so that he/she will be able to be holistic in thinking. This enterprise has been approached in many ways depending on the times and the socio-economic and political climate prevalent. One of the most remarkable and landmark studies which has emerged in the field of assertaining human potential is that done by Prof. Lewis Terman of Stanford University. For 34 years and one which continued after his death, Terman spent his life, beginning as a graduate student, closely following the intellectual development of over 1500 children he defined as gifted and talented through the Stanford-Binet test (Sisk, 1987:7). Terman and Oden (1959:2) described the purpose of the study entitled Genetic Studies of Genius.

In 1921 a generous grant from the Commonwealth Fund of New York City made possible the realization of this ambition. The project as outlined called for the shifting of a school population of a quarter-million in order to locate a thousand or more of highest IQ. The subjects selected were to be given a variety of psychological, physical and scholastic tests and were then to be followed as far as possible into adult life.

Terman was working within the paradigm of intelligent testing based upon the Stanford-Binet IQ concept; a time wherein the structural-functionalist and empirical approach to ascertaining intelligence was flowering. Seventy years hence has passed and countless criticisms were leveled against IQ testing-based selection and determining of the concept of giftedness. Numerous instruments have since been developed to give a “fairer” approach to defining intellectual ability. Albeit the above-mentioned summary of the controversies which has plagued intelligence testing up to this day, Terman’s classic study remained much revered as an attempt to comprehensively and longitudinally analyze the life events which has shaped and sustained the “giftedness and talentedness of his subjects”. Terman (1959:) was specifically attempting to find out the following:

(1) what intellectually superior children are like as children; (2) how well they turn out; and (3) what are some of the factors that influence their later achievement. (page 2) The history of gifted and talented education has not recorded any attempts by others into follow-up studies of such magnitude. Sisk (1987) in analyzing early education efforts on behalf of gifted children concluded that “[i]n reviewing the early educational efforts on behalf of the gifted, the genius of Terman cannot be ignored. He was a major catalyst for education for the gifted and devoted his life to bright and quick students”. (page 7)

It is within this backdrop of literature on the history of giftedness and talentedness that the foregoing discussions leading to the stating of problem statement and hypothesis need to be set. Whilst the American experimentation on the selection and identification of children designated be academically gifted began with the Terman study in 1921, more than 50 years after that, Malaysia as a developing country emerging out of the shockles of colonialism and undergoing a process of nation-building through education, began a similar experiment.

A study into the process of systematic filtration of children designated as academically gifted and placing them in special schools for the academically superior was documented in a doctoral dissertation by (Sulaiman, 1975). A nationwide search was made for the “best and the brightest” to be screened and admitted in a newly established group of three schools named MARA Junior Science Colleges (in Seremban, Kota Baru and Kuantan). Sulaiman’s study focused on the 1974-75 selection process and stated that:

... a total of 2,070 candidates were eligible to participate in the selection process. Out of these, only 818 managed to qualify for the interviewing stage. And out 880 interviewed candidates, only 330 were finally selected based on the cumulative results of the MJSC tests, which formed 60% of the total, the socio-economic considerations which formed 20% and the interview criteria which form another 20%. (page 144)

If there are similarities in the manner Terman selected his subject, it is in the manner IQ testing is used which focused primarily on the logical-mathematics and linquistic abilities of those tested and selected. Sulaiman (1975) stated that “[t]he MARA test comprised an IQ test, an English test, a Science test, and a math test, each having a total of 60 points making a total score of 240 points for all four subjects.” (page 145) Having been tested and succeeded, thus began MJSCs’ experiment’ in “enriching the lives of the children through a differentiated curriculum modeled after The Bronx School for the Gifted in Science. A historical survey into the development of Terman’s study as well as MJSC’s experimentation and its mission and vision will certainly be dealt with in the section of literature review. The above discussions, albeit at length for a section on problem statement and hypothesis, nonetheless is necessary to arrive at a jucture to understand a parallel experiment which was done at two different times.

Although Terman’s study began in 1921 and Sulaiman’s analysis of the selection process was described critically and analytically in 1975, one must content with the chronological difference in the transplantation of ideas from a developed country to that of a developing one. Sections in the review of literature will deal with the Center-Periphery Concept of transplantation of educational ideas looked at within the context of Dependency theory. Pertinent to this study nonetheless is the replication of Terman’s study (with minor adaptations) to the products (in the vulgar sense of education/terminology) of the MJSC experiement out of which is based upon the intelligence testing championed by Terman himself.

REVIEW OF SELECTED LITERATURE ON THE HISTORY OF GIFTED AND TALENTED EDUCATION

The history of defining the concept of “giftedness” is one characterized by shifting paradigms of what constitutes intelligence and creativity in the context of a particular society’s ideological, political economic, socio-economic, cultural structure and history. It is also that of a constant flux and controversies in one’s definition of concepts such as “egalitarianism”, “equality” and “equal opportunity” as an art and science of “drawing out the best in every human being” (Kline, 1988)”. As society, in the context of historical materialism, moves towards progressing complexity, the need to delineate the “junior members of the society” borrowing educational philosopher John Dewey’s term (Dewey, 1938) becomes more pressing; the “best and the brightest” need to be systematically groomed particularly into “intellectual elites”.

