Route to world citizenship

Professor Tan Sri Dato' Dzulkifli Abdul Razak
Learning Curve: Perspective
New Sunday Times - 29-09-2013

SECOND Education Minister Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh recently raised the importance of cultivating basic humanitarian values among students. Humanitarian values are fundamental to the larger vision of "world citizenship" while we strive for conventional academic values through teaching-learning, and research and development.

Incidentally, this was a much discussed topic at the recent First Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs)-United Nations Educational, Scientific And Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Forum, themed Which Education Goals For Tomorrow's Citizens: Is Quality Enough? (Learning Curve, Sept 22), in Paris. More than 100 NGOs of diverse interest were represented at the event.

Values such as courtesy, ethics, integrity, trust, empathy and social solidarity -- generally the "intangibles" -- are integral to the quality of tertiary institutions, especially in light of rankings and league tables.

The term "first-class human capital" is misleading as it is devoid of such intangibles that nurture a "total human person".

Civil right activist Marian Edelman believes a deeper understanding of education is lacking. She says: "Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and the world better than you found it." Such a noble notion is being drowned by the noises and wants of narrower economic demands of labour and production (read human capital, the product of education without a soul).

The concept of "world citizenship" is reduced to no more than a means to an end to further enhance the method of production globally at the expense of the community. Under the guise of "world citizenry", the so-called educated class is licensed to roam the world and use their knowledge but not in the way that Edelman puts it. They are aligned with a "me-first materialistic" ethos, befitting end-products of an education without a soul.

What this amounts to, as mentioned by the Minister, is an approach to education that has been straitjacketed by a one-size-fits-all model of a university founded during the 19th-century Industrial Age.

This model has never been openly questioned even until recently. On the contrary, it is accepted almost blindly as the template for the post-industrial 21st century despite it being at least 200 years out of date!

This is not surprising because education is a multibillion industry with bottom lines taking precedence over its true merits. Values that the Minister advocated are sacrificed at the altar of profit-and-loss of the industry. The situation is so dire that about this time last year the British Academy president Professor Sir Adam Roberts officiated the establishment of the Council for the Defense of British Universities (CDBU), which is emphatic in defending academic values. Professor Gordon Campbell, a member of the steering committee, says successive British governments have sought to transform universities into industrial assembly lines since the Jarratt Report of 1985.

Notably present at the momentous launch were representatives of the UK National Union of Students and the University and College Union, an indication of the pervasiveness of the issue.

Like the CDBU, the defence of universities worldwide is in order. Embedding the academe with renewed wisdom, thoughts and ideas is timely in view of transforming "dominant" thinking and practices of the old model.

It warrants challenging old structures while constructing new ones to fit the new century. That new configuration, aptly code-named "the humaniversity", dedicates itself to serving humanity first rather than the vested interest of the individual and industry per se. It is about supporting global agendas such as Education for All and the Millennium Development Goals post-2015.

This, no doubt, demands intellectual courage and honesty par excellence that too often buckle under the pressure of business owners. This inevitably brings us to the next vital point which Idris mentioned -- the granting of autonomy to shape the landscape of higher education to make it more "colourful".

Currently the situation is extremely dull, plagued by the tensions between operating a truly autonomous university and the present "marketability" model. Academic norms and culture are reduced to a mere "culture of audit" ("audititis"?) subject to a fiscal command-and-control that takes the lead.

This short-changes the search for truth and the meaning of citizens of the world. What is more embarrassing is that after declaring their international ambitions, universities remain captives of parochialism, lacking the humanitarian touch!

- The writer is an invited panelist at the NGO-UNESCO Forum.