Life-long learning, what?
Sim Kwang YangPublished: Mar 19, 2005 1:10 PM | Updated: Jan 29, 2008 6:21 PM
By now, the Life-long Learning Campaign launched by the MCA has assumed the facade of a full fledged political movement.You do read about all sorts of grand speeches made by all sorts of MCA dignitaries on all sorts of occasions, extolling the value of learning beyond one's school years.
A few months ago, the prominent columnists in the Chinese press Phua Yong Chiang sarcastically remarked that MCA, in initiating the campaign as its main agenda, has retreated from the political domain, and sought refuge in a campaign that is best left to the civil society. His comments drew quite a great deal of flake from the usual MCA faithful, and sparked off an ineffectual mini-debate in the Chinese press. Meanwhile, the campaign continues, at least among MCA members, on the surface.
Phua has got a point of course. The business of any political party is politics. The business of MCA ought to be the furtherance of the political and economic rights of their Chinese constituency within the context of our race-based politics, as their name and their history would suggest. Should not the thousands of Chinese guilds and associations be in a more appropriate position to promote a campaign like the Life-Long Learning programme?
By now, the Life-long Learning Campaign launched by the MCA has assumed the facade of a full fledged political movement.You do read about all sorts of grand speeches made by all sorts of MCA dignitaries on all sorts of occasions, extolling the value of learning beyond one's school years.
A few months ago, the prominent columnists in the Chinese press Phua Yong Chiang sarcastically remarked that MCA, in initiating the campaign as its main agenda, has retreated from the political domain, and sought refuge in a campaign that is best left to the civil society. His comments drew quite a great deal of flake from the usual MCA faithful, and sparked off an ineffectual mini-debate in the Chinese press. Meanwhile, the campaign continues, at least among MCA members, on the surface.
Phua has got a point of course. The business of any political party is politics. The business of MCA ought to be the furtherance of the political and economic rights of their Chinese constituency within the context of our race-based politics, as their name and their history would suggest. Should not the thousands of Chinese guilds and associations be in a more appropriate position to promote a campaign like the Life-Long Learning programme?
At least the DAP is now engaged in a campaign to restore local government elections, and PAS is still dead set on their course towards promoting an Islamic State. They are still in the business of politics, no matter how much you disagree with them.
But these days, MCA bashing is all too easy, and it does not do any good. The DAP used to make their political career out of running the MCA to the ground, but ever since the MCA has taken over the Chinese newspapers directly or indirectly, the influence of the DAP has apparently waned.
A real need
I am not that interested in bashing the MCA. A political party is merely the superstructure that reflects the sentiments prevailing in the socio-economic substructure of the Chinese constituency. What needs to be examined is the direction towards which the Chinese community is heading. That task of self-reflection among Chinese intellectuals has fallen short so far, because there is neither motivation nor space for it. Perhaps that is the real problem with the Chinese community.
But the need for life-long learning is a real one nevertheless, for all Malaysians.
People usually associate learning with the process of formal education. Unfortunately, schooling in Malaysia, right up to the university level, has been reduced to a frenzied pursuit of passing examinations with good grades. Parents and educators alike are mostly so drowned in the torrents of paper chase, that students have been conditioned to learn only one thing in their school years: to pass examinations. To put in another way, students have learned nothing but learning to learn by rote only.
For 12 to 15 years in the most formative phase of their lives, boys and girls often have to sacrifice the joy of childhood and youth, and surrender themselves to a strict regime of memorization and regurgitation of prescribed materials. This manner of robot-like learning kills off all natural curiosity, stultifies the imagination, and imprisons the innovative impulse of the mind.
Is it any wonder that students would tend to associate the process of education and learning with all the horror of a torture chamber? Should we be surprised that, upon graduation and assuming the status of adulthood, young men and women would avoid books like the plague? Should they not now, as working adults, pursue with a vengeance the pleasures of life which have been denied them thus far? Is not making money, and having fun, the purpose for which they have been prepared at great costs and with great toil, all their lives?
Means to an end
Therefore, any attempt to push forth a public campaign to promote life-long learning would go very much against the grain of the times. It would require a reversal of the most dominant values among parents, educators, and students, involving the revolutionary ideas of "deschooling" society advocated by Ivan Illich.
There is another reason why the MCA life-long learning campaign looks wobbly. So far, in the public discourse of their leading lights on the subject, the justification on the need for continuing education is entirely based on utilitarian pragmatic grounds. Learning is a mere means to an end.
The ends may be cloaked in fashionable corporate/management jargon, calling the business of life-long learning "value-adding process", "to increase competitiveness of the citizens on a global market.", and "to acquire the latest knowledge on cutting-edge technology".
Obviously, knowledge is envisaged as just another commodity, to be produced, distributed and acquired with money and time, like a kilo of salted fish. At best, it is seen as another form of asset, or another set of tool, for self-satisfaction or the creation of a First World mentality.