These elites should then be socially engineered, through the human capital revolution process called “schooling”, to become cadres’ of capitalism able to sustain, evolutionize or even revolutionize the make up of the nation’s ideological structure. As such, the process of creating intellectual elites is not without precedence. Education for the gifted and talented is one such enterprise spawning historically from the days of Plato’s insistence that “philosophers” should be kings (Plato ). Modern-day history of gifted and talented education must be seen within the historical perspective of education in the United States Tannenbaum (1988) chronicled the American effort in educating the gifted; describing the historical evolution of gifted and talented education. From the days of Stanford-Binet Intelligence Quotience (IQ) testing in the early 1960s up till the move towards holistic definition and perspectives on the selection process in the 1980s, it is argued that the paradigms of perceiving giftedness have continually shifted, signalling the “maturity” of the concept (Tannenbaum, 1988).

The 1990s is characterized by the definition of giftedness based on brain-laterality and hemispheric models, signalling another paradigm shift which moves into the arena of educational belief that giftedness is a “concept for all” and that “egalitarianism” in defining whether one is gifted or not is essentially a moral-educational obligation, and that what should be looked at and into is the concept of “the genius in each and every human being” (Kline, 1988; Deporter; 1992 Gardner; 1985 Levine, 1991). The discussions and brief mentioning supra of the historical trends in gifted educational conceptual perspective suggests, as stated in the first paragraph of this section, the “shifting paradigms of what constitutes intelligence and its means of “perceiving it”. The following paragraphs briefly outline the review of literature pertaining to the history of gifted and talented education:

Philosophers par excellence of the Hellenistic tradition, notably Socrates and Plato were the first to contribute to the idea that intelligence need to be nurtured in order for society to sustain its cutting edge and competitive advantage in civilization (Nettleship, 1966). Whilst Socrates called for the early identification of individuals’ talent so that more of the gifted can be nurtured, Plato believed that a society can maintain its prominence and intellectual sustenance through the election of gifted and talented individuals to the ruling class. Plato, in essence and in the leit motif of his age, insisted that “philosophers should be king” believed that the giftedness can be defined as the ability to grasp knowledge at the various levels classified and be able to also be highly competent at those various levels.

The Hellenistic tradition, with its primary of classical philosophy as its force majeur, gave birth to the enterprise of scientific inquiry; familiar the maxim that “philosophy is the mother of knowledge.” Scientific inquiry, the soul of rationalistic throught of that philosophical genre transferred the concept of giftedness and intelligence, from a somewhat vague, fuzzy and non-scientific conception based on Platonic idea of the human mental innerworkings, to a more “constructed” one; that intelligence is a fixed human characteristic. One such attempt to search into the fixatedness of this concept of intelligence which later gave rise to the genetic investigations into giftedness is the work of Sir Charles Darwin, an English botanist.

Darwin’s (1868) investigation into the origin of species a “blasphemic and controversial” study on natural selection set the impetus for another researcher to look into the concept of the inheritability of human intelligence. Such was undertaken by the English biologist, Sir Francis Galton, who constructed the first intelligence test based on the data of his research findings. Galton (1869) developed the instrument based on his theory that the general intelligence of infants are related to their sensory acquity (Howley et. al., 1986). The quest for identification of human intelligence saw further development in the work of the Frenchman, Alfred Binet who developed a test to identify slow children. Binet’s work (1905) was focused on searching for measures to help these slow children to develop to their fullest potential.

Contrary to previous ideas put forth that intelligence is a fixated and inherited, Binet believed that human beings can develop their intelligence and that it can be done so through education. The history of gifted and talented education especially at this juncture saw the birth of the “nature-versus-nurture” controversy of intelligence which has up to this day kept emerging and reemerging, gaining prominence in the current “Murray” research published in 1995 (Murray, 1995). Following Binet’s work on the developmental and educable nature of intelligence and giftedness, the thesis was further developed into a revision of the original test by Lewis Terman, one of the most monumental figures in the history of gifted and talented education. Terman was then teaching at Stanford University and in 1916 developed the classic Stanford-Binet test (Binet, 1916). thus, the Stanford-Binet IQ test was born which gave, up to this day the popularity of the term IQ testing; an enterprise claimed by its proponents to be a holistic and scientific measurement of the fixatedness of human intelligence. Subsequent developments followed which saw the further refinement of the measurement of intelligence. Intelligence was then looked at from the perspective of one’s ability to perform certain tasks, depending on one’s general aptitude and unique factors. Spearman (1904) was the first to delineate “s” (specific) factors” in human intelligence.

These “s” factors were then further delineated by research done by Thurstone (1938) who specifically named seven mental abilities as primary to the definition of intelligence. They are namely, “numbers, verbal, space relations, memory, reasoning, word fluency and perceptual speed.” (Sisk, 1987: page 5) Whilst the historical development of intelligence testing is, at this point of discussion, centered around the belief that giftedness is a fixed construct, the work of Guilford (1959) who developed the model structure of intellect (SOI) marked a turning point in conceptualizing what intelligence is. Guilford’s factor-analytical model intelligence, the SOI, was based upon the idea that intelligence need to be looked at from three dimensions: operations, contents, and products. (Sisk (1987) stated:

According to Guilford’s definition, the operations are intellectual activities which involves the processing of information. Contents are the types of information on which operations are performed, and products are the outcomes of the different kinds of mental ability (pg. 5).

Jean Piaget’s monumental contribution to this historical review comes next in significance. Piaget (1952) theorized the stages of growth of human cognition; from the sensory-motor to pre-operational to concrete operational and lastly to formal operational. The human being progresses through these stages through his/her interaction with the environment a life process which is undergone with intensity. Accommodation and assimilation are the key features of the innerworkings of this interaction. Linguistic and thought development enriched or impoverished determines the level of cognition characteristic of the individual. Piaget looks at this development within the context of input-output of information in the process of developing the intellectual structure of the human being.

