How smart is rebranding Permata to Genius?

Opinion  |  Azly Rahman

Published: Today 7:21 pm  |  Modified: Today 7:21 pm

   

"Why are so many students with excellent SPM results rejected from gaining admission into our matriculation programmes? Is there an ethnic quota, as in the days of the BN government rule, or is there a new system of intake designed by the newly-minted Pakatan Harapan government? Whether there is an ethnic quota or not, it is clear that many non-Malay students have been rejected and told to appeal. If there is an ethnic quota, then the rejection must have been based on this affirmative action plan. Then what is the point of appealing? If an ethnic quota is operative, then the government should announce the numbers allocated to Chinese and Indian students."
– P Ramasamy

COMMENT | The above quote exemplifies the nature of the major issue on how the Education Ministry operates. Yet we speak of a programme called Genius, a mere name change of Permata. 

As if there is no major structural problem whatsoever we need to attend to. As if there are no educational philosophical questions we need to answer for a country with a multicultural polity currently in a socioeconomic quagmire.

If we have Genius as a programme, will we have 'Mediocre' and even 'Morons' as its continuum? Hope not! Be careful with labels. Switching names from Permata to Genius will not address the problem of the conception of the child's intelligence, situated in the habitus of socioeconomic realities vis-a-vis social advancement through state schooling. 

Learn the lesson of the concept of the 'bell-shaped curve' in education. Be careful how we structure and propagate economic and cultural class structures via defining and harnessing intelligence.

But why continue with that Permata project? Use the once massive elitist-elusive funding to educate the half-a-million teachers we have, to "teach to the intelligences" instead. Every child wants to be treated as intelligent and wishes to be educated as a potential genius. No need for Permata continuation. 

There is also the need to rethink the continuation of programmes such as Mara’s Junior Science Colleges, governed by another ministry, which began almost 45 years ago.

I hope the Education Ministry is working on a radical restructuring of education for the gifted and talented. This ministry keeps on mistaking trivial changes with systemic changes. Go back to the drawing board, please. It is an important ministry dealing with our children’s future.

'Pintar' and 'genius'. These are overused words in education. What Malaysia needs is to see that each child is a gift conceived culturally. Train Malaysian teachers to teach to the intelligences and to be culturally intelligent to see equality in education. 

In Malaysia, there is a Malay concept of baka that can be used to speak of a child from good stock. i.e., intelligence. A project revolving around this concept was started in Universiti Malaya by the educator par excellence Azman Wan Chik back in the mid-1980s, before Rosmah Mansor and her UKM team claimed that Permata pioneered learning for the gifted and talented.

Success and intelligence, framed from a class perspective will usually favour the privileged, not those economically left behind. Don’t let the word 'genius' morph into 'genie' and then to 'djinn' and use that to replace pintar. We might have a Projek Permata Djinn! Jokes aside, you call your new programme Genius, but would you first define what that means and what you hope those children will achieve?

There seems to be a problem with the word 'genius' when used in a national programme. Like the term 'world-class education' or something. Why are we seeing more and more of rebranding, and mere name changes of the programmes of the Najib Abdul Razak era?

Issues of educational inequality, unfair university admissions policy and teacher training are more important than a reboot of Permata.

Addiction to sloganism

In education, we are seeing an addiction to sloganism. Deep learning and how to treat each child as a potential genius are keys. Bahasa Baku, Smart Schools, Vision Schools, world-class schools, Permata, Genius – these are slogans. Go deeper, less rhetoric. 

From the indecisiveness over the Unified Examination Certificate, a poor vaccination policy, racist matriculation admissions policy – these are big issues. The advisory team in the Education Ministry needs help with ideas that can move the nation, I sense. You can't operate on an old Umno formula or a rebranded one.

See each child, regardless of race, as a gift, a talent to be developed and you will not need a programme called Genius. Fix inequality. Because of racist educational policies, we've seen so many talents wasted, so many geniuses fester like raisins in the sun, as Langston Hughes says in 'Dreams.'

Each child entering school wants to be called a "potential genius", a natural-born pintar a baka, a fitrah – all these signifying the human potential in a child, not labelled and graded like eggs in a market. The Education Ministry may still be trapped in an old paradigm of defining giftedness and talentedness. I suggest they do some research on the genealogy and post-structurality of the definition of intelligences as they are applied to education in a world plagued with the diseases of globalised capitalism.

Are gifted, talented, high-achieving non-Malays still being discriminated against even in this new government? Why, if so? To develop geniuses one cannot measure achievement only in a few areas. They are many kinds of "smartness" to be observed. We cannot build a sustainable education system based on inequalities and advancement of racial superiority. This is an ideological disease.

The non-Malays voted for Pakatan Harapan to have a better future for their children. Are they getting a rebranded discrimination system, educational apartheid cleverly rebranded? Refusal to think as a Malaysian, to craft that philosophy of multiculturalist social-justice, will signify a second collapse of this nation by way of schooling as a means of social reproduction inspired by the developmental shibboleth of kakistocracy, kleptocracy and wannabe-theocracy combined.

Like many awaiting a blueprint, as Americans waited for the Mueller Report, I'd like to read in the forthcoming blueprint what the Education Ministry is committed to, in ensuring that children of all races are equally treated. Looks like, taken as a whole and in parts, this new government is merely a remaking of the old. It is like a bad sequel. I might be wrong. Maybe the elegant language masking hash realities will prove the government’s righteous intentions.

We'll continue to waste Malaysian talents if we continue to allow race-based politics to define the way we school our children. Each child is a genius born as such in all his/her glory of cultural identity and diversity. Develop that as a philosophy. Because education is about social reproduction – a racist education system will continue to reproduce efficient forms of racism.

Malaysia is so entrenched in race-based politics that we will need a 'Year Zero' to correct the ills of this nation. Meaningless it is to speak of a programme for 'geniuses' when racial discrimination still governs the definition and system of human capital evolution and filtration.

High achieving non-Malays continued to be denied access to universities. That's not a genius policy. We cannot continue to promote mediocrity in education, to continue to advance this or that race. We are a nation of Malaysians and we still cannot get that idea to sink into our heads. 

If we are not careful, we'll create another 1MDB with the financial geniuses and robber-barons – Permata running another big looting such as that done by Ali Baba and his 40 elected thieves.

Why not start helping deserving and high-achieving non-Malays to go far in life too? Just like we did with Malay children from very poor families through programmes such as MRSM, which have achieved their mission and need to be discontinued? 

Use the MRSM budget to train teachers to train children to be more intelligent so that we can feel the reality of a knowledge and intelligent society emerging. Not like today where universities still continue to glorify and honour foul-mouthed Islamic preachers spewing hate.

We seem to have a structural problem to sum it all up. With no clear plan for a transition of power, with promises unfulfilled, programmes of the old regime merely tweaked and rebranded for continuing profitability, crafting of useless projects such as the F1 circuit races and racial and religious politics allowed to continue to define nationhood, Malaysian politics will see another dark spring ahead. 

We need political-economic-social reconstructionist geniuses to come up with a Year Zero plan for sustainability before we travel the path of such oil-rich democracies as Venezuela. Unless we allow our politicians to do the self-destruction for us.