This view of knowledge and learning is very popular among Malaysians. Nevertheless, it suffers from severe epistemological anaemia. It is a Third Worldish superficial perception of First World mentality.
There are many other forms of learning, and many other things to learn apart from technical skills. One has to learn about the meaning of life, the destiny of one's existence, and a deep appreciation of the daily miracles that make up our living pulsating universe. One can never learn enough about love, hate, and death - especially death and dying. There is always a whole world of artistic creation for life-long discovery. Above all, one has to learn about the self, and its relation to the world.
This sort of learning has nothing to do with getting ahead in life, "positioning for advantage", "self-actualisation", or emulating any country in the First World. In fact, it should also call into question the idea that the social and economic goals of the First World countries should be emulated and aped blindly.
Fulfill human potentials
Needless to say, learning not merely the use of tools, but also the purpose to which the tools are put, requires a highly critical mind. Nay, it requires a highly self-critical habit of thought. The idea that this is entirely a rational process is the legacy of the European Enlightenment Movement, which has recently come under increasing attack. There are limits to human reason, and reason is sterile without the sometimes anarchical power of the heart, and the mysterious enigma of the spirit.
This kind of learning, from what is popularly known as the University of Life, will grant no parchment or certificate of achievement. To coin another catch phrase, it is a "holistic approach" at self-creation and self-recreation. Its purpose, if one can talk about any purpose at all, is to fulfill our potential to be fully being human.
To be human is to learn, and learning is its own purpose and its own reward. Young children exhibit this hunger to learn admirably, until the free play of their imagination is properly stifled by parents and teachers. Our formal education is the culprit, putting our children through an assembly-line in the mass production of human resource, like producing worker ants. At the end of the assembly-line, graduating from universities with various degrees, they cannot find jobs, unless jobs are handed to them on a platter..
Our formal educational system is the anti-thesis of what would engender innovative, imaginative, curious, and independent souls. It produces only obedient loyal and submissive subjects of state, again like worker ants. Above all, our education philosophy will never cease to frighten away the young from learning the really important things in their adult life, like how to be concerned citizens in participating in the public life of the nations.
Control the minds
That is why the MCA Life-long Learning Campaign is so misplaced in its objectives. What is needed is for statesmen in the nation to initiate a thorough study of our education system, a task which has been done in Taiwan for instance. The idea is to free education from the shackles of the state as much as possible, and to transfer the responsibility for children's education into the hands of the local communities.
The state will never surrender its monopoly on educational control of course. Controlling the schools means controlling the mind of future generations of Malaysians, through a complex process of social engineering. A controlled mind will not want to learn the really important things in life, because that would be subverting the control of the state, an idea that is totally unthinkable to human beings with the mentality of the worker ants.
To be honest with ourselves, we do not even have First World facilities. The monuments of our development hardware look impressive from the outside, but they do not always work. Perhaps that is because we have Third World ministers running our Third World institutions, like the schools and the universities.
Politicians who launch life-long learning campaigns are the ones who need to learn the most!
A few months ago, the prominent columnists in the Chinese press Phua Yong Chiang sarcastically remarked that MCA, in initiating the campaign as its main agenda, has retreated from the political domain, and sought refuge in a campaign that is best left to the civil society. His comments drew quite a great deal of flake from the usual MCA faithful, and sparked off an ineffectual mini-debate in the Chinese press. Meanwhile, the campaign continues, at least among MCA members, on the surface.
Phua has got a point of course. The business of any political party is politics. The business of MCA ought to be the furtherance of the political and economic rights of their Chinese constituency within the context of our race-based politics, as their name and their history would suggest. Should not the thousands of Chinese guilds and associations be in a more appropriate position to promote a campaign like the Life-Long Learning programme?
At least the DAP is now engaged in a campaign to restore local government elections, and PAS is still dead set on their course towards promoting an Islamic State. They are still in the business of politics, no matter how much you disagree with them.
But these days, MCA bashing is all too easy, and it does not do any good. The DAP used to make their political career out of running the MCA to the ground, but ever since the MCA has taken over the Chinese newspapers directly or indirectly, the influence of the DAP has apparently waned.
A real need
I am not that interested in bashing the MCA. A political party is merely the superstructure that reflects the sentiments prevailing in the socio-economic substructure of the Chinese constituency. What needs to be examined is the direction towards which the Chinese community is heading. That task of self-reflection among Chinese intellectuals has fallen short so far, because there is neither motivation nor space for it. Perhaps that is the real problem with the Chinese community.
But the need for life-long learning is a real one nevertheless, for all Malaysians.