Since the times of Socrates and Plato to that of Jean Piaget, the history of defining intelligence and giftedness has undergone monumental paradigmatic shifts bringing forth newer perspectives in attempts to educate the human intellect. This brief historical survey would not be complete without the inclusion of contemporary findings in research on brain/mind which has begun to revolutionize the field of gifted education and one which has spawned new and unprecedented directions in this field. Sisk (1988) outlined the developments in cognitive psychology, an interdisciplinary field of the study of human potential and how this “new science” has brought promises in realizing “egalitariarism” in education. Sisk (1988) wrote:

Within the last generation, a new empirical discipline, cognitive science (a hybrid of psychology, computer science, psycholinguistics and several other fields) has developed. Cognitive science explores the interior universe - the mind and the processing of thought. This exploration bears examination by educators interested in building quality education. (page 289).

And thus, the history of gifted and talented education saw a watershed with a burgeoning literature to support the idea that giftedness and intelligence is not only concepts which are fixed and to be measured but can be developed multi-facetly, through multi-disciplinary means in order to create multi-dimensional human beings able to cognitively sustain their intellectualism in, a world of multitude complexities. Among those pioneering such a radical humanistic concept of human potential development are those such as Ivan Barzakov, Geogi Lozanov and Howard Gardner. Important works in the literature of brain/mind science of this genre abound and currently transforming education for the gifted and talented : (Lozanov, 1979; Gardner, 1985) a concept no longer to be tested on and discovered for the reserved few, but one to be developed and nurtured for the masses!

II. ON LEWIS TERMAN’S LONGITUDINAL STUDY

Significant to the intent of this research proposal is a brief discussion on Terman’s longitudinal study of which will be adaptatively replicated as a cross-sectional panel study of Malaysian gifted individuals identified in 1974. In Genetic Studies of Genius which remain up to this day, an unsurpassed and monumental research into giftedness, Terman documented research findings from 1925 to 1959, the year of his death. Sisk (1988) wrote of his work:

Terman’s project to study gifted students was founded in 1921 for $20,000. For 34 years, more than a quarter of a million dollars was raised to fund the study. As students were added, the size of the group studied grew to 1528 children. After Terman’s death in 1956, the study was continued by his associate Melita Oden, who conducted follow-up testing every five years. It is scheduled to continue until the death of the last Terman project participant in 21st Century and is financed primarily from Stanford-Binet test royalties. (page 7).

Sisk (1988) in her discussion of the emerging concept of giftedness summarized Terman’s findings as:

• The gifted differ among themselves in many ways and are not homogenous. • The stereotypes of the gifted child as puny, asocial, or prepsychotic, and of high intelligence as akin to insanity, are discounted. • To identify the most intelligent child in a class, one should consult the record book for the youngest. • Superiority in intelligence is maintained through adulthood. • Instructional acceleration at all levels is beneficial • Gifted students who did not attend college had the same intellectual level as PhD candidates. • Research on differences between the most and the least successful men in the gifted group indicate socio economic status and college education of the father as influencing factors, as well as force of character. • Mental age continues to increase into middle age. • There were many more high IQ persons than predicted by the normal curve of probability (Terman and Oden, 1947; Goven, 1977).

It is not the intention here to discuss the criticisms and contestations related to the findings made by Terman in the heydays of Stanford-Binet Intelligence testing. Rather, the purpose is to highlight the significance of Terman’s longitudinal study within the context of this proposal. What is to be studied in this Malaysian context has its parallelism with Terman’s work. The following review of the MARA Junior Science College experiment will throw some light to this parallelism.

III. ON THE MARA JUNIOR SCIENCE COLLEGE EXPERIMENT

The relationship between education and nation-building has extensively emerged in the literature of education particularly since nations in Latin America, Africa and Asia were released by their colonial masters from the shackles of domination (Bock,1971). Analyses of the role education play in these newly-independent nations have ranged from particularly two contending paradigms; structural functionalist and dependency or conflict (Paulston, 1977). Education, as part and parcel of superstructure inherited from colonialism has been seen as an enterprise which has its ideological base in the former colonial countries.(Walters, 1981). In Malaysia, British colonialism has had a major impact in the development of English schools which were instrumental in grooming political elites, predominantly, who would administer the country using ideological and political tools British in character.

Bock (1971) particularly analyses this relationship in his study of education and nation-building emphasizing on the uniqueness of multi-racialism of post independence. Bock stated the educational imperative as such:

... the range of problems which confront Malaysia are precisely those which require a direct attack on the attitudinal predispositions of its ethnically diverse citizenry. Recognition by the national elites that true unity between the ethnic communities in any cultural sense will take years, perhaps several generations to develop, has resulted in the short-run on attempting to attain some kind of accommodation between the communities so that they can live in peace while pursuing modernization. (page ) (1971)

