COMMENT | Is our academia going 'kangkong'?
(Editor’s note: Gerak, which is mentioned in this article, has penned a statement in response to the comment.)
COMMENT | A spectre is haunting our country - the spectre of our academia going kangkong.
In the past, there were odd reports of a lone wolf kangkong professor, a phrase the late scholar Syed Hussein Alatas coined to mean a don “devoid of knowledge to the core”, talking through his hat, but now they seem to be mushrooming like what else but mushrooms. And poisonous ones at that.
Why else is the higher education minister and Gerak urging our professors to only speak on matters that are within their area of expertise?
Their call is akin to confining the vain and egotistic emperor in the “new clothes” fable to his ivory tower lest his people know he is both naked and thick-headed.
But for transparency’s sake, I say, let these kangkong professors...
(Editor’s note: Gerak, which is mentioned in this article, has penned a statement in response to the comment.)
COMMENT | A spectre is haunting our country - the spectre of our academia going kangkong.
In the past, there were odd reports of a lone wolf kangkong professor, a phrase the late scholar Syed Hussein Alatas coined to mean a don “devoid of knowledge to the core”, talking through his hat, but now they seem to be mushrooming like what else but mushrooms. And poisonous ones at that.
Why else is the higher education minister and Gerak urging our professors to only speak on matters that are within their area of expertise?
Their call is akin to confining the vain and egotistic emperor in the “new clothes” fable to his ivory tower lest his people know he is both naked and thick-headed.
But for transparency’s sake, I say, let these kangkong professors parade themselves in all their naked glory! At least for a limited period.
How else can we know who is naked and who is not, leaving aside the matter that they provide some light entertainment now and then?
The more important thing now is to find out how and why these kangkong professors are proliferating like never before.
I suspect it's not our weather but the climate within our academia. A case in point: the aplomb and utter conviction with which a kangkong professor suggested recently that Prophet Muhammad’s wife Siti Khadijah Khuwailid, an Umm al-Muminin, came from the Malay world.
Her self-satisfaction and delight at her “theory” were both shocking and disturbing.
Be sensibly open-minded
Do kangkong professors like her, “devoid of knowledge to the core”, not know that the end of all doubt is the dead end of all learning, of wanting to know more?
This quest to know new things and join up the dots is part of our homo sapien DNA from the time we walked this Earth. And very often, discoveries require us to discard long-held beliefs.
Which is why we have the quality of sapience, from the Latin meaning good sense, intelligence and wisdom. It is this same sapience that makes us open-minded yet not nonsensical.
Surely our kangkong professors must know that the Ph in their PhDs refers to “Philosophy”, “love of wisdom”. Not mere knowledge but wisdom, hikmah.
A whole range of trades from the mechanic to the butcher and from the farmer to the tailor are carried out by people who have knowledge. Only a few have the time or passion to pursue wisdom, people like the philosopher Spinoza who was a humble lens-maker by trade.
In progressive countries, academics pursue both knowledge and wisdom, hikmah, and do not descend into the closed world of politics, nationalism and religious bigotry.
Free the ‘katak’
The Malay language has provided us with a delightful label in the form of a proverb for people living in such a closed world - Seperti katak dibawah tempurung (a frog under a coconut shell). And even worse than such a katak is one who doesn't know it is living under a tempurung!
When such a katak proliferates within the ranks of academia, the nation suffers grievously.
Take Cardinal James Ussher in Ireland, circa the sixteenth century. He pored over the holy texts and was utterly secure in his conviction that the earth was created in the evening of 4004 BC.
But unlike our kangkong professors, he at least entertained some doubt whether it occurred at 6pm or 7pm of the day.
For comparison, take Professor Tajuddin Rasdi. A PhD in Architecture, why should he refrain from engaging in matters related to politics, race and religion just because these are deemed as not his areas of expertise?
And who decides who is an expert? Not only does he have a sound knowledge of these matters, but he also has that quality of mind - rational, logical, and open to reason - that truly reflects that he is a philosopher, a lover of wisdom, of hikmah.
It is this hikmah that makes a professor of mathematics or statistics come up with new theories to explain the economics of poverty.
Or a PhD in Organic Chemistry to formulate better fertilisers to increase agricultural output.
Or an academic in optics provides a solution for problems in the chip industry. And it may well be a writer who convinces countries that peace is better than war.
Quantity over quality
At the highest levels of human endeavour, convergence is the key to furthering man’s dream of a better world. Simply put, the silo mentality is an obstacle to human progress.
Meanwhile, the rot continues in our universities, and no one wants to talk about it. These same universities have reduced obtaining a PhD to a mechanistic process rather than a scholarly endeavour.
To add insult to injury, they have also become degree mills to cater for the burgeoning number of students seeking a higher education.
They can fool themselves but not employers or the world at large. A graduate English teacher in a secondary school was honest enough to own up that she teaches workbook English, not English. Ditto other subjects, leaving the opening of young minds to life’s experiences.
A country that generously funds universities that churn out kangkong professors and PhDs will never lead the world in cutting-edge science or technology.
Or blaze new trails in sociology or the humanities. Or produce thinkers and philosophers whose books and writings will have a profound influence in the emerging new world.
But make no mistake, they will produce yet more katak dibawah tempurung for whom the universe is a coconut shell.
Return to meritocracy
It is the eleventh hour for our academia, and the only way out is a return to meritocracy in the staffing of our universities and the selection of students into its various faculties.
Otherwise, expect to see more katak and more tadpoles hiding among the fast-proliferating kangkong.
To end on a personal note, I dread the day the collective noun - “a kangkong of academics” - enters the English language.
MURALE PILLAI is a former GLC employee. He runs a logistics company.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.
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