People usually associate learning with the process of formal education. Unfortunately, schooling in Malaysia, right up to the university level, has been reduced to a frenzied pursuit of passing examinations with good grades. Parents and educators alike are mostly so drowned in the torrents of paper chase, that students have been conditioned to learn only one thing in their school years: to pass examinations. To put in another way, students have learned nothing but learning to learn by rote only.
For 12 to 15 years in the most formative phase of their lives, boys and girls often have to sacrifice the joy of childhood and youth, and surrender themselves to a strict regime of memorization and regurgitation of prescribed materials. This manner of robot-like learning kills off all natural curiosity, stultifies the imagination, and imprisons the innovative impulse of the mind.
Is it any wonder that students would tend to associate the process of education and learning with all the horror of a torture chamber? Should we be surprised that, upon graduation and assuming the status of adulthood, young men and women would avoid books like the plague? Should they not now, as working adults, pursue with a vengeance the pleasures of life which have been denied them thus far? Is not making money, and having fun, the purpose for which they have been prepared at great costs and with great toil, all their lives?
Means to an end
Therefore, any attempt to push forth a public campaign to promote life-long learning would go very much against the grain of the times. It would require a reversal of the most dominant values among parents, educators, and students, involving the revolutionary ideas of "deschooling" society advocated by Ivan Illich.
There is another reason why the MCA life-long learning campaign looks wobbly. So far, in the public discourse of their leading lights on the subject, the justification on the need for continuing education is entirely based on utilitarian pragmatic grounds. Learning is a mere means to an end.
The ends may be cloaked in fashionable corporate/management jargon, calling the business of life-long learning "value-adding process", "to increase competitiveness of the citizens on a global market.", and "to acquire the latest knowledge on cutting-edge technology".
Obviously, knowledge is envisaged as just another commodity, to be produced, distributed and acquired with money and time, like a kilo of salted fish. At best, it is seen as another form of asset, or another set of tool, for self-satisfaction or the creation of a First World mentality.
This view of knowledge and learning is very popular among Malaysians. Nevertheless, it suffers from severe epistemological anaemia. It is a Third Worldish superficial perception of First World mentality.
There are many other forms of learning, and many other things to learn apart from technical skills. One has to learn about the meaning of life, the destiny of one's existence, and a deep appreciation of the daily miracles that make up our living pulsating universe. One can never learn enough about love, hate, and death - especially death and dying. There is always a whole world of artistic creation for life-long discovery. Above all, one has to learn about the self, and its relation to the world.
This sort of learning has nothing to do with getting ahead in life, "positioning for advantage", "self-actualisation", or emulating any country in the First World. In fact, it should also call into question the idea that the social and economic goals of the First World countries should be emulated and aped blindly.
Fulfill human potentials
Needless to say, learning not merely the use of tools, but also the purpose to which the tools are put, requires a highly critical mind. Nay, it requires a highly self-critical habit of thought. The idea that this is entirely a rational process is the legacy of the European Enlightenment Movement, which has recently come under increasing attack. There are limits to human reason, and reason is sterile without the sometimes anarchical power of the heart, and the mysterious enigma of the spirit.
This kind of learning, from what is popularly known as the University of Life, will grant no parchment or certificate of achievement. To coin another catch phrase, it is a "holistic approach" at self-creation and self-recreation. Its purpose, if one can talk about any purpose at all, is to fulfill our potential to be fully being human.
To be human is to learn, and learning is its own purpose and its own reward. Young children exhibit this hunger to learn admirably, until the free play of their imagination is properly stifled by parents and teachers. Our formal education is the culprit, putting our children through an assembly-line in the mass production of human resource, like producing worker ants. At the end of the assembly-line, graduating from universities with various degrees, they cannot find jobs, unless jobs are handed to them on a platter..
Our formal educational system is the anti-thesis of what would engender innovative, imaginative, curious, and independent souls. It produces only obedient loyal and submissive subjects of state, again like worker ants. Above all, our education philosophy will never cease to frighten away the young from learning the really important things in their adult life, like how to be concerned citizens in participating in the public life of the nations.
Control the minds
That is why the MCA Life-long Learning Campaign is so misplaced in its objectives. What is needed is for statesmen in the nation to initiate a thorough study of our education system, a task which has been done in Taiwan for instance. The idea is to free education from the shackles of the state as much as possible, and to transfer the responsibility for children's education into the hands of the local communities.
The state will never surrender its monopoly on educational control of course. Controlling the schools means controlling the mind of future generations of Malaysians, through a complex process of social engineering. A controlled mind will not want to learn the really important things in life, because that would be subverting the control of the state, an idea that is totally unthinkable to human beings with the mentality of the worker ants.
To be honest with ourselves, we do not even have First World facilities. The monuments of our development hardware look impressive from the outside, but they do not always work. Perhaps that is because we have Third World ministers running our Third World institutions, like the schools and the universities.
Politicians who launch life-long learning campaigns are the ones who need to learn the most!
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