Bock further stated that nation-building in post-colonial Malaysia has focused on the need to provide “crutches” to aid the Malays in their quest for economic and educational equality whilst at the same time to encourage “greater political participation by the non-Malays, particularly the Chinese population” (page 33). Out of this political economic obligation then efforts were made to systematically engineer special educational provisions for the Malays to enter “priviledged” schools which attempt to groom bright and fast rural children to advance the ladder of social stratification. At the time the government was already embarking for several years in these special residential schools project, at the same MARA (Council for the Indigenous People’s Trust), a quasi-government body “ventured in a major educational programme - The MARA Junior Science College (MJSC)”. (Sulaiman, 1975). These special residential schools were to encourage the development and interest of students especially in Science and Mathematics. Particularly relevant is the mention of the issue which surrounded the establishment of these school vis-a-vis the Government’s effort in attempting to do similarly. Sulaiman (1975) wrote:

The steps taken ... in setting up MJSC were received with mixed feelings. Some negated the necessity and justification set forth by the proponents of the project by claiming that if would ‘duplicate’ the government’s efforts aimed at basically the same objectives. That is, to help the poorer but bright intelligent students to excel in academic studies in science and mathematics. The counter claims by the MJSC proponents were that they were not interested in just producing academic ‘geniuses’ (robot-like and insensitive) who are unable to adjust to society’s needs. They claim that MJSC is also an attempt to inculcate ‘enterprising’, ‘creative’, ‘independent’ and ‘all-rounded’ attributes in all their students. (page 109 : underscore mine) Students were selected based on criteria such as good results in the Standard Five assessment exam, a series of tests and an interview. The tests, conducted by MARA “comprised an IQ test, an English test, a Science test, and a Math test each having a total of 60 points, making a total score of 240 points for all four subjects (pg. 146).

The purpose of creating MARA Junior Science Colleges was clear, to screen the “best and brightest” among Malay children to undergo privileged training in science and mathematics based education. The vision was to create intellectual elites able to build the nation which was then in the process of modernizing. The foregoing brief review of literature relating the MJSC experiment as it relate to post-colonial Malaysian education attempt to provide the context of this research proposal. It would be impossible to measure the contributions made by the individuals selected into MJSC in the early 1970s, to the development of the country.


REFERENCES (USED IN THE FULL-LENGTH VERSION OF THIS PAPER)

Alexander, P. & Maria, J. (1982). Gifted education, Rockville, MD: Aspen Publications.

Binet, A. (1916). The development of intelligence in children. Baltimore, MD: Williams and Wilkins.

Bock, J.C. (1971). Education and Nation-building in Malaysia: A Study of institutional effect in Thirty Four Secondary Schools (dissertation), Ann Arbor, Michigan: Xerox University Microfilms.

Darwin, C. (1868). On the Origin of Species. New York: Appleton & Co.

DePorter, B. & Hernacki, M. (1992) Quantum Learning: Unleashing the Genius in You. New York: Dell Publishing.

Dewey, J. (1938) Experience and Education. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.

Galton, F. (1925). Hereditary Genius, an inquiry into its Laws and Consequences. London: Macmillan and Company.

Gardner, H. (1985). Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic Books.

Guilford, J. P. (1959). Three Faces of Intellect. American Psychology, 14, 469-179.

Howley, A. et al. (1986) Teaching Gifted Children: Principles and Strategies. Boston: Little, Brown.

Kline, P. (1988) The Everyday Genius. Arlington: Great Ocean.

Levine, H. (1991). What are accelerated schools? Accelerated schools. Accelerated Schools Project: Stanford University.

Lozanov, G. (1979) Suggestology and Outlines of Suggestopedy. New York: Gordon and Breach.

Paulston, R. G. (1977). Social and educational change: conceptual frameworks. Comparative Education review June/October.

Piaget, J. (1952). The Origins of intelligence of children. New York: International University Press.

Sisk, D. (1987). Creative Teaching of the Gifted. New York: Mc Graw Hill.

Spearman, C. (1904) General intelligence - Objectively determined and measured. American Journal of Psychology, 15. 201-293

Sulaiman, S. Z. (1975). MARA Junior Science College: Student Selection and Its Implication for Educational System Development in Malaysia. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Xerox University Microfilms.

Tannenbaum, A. (1988). The Gifted Movement - Forward or on a Treadwill. Leadership Assessing Monograph: Education of Gifted and Talented Youth (opinion paper) West Lafayette, IN: Gifted Education Resource Institute.

Terman, L. M. & Oden, M. (1959). Genetic Studies of Genius (volume 5): The Gifted Group at Mid Life. Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press.

Thurstone, E.L. (1938). Primary mental abilities. Psychometric Monographs, 1

Walters, P.B. (1981). Educational change and National Economic Development. Harvard Educational review vol. 31, No. 1 February 1981.

Perak Darul Ridiculous!

What's new in Perak since the time of slavery of the natives in the 1800s, the feud between the royal houses, and the gangland wars of the Ghee Hins and Hai Sans?

What a shame to the people of Perak who yearn for a peaceful government that will take care of their basic needs especially in times of Malaysia's economic troubles. While the rakshashas go to war, the innocent suffer.

Perak Darul Ridiculous is a microcosm of Malaysian politics and the shape of things to come.

Aren't the Perak people tired of all these and Malaysians in general sick of this drama?

SCALE OF CORRUPTION IN MALAYSIA -- Al Jazeera Report

A beautiful mind!

