Going beyond getting rid of unnecessary subjects in shaping future education
Emeritus Professor Tan Sri Dato' Dzulkifli Abdul Razak
Opinion - New Straits Times
October 14, 2022
THE recent suggestion to "get rid of unnecessary subjects in varsity", accorded to Muar member of Parliament Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman, cannot come at a better time.
The world over has been questioning the same but not limited to only one country or any one institution, be it public or private, higher education or otherwise.
Greta Thunberg's "Fridays for Future" (FFF) movement is tstimony to this when she skipped school and launched a protest on Fridays since August 2018.
The now well-known Swedish environmental activist, Greta then was 15 years, sat in front of the Swedish parliament alone (later, together with her friends) every school day for three weeks.
It was to highlight the alleged lack of action on the climate crisis in the delivery of education.
The basic message was to alert everyone as to how toxic is the current (Western) education system.
The FFF made this point by calling out that "our house is on fire", yet world leaders remain oblivious to the flames. In other words, education is becoming increasing irrelevant when real-world issues are not taken up seriously.
This is in contrast to what happened when the entire humanity is infected by the coronavirus which could be likened to the carbon emitted by industries around the world.
The latter has been harming humanity insidiously. Unfortunately, world leaders are not responding like they did to the pandemic.
Thus, it is not so much as to get rid of "the unnecessary subjects" per se but to also address the outdated educational context or system that grew out of the then prevailing socio-economic and ideological worldview.
Consumerism is one example, now recognised as one of the major factors that leads to extreme weather disasters like global warming.
More specifically, the first industrial revolution gave rise to such a new lifestyle along side the massive pollution, some 300 years ago.
It was directly linked to today's factory-like education ecosystem, a system that must give way to a more "sustainable" one based on the 5Ps of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), namely the interplay between People, Planet, Prosperity, Partnership and Peace.
Simply put, the new ecosystem must not only be independent of partisan politics but also vested commercial interests (including commercialised ranking).
It should realise a better future that knows no borders, where all lives matter.
In many ways, there is also an urgent need to decolonise the system that is systematically tainted with racism as amply demonstrated by the pandemic amidst the call that 'Black Lives Matter.'
It is made worst by the erosion of freedom (thanks to the lockdowns and managerialism), newfound and heightened unemployment which was enraged by mental (ill-) health and socio-emotional threats.
In the words of the Chief Higher Education of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco), in conjunction with the 2022 World Higher Education Conference in Barcelona (May 2022):
"Every aspect of what we hold true for universities [and schools] around the world is changing, being rethought or reinvented."
The unnecessary subjects, if at all, is a merely tip of the educational iceberg that Malaysia must not lose sight of.
The writer, an NST columnist for more than 20 years, is International Islamic University Malaysia rector