Obama-Corzine Rally in New Jersey, USA

Pigs could fly

For Led Zep fans worldwide:

For Pink Floyd fans: Tribute to Syd Barrett

Essays on the Malays

Here are some thoughts on the Malays, written over these last few years:

ESSAYS ON THE MALAY SUBJECT

• A Malay view of "Ketuanan Melayu"
• A mind is a terrible thing to waste
• After apology over the keris
• An invitation to the Oxford Roundtable
• Brand new Malay dilemma
• Embrace kampong-ism, not feminism
• Entering the Malay mind
• From daulat to derhaka: A Malay Darwinist moment
• Ideology, idiocy, independence
• In search of a new Malay mind
• Is the keris a symbol of violence?
• Johor Malay congress on Ketuanan Melayu
• Machiavellis in Malaysian politics
• Malay matrix awaits its messiah
• Malay myth as colonizing strategy
• Mandate of heaven this nation awaits
• Memories of the colony
• Nationalism and tribalism
• Neo-feudalism of the cybernetic Malays
• Our 'remptized' education system
• Outside the matrix
• Sawojaya -- a new Malay race
• Slaying an immortal tiger
• Stop fighting, help the Indians!
• Stop glorifying the Mat Rempits!
• Who is our real father of independence?
  

Another truth about Hang Tuah?

On Bagan Pinang and existentialism

Landslide victory or political immorality?
Azly Rahman

(From: ILLUMINATIONS, Malaysiakini)

Isa Samad's second coming - into Minangkabau politics - signifies the coming of a disturbing age of loosening morality. What does a landslide victory mean? Will we see a kingdom of peace on earth that the Minangkabau people inhabited? Will this "landslide victory" of an avalanche of postal votes establish another forty years of the reign of One Malaysia?


Let us look at the semiotics of Bagan Pinang - of the sign, signifier and the signified of this by-election that is telling Malaysians something about the shape of things to come.

The Negri Sembilan people have spoken. They have voted for corruption to reign. What does the victory say about hegemony and political immorality?

Thus spake the Minangkabaus

Negri Sembilan politics is "Menang Kerbau" politics. Hence, the name Minangkabau. It's a blood sport of Toros bullfighting, only that it is happening in a Third World country. Sometimes I do not know what all these mean - the elections, democracy, and the fierce struggle for regime change.

How must a corrupt regime be allowed to sustain itself? How must voters be allowed to continue to choose leaders that are corrupt to the bone? Political questions become philosophical musings - ultimately forces one to become an existentialist.

We are living in a world of cynicism and hopelessness. Of course, we do not expect every Malaysian to become an existentialist thinker and abandon the advancement of political will, but there must be a period in our evolution wherein we ought to step aside and think what is right and what is wrong in politics and how we address the question of meaningfulness, alienation, and revolution.

Existentialist thinkers such as Jean Paul Sartre, Franz Kafka, and Soren Kiekaargard have addressed the issue of human condition in a time of hopelessness and hegemony produced by the government of the day. In a world of big-time bullfighting - this "Menang Kerbau" and cowhead protest era - in which winning is a Machiavellian act, one is faced with an existential situation - what do all these mean?

Bagan Pinang was a game of high stakes and low stakes politics, as the anthropologist Clifford Geertz would put it, as analyzed in his work, "Deep Play: Notes on a Balinese cockfight". It is an occasion to symbolize the arrogant return of the politics of despotism - of the decadence of that two-decade rule. In this sign of arrogance lies the symbolism of a world of money-media-machinery-mind control.

In this symbolism lies the signifier of the continuation of old school hegemony and yet another phase of its transition. In this continuum of sign, symbol, and signifier lies a representation; that the people of Bagan Pinang specifically and Negri Sembilan generally are still mesmerized by the spectacle of old school hegemony and blinded by the argument of the "technicality of corruption".

If corruption can be turned into a technicist construct, what must other forms of expressions of dehumanization - the Internal Security Act, The University and University Colleges Act, The Official Secrets Act, etc. - be called? We will see more of the acts of rationalizing conducts that are blatantly irrational. How else can we explain police brutality, torture, religious intolerance, unexplained political murders, the rise of Malaysia's Hitlerian youth, the nexus between politics and the underworld, and so forth?

Tsunami of political immorality

Existentialists have generally abandoned the hope for divine intervention in the resolution of deteriorating human condition. Conditions in French Algeria particularly during the Algerian War, and the aftermath of World War II gave an inspiration for philosophers and humanists like Albert Camus, Jean Paul Sartre, and Franz Kafka to lose hope in Fate to intervene.

But in our times, religion need not be an opiate for the masses, nor a ‘ganja' for the delusional. From the experience of the liberation theologists in Latin America, South Africa, and the Philippines we can see the power of the collaboration between radical critical theorists and religious reconstructivists.

In the face of hegemony, such as in the outcome of Bagan Pinang in which landslide victories signify the march of big-time irrationality and political immorality, our own interpretation of liberation theology can be constructed between the revolutionary forces of change within the parties in the counter-hegemonic coalition.

What the rakyat want, to be part of a tsunami, is to wipe off corrupt individuals, institutions, installations, and ideologies that have become part of the landscape of even the Malaysian mind. What is needed is a reconstruction of the philosophy of counter-hegemony in this game of ‘Menang Kerbau', or the Malaysian buffalo or cockfight so that the revolutionary and religious elements of radical change can be constructed and hence the chi or the inner harnessed energy, like in the training of the Shaolin warrior, can be harnessed and used to transform society.

As long as there is no reconstruction of this philosophy, race can still be used by the oppressors as a tool to dislodge, divide, disengage, and ultimately destroy the force of change.

Is Bagan Pinang the beginning of more landslide victories? Or is it a lull before a tsunami? As an existentialist, I would say that only time will tell, and only after there is a serious reconstruction in the philosophy of the forces of counter-hegemony.

The winner in Bagan Pinang, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia

Negri Sembilan politics is "Menang Kerbau" politics. Hence the name Minagkabau. It's a blood sport of Toros bullfighting, only that it is happening in a Third World country. Sometimes I do not know what all these mean -- the elections, democracy, and the fierce struggle for regime change. How must a corrupt regime be allowed to sustain itself? How must voters be allowed to continue to choose leaders that are corrupt to the bone? Political questions become philosophical musings -- ultimately foces one to become an existentialist. We are living in a world of cynicism and hopelessness.



We do not know that outcome of Bagan Pinang but we know that it is a game of high stakes and low stakes politics, as the anthropologist Clifford Geertz would put it, as analyzed in his work, "Deep Play: Notes on a Balinese cockfight"





SEE GEERTZ'S NOTES: http://www.si.umich.edu/~rfrost/courses/MatCult/content/Geertz.pdf

A Led Zeppelin tribute concert --Stairway to heaven

Just came home from a Led Zeppelin tribute concert:



DECONSTRUCTING IT:

"Sawojaya" -- a new (replacement) Malay race

“History is bunk": Henry Ford, American inventor


What if the Malays undergo a conscious and mandated name-change - from Melayu or Malay to Sawojaya? I believe this is possible as a preamble to a suggestion of a planned evolution of the name “Malay”.

I think we are at an exciting historical juncture in which human creativity is at its highest point, given the power of the advanced digital communication technologies such as Web 2.0 and the like.

It is time that the Malays are “rebranded” into something less contentious as the name of a race or ethnic group or even a political entity. It would be an exciting idea in postmodern anthropology' - one that will signify a discovery of the grounded theory of the Malay philology. The anthropological challenge might be to erase all the prefixes, affixes, and suffixes of “Malay” in all existing documents that have ever existed about the Bangsa Melayu.

An exercise in rebranding

Why this proposal?

Consider these, within the context of the syntagmatic perspective of history, within the paradigm of the political-economy of change, and the archeology and philology of language analysed within the context of class and the post-modern caste system.

The word "Malay" or "Melayu" in the modern and post-modern times has carried its connotation of "malaise", "withering", "wilting" "backwardness", "paranoia", disempowerment", and even “laziness”.

Me-layu = wilting
Malays = malaise
Mel-ange = range of differences/fragmentation
Malas = lazy

In Malaysia, particularly wherein Malays form a substantial majority and political power is in the hands of a "Malay" party called "United Malays National Organisation", concepts related to the word "Malay" have been hovering to indicate the "malaise-ness" of ideas:

Notions such as ketuanan Melayu successfully marketed by the Malay propaganda outfit, Biro Tata Negara (BTN), kedaulatan Melayu trumpeted by Malay blind nationalists and ageing sloganeers, and tak Melayu hilang di dunia (Malays will never be extinct) vainglorified by one-dimensional historians and inscribers on meaningless statues propped in front of a national museum – all these have been the reason behind the bad publicity the Malays have been getting over the last 500 years.

In fact the founding of Melaka itself has been a historical accident that has catapulted the word Malay into a situation of historical problems and contributed to the feel of the malaise-ness of the Malays.

Politicians no Malay paragons

The biggest culprits in contributing to the malaise have been the Malay politicians.


Of late, there is confusion amongst the Malays themselves as to who is representing who in the struggle to "liberate" the Malays. Many are confused why there is a small segment of the Malays supporting the continuation of the use of the repressive tool of the state, the Internal Security Act.

Many are confused why the Malay linguistic nationalists are insisting that Mathematics and Sciences are taught in the Malay language. Many are even more confused about which Malay political party is actually representing the Malays.

In modern times much has been written about the Malays and what is happening to this ethnic group. Works such as The Malay Dilemma, The Malays: Their problems and their future, Revolusi Mental, Tuntutan Melayu, Quo Vadis Bangsaku, are amongst those that address the Malay racial and political-economic problems.

Might is right seems to be the notion that governs which political entity or entities will guide the Malays. It is as if the leadership of the Malays has undergone a process of salah pimpin (bad leadership) in the process of leading due to the fact that they have undergone salah tuntut or wrongly following the philosophy of leading. In the culture of the Malays, salah tuntut is a serious matter – entailing a life relegated to following this or that cult that produces deviant teachings.

Institutions and ideologies that have permeated the psyche of the Malays, create misrepresentation, and exacerbate the malaise-ness of the Malays abound. Consider these:

- Biro Tata Negara
- PLKN
- Malay-only institutions
- Malay centric curriculum
- Malay Rights doctrine
- Malay centric notion of a "social contract"
- Malay postmodern bourgeoisie class
- Malay media power that monopolises the indoctrination of the Malay mind
- UMNO or United Malays National Organisation

The Malays are generally considered a people of a dark brownish skin color. In the language it is called "sawo matang" drawn from the kiwi/mango-looking brownish fruit popular in the island of Java.

The word "Jaya" is a Sanskrit word meaning "Victory"; the core idea of The Mahabharata. The assassin-prince of Melaka, had a name of a Hindu god, Parameswara.

I consider the suffix “Jaya” as a successful idea that can be used in hybridizing the word “Sawo” (“brownish-skin”) to replace the word Malay.

Examples abound, especially in the names of places-- symbols installation of the ideology of “victory” : “Cyberjaya”, “Putrajaya”, “Petaling Jaya”, “Subang Jaya”, “Kelana Jaya” “Seberang Jaya”, “Nusajaya” “Johor Jaya”. There is also a Malaysian mall that uses the word “Jaya”: Jaya Jusco. There is also a favourite 1980s composition called “Raja Jaya” by the Malaysian percussionist Lewis Pragasam's band Asiabeat Percussion.

A new race is born

In the age of biogenetics, cloning, nanotechnology, embedded journalism, casino-capitalism, stimulus packages, this or that “-nomics” Web 2.0, deconstructionism, and cultures that undergo re-enculturalisations, a name-change of the Malays is necessary. A new identity, a karma, a rebirth, a renaissance, a cure for this linguistic myopia in the form of a construction of a brave new world is necessary.

I hereby call upon the Malays to agree on a name change.

Viva Bangsa Sawojaya!

DECLINE OF THE U.S. DOLLAR

From cow-headed to level-headed education

by Azly Rahman

How must we re-educate those who protested in such a style against the relocation of a Hindu temple? What gross deficiencies in our educational system contributed to the creation of beings that displayed such hatred?

What then must we do to reverse the evolution of hate groups sponsored by those who wish to sustain the dying ideology of ethnic politics?

These are the difficult questions Malaysian children will inherit. In the cow-head protest there were children involved; those tender young minds who will hopefully understand what respect for race, ethnicity, and religion means. Hopefully they will be strong enough to release themselves from the shackles of hatred, after 52 years of Malaysia's independence.

We must blame the continuing survival of communal politics for the creation of hate-based groups. Because our Independence is an illusion and Malaysia is an imagined community that is thriving on rhetoric and slogans, we have a fragile system of in-breeding of hyper-modernised politics of hate.

Because the insatiable urge for wealth and power necessitates the maintenance of 'politics of divide-and conquer and rule through racial annihilations', we are heading towards a brink of destruction. We will see more 'cow-head' antics orchestrated form time to time in order for organized chaos to reign.

We must blame the contradictions and the hypocrisy in the translation of our national educational philosophy for the display of the cow-head politics we are witnessing.

Though the philosophy, mission, and vision of our educational system is elegantly worded and loudly trumpeted, we have hidden hands orchestrating the game of divide and rule and segregation. Underneath the canopy of the elegance of the rhetoric lie structural violence; a base and superstructure of politics of race that has come to a breaking point.

The way Malaysians school their children - from pre-kindergarten to post-graduate levels - is characterised by the insistence that race-politics must be propagated by all means necessary. Narratives on what Malaysia is - drawn from kampong folks to retired professors - oftentimes reflect the same theme: maintain race-politics and let this or that race dominates.

We must blame the mainstream media as agents of race-based and racist socialisation for shaping race and class consciousness in a Malaysia badly in need of a way out of racial intolerance; a path charted wrongly for the sake of glorifying greed over virtue, wants over needs, and indoctrination over education guised in the name of blind patriotism.

The media as an extension of the state now has life of its own profiting from the manufacture of chaos and the production of conflict. In time of economic troubles when the masses are suffering while the elite are still conspicuously consuming, the media will have a ball of a time translating repressed emotion into a reason to project mass anger against this or that race.

The British colonials did a wonderful job in perception management - divide and conquer the natives and create perceptions of this or that superiority amongst them so that they will not see the bigger picture. Hitler did a good job at this too. Stir up emotions during that time of economic depression, tell repeated lies, and create an enemy of the state, and next get those millions of young Germans to join the Nazi party.

'Indoctrinated nation'

We must also blame ourselves for not educating our children enough in matters of racial and religious tolerance. We have failed to tell our children that the Malay, Chinese, Indian, Sikh, Kadazan, Iban, and hybridised groups they see in their classrooms and in the neighborhood are fellow-Malaysians and part of what our country has evolved into.

How could our children be taught to hate this or that group when their teachers - the managers and transmitters of virtue - are of this or that race?

The cow-head politics we saw in Selangor last week is a grim picture of how our educational institution is failing to create a citizenry that celebrates diversity and willing to learn about each other's religious belief. In essence, we have become an 'indoctrinated' rather than an educated nation, a furious 52-year- old rather than a forgiving one ready to meet its Maker.

As a nation we are drowning in dangerous waters; from a flash flood we created. Bahtera Merdeka is sinking. How do we save ourselves? How do we evolve out of this cow-head politics we are witnessing.

Again, we must turn to education and the radical restructuring of it. Education as a gentle profession and a powerful enterprise for social and personal progress must be restructured. Its philosophy must be recaptured.

But what philosophical orientation must we embrace? Social reconstructionism and education for spiritual capitalism perhaps. For too long we have been trumpeting 'human capital', 'educational for national development', 'education for nation-building' and all those fancy words we blindly borrow from the pages of work of modernisation theorists and post-industrialist theorists.

These have become meaningless. We are living with the contradictions of the manifestations of these words that have been translated into policies.

What we need is not a better educational philosophy that will make our children more sophisticated racist and aspiring robber barons. We have a generation of these already. What we need is a philosophy sound enough to create a powerful generation that will care for fellow human beings and ones that understands that the Earth's resources are enough for one's need and not for one's greed, as Gandhi said.

Ah, we have made a wrong turn in history. But education is still about hope and love. Evolve we must - from cow headed to level-headed education.

Ring of fire and the kecak dance

Cultural logic of Najibo-nomics

by Azly Rahman


Fashionable it may seem to credit this or that "economic miracle" episode to this or that country to the name of its leader, economist, dictator, emperor, etc. - the larger picture of the historical march of "freakonomics" is neglected.

Freakonomics is what the global society was plagued with beginning with the American sub-prime-inspired crisis; a breakdown of the world's casino-capitalist system.

Fashionable it may seem to cite this or that case-study to a proposed "Harvard" study, just like calling a university "Harvard of the East" or "Princeton of the Peripheries" or "Oxford of the Outbacks" or even "Cambridge of the Caribbean" - it misses the point of what and how casino capitalism works.

It misses the point that the world is undergoing yet another wave of perpetual revolution in the field of economic thinking.

Malaysians are into this fashionable game of assigning this or that terminology to this or that epoch of "economic cultural depression and how these are cured".

Like the style of historicising that assigns this or that age to this or that person, resulting in epochs of historical vaingloriousness, Malaysians have seen periodisation of its capitalist march, in names such as "Mahathirism", "Badawi-ism", and now "Najibo-nomics".

Not much was seen in names such as "Tunku-nomics" (after Tunku Abdul Rahman), Razak-ism (after Abdul Razak Hussein), and Hussein-nomics or Hussein-ism (after Hussein Onn).

Perhaps we did not really pay attention to how the pre-Mahathir era leaders address issues. We did not see words such as "Doctrine" attached as affix to these names to read "Tunku Doctrine" or the likes.

The politics of names

History that glorifies individuals is a result of historicising that involves forced authoring of name. Hence, dynasties in China are generally named after individuals and Empires in India, after their first rulers.

In modern times, we saw terms such as "Thatcherism", "Reaganism" or "Reaganomics" and perhaps "Obama-nomics" after we saw "Obama-mania".

At the beginning of the century we saw Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, Castroism, and the "Kennedy Era". Then there were Hitlerism, Bismarkian era, and Tokugawa Period. The Islamic world saw names such as Wahhabi-ism and Khomeini-ism.

Post-Independence Southeast Asia saw Marcos-era, Sukarnoism with its Marhaenism and Ganyang-Malaysia-ism replaced by Modern Day-Yudistira-ism of Suhartoism. We saw Lee Kuan Yew-styled Asian Despotism and the 22-year rule of Mahathirism.

As if there is not enough of the game of glorifying persons in history, the modern media too is continuing the politics of false-consciousness; masking the larger picture of oppression of those nameless masses in the march towards the perfection of casino capitalism.

Logic of capitalism

Philosophically positioned, capitalism takes Nature, turns it into Technology, and engineers the evolution of culture that structures the divisions of classes of people, through the installation process of the "machine in the garden" and the transforming of human beings into labor and commodities.

Ultimately, Technology subdues Nature and thrusts Humanity into a matrix of complexities that relegates human beings as cogs in the wheels of Capital.

Capitalism is a system of predatory economics, sanctioned by the evolution of power, knowledge, and ideology. It must be looked at not by the "epochs" of rulership of these or that kings, tyrants, or despots, but culturally as a system that has a logic and its own system of periodisation.

It requires the unmasking of the psychology and culture of human control, bondage, and the abuse of control apparatuses, in order to sustain an economic system that will naturally create a complex system of ownership rationalized through yet another system of production of culture as commodity, and production of strategies of mystification that provides false consciousness and happiness to those exploited by those who own the means of economic, cultural, and intellectual production.

The evolution of tribes, nations, and countries need not be seen as linear, following Rostowian idea of developmental economics, framed by Friedmanian doctrine.

The premises underlying these ideas need to be studied, critiqued, and made culturally relevant in all of our institutions of higher learning.

We must also demand our students to master the concepts and applications of radical economic ideas that put back human dignity in the march of meaningful human progress.

In this case, why not challenge them to explore ecological socialism and sustainable developmental paradigm by having them study the economics and social systems of the indigenous peoples of Malaysia, such as the Penans, Ibans, and Kadazan-dusuns?

For too long, we have been so obsessed with creating wealth and destroying Nature rather than spreading wealth and preserving Nature.

The middle name

Back to "Najibo-nomics".

I do not think it is necessary to give birth to this name. I think there is, in the words of a research or case-study strategy, those who proposed that the name must triangulate the data of Malaysia's claim to economic invulnerability.

One must not only study numbers crunched officially and bury human beings under those numbers that are then trumpeted across the globe.

One must go back to Malaysia's timeline of economic history and look at the country from a culturally-kaleidoscopic perspective, from the lens other than what structural functionalists would use.

The world we inhabit in is not merely a celestial body tattooed culturally and stylized by economic numerology; we live in a structurally violent world of the powerful and the powerless, of the haves and the have-nots, and of increasing dehumanization as a consequence of the economic condition we are born into, exacerbated by the rapidisation of technology and the speed of politics.

In Malaysia, fifty years of glorifying this and that epoch and of periods and ruptures must, in any case study of political economy, be triangulated with data on the human and cultural consequences of development -- this "developmentalist agenda" must be perceived from a human rights perspective.

How must Malaysians study the decades of racial disintegration, incidences of ethnic violence, nature of authoritarianism, breakdown of virtually all sub-social systems, etched patterns of economic apartheid, schooling and racial discrimination, abuse of the state ideological apparatuses, and finally the steadily rising billion-Ringgit benchmark of corruption this country has gauged in her way to becoming a failed state?

Those above are amongst the variables that need to be taken into consideration when one thinks of a good case study.Let us be more sophisticated when naming names.