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Thursday, July 23, 2009

Malaysia Boleh!!!

One of the wonderful things about living in Malaysia is that we devote so much of our resources into building brain power. We love smart people in Malaysia. Parents spend an obscene amount on tuition classes.

Let’s look at some of the major initiatives by our wonderful government to increase our brain power:
1) Malaysia will produce more than 100,000 PhDs by 2012
2) Creating “knowledge” workers and “world-class” IT industry via the MSC
3) Almost all grants by MOSTI is geared towards science and technology
4) Building new universities left and right. In the 1980s we had fewer than a dozen universities — now we have more than 20 public universities and an equal number of private universities
5) “Apex” and “research” universities allocated extra millions of ringgit with the aim of getting into the top 200 university rankings
6) All sorts of academic prizes from all sorts of dubious exhibitions
7) Smart schools
8) All sorts of scholarships — JPA alone gives more than 2,000 overseas scholarships. If you include Mara and GLCs and private companies, the number is probably somewhere about 6,000-7,000 overseas scholarships plus thousands of local scholarships
9) “Brain gain” programme where we try to entice successful Malaysian scientists to come back to help our R&D
10) All sorts of government-backed programmes like the invention awards, best ICT Company, PM’s innovation awards, smart partnership, etc.

Yet, somehow we seem to be going the opposite direction. Mind you it’s been there for more than a decade already and, correct me if I am wrong; the MSC has been a dismal failure since the “knowledge” industry has not taken off and no major Malaysian IT inventions since the inception of the MSC. Cyberjaya is still years behind Singapore.

In fact, the most famous “Malaysian” IT invention — the pen drive — was invented in Taiwan by a Malaysian Chinese who could not even enter a public university here. He had to go to Taiwan, get a degree there (which is not recognised here!) and invented the pen drive there. So today, the world thinks it’s a Taiwan invention! Malaysia Boleh!

The brain gain programme is so successful that almost all the scientists who came back to work here have resigned from the public universities or government research centres, and the bulk of them have left for overseas again. Needless to say, their major complaints were racism (almost all were non-Bumiputeras) and red tape. But no one wants to admit to this since it’s not a very smart thing to admit failure.

Meanwhile we are rushing to produce 100,000 PhDs. Since most of these 100,000 PhDs will be awarded by local public universities you really have to wonder about the quality. But who cares? The important thing is to graduate 100,000 “doctors” of dubious quality so that they can train the next generation. After all, the majority of these PhDs will end up as professors in our public universities and they will supervise the next generation of PhDs. Remember the movie “Dumber and Dumber”?
Is it any wonder that our public universities’ ranking is dropping fast?

On top of that, we have decided to stop emphasising English at the high school level. No wonder international schools are celebrating — their student enrolment will go through the roof from next year onwards.

And to ensure that we have the right environment to produce “Towering Malays” and “world-class” Malaysians, the mainstream newspapers here follow the same editorial style as China’s People’s Daily and the old Soviet Union’s Pravda. Truth is not as important as propaganda and the promotion of racism and racist ideology. Malay newspapers are free to preach racism as long as they reinforce “Malay unity” and Malay dominance. News is only news if the government says so.

In the arts, local productions cannot reflect reality. How else can you explain government directives that Mat Rempits and transvestites cannot be shown on Malaysian movies and television. The way it works is like this: if we don’t show Mat Rempits and transvestites, then they do not exist! See how smart we have become because of all the government investment in educating Malaysians? Very soon, there will be no prostitutes or gay people in Malaysia.
Just to be sure, the government has just announced another round of books that are banned in Malaysia. In total more than 2,000 titles are banned in Malaysia. Some authors do not even know that their books are banned. Reading is a dangerous habit for a knowledge nation.
Meanwhile religion, or the official view of religion, is shafted down the throats of young people through television programmes and in the schools.

You really have to wonder how on earth Malaysia produces thinking citizens since all around them the system, from the mass media to the education system to the universities, is designed to damage the brain? The whole system is designed to produce a non-thinking, non-critical person who can easily be manipulated by propaganda.

It is really mind-boggling that somehow young people have managed to escape this system. Of course there are thousands who believe in the system and are basically brain dead, especially after reading the Malay newspapers and watching the local television stations. But there is a significant portion of young people out there who have managed to overcome the attempt to control their mind. I take my hat off to these young people. Without them, Malaysia will have no future.

11 comments:

TG said...

An excellent article! What I read about Malaysia lately is crazy. Seems like all bloggers are now more open to criticize, even if there's danger. I basically have nothing to add to your article, it's written brilliantly and very ironic. I like that. Keep on blogging.

Unknown said...

A great post. Absolutely agree with you. Thank goodness I'll be leaving for 3 years to study! Away with all this stupidity at least for awhile.

wenwen said...

I love this.

"News are only new if the government say they are" - so true.

Actually I find it pretty good for myself not to start reading newspaper at a too young age, at least my mindset can mature in a neutral way. <-- Crapping, LOL

A Gust of Wind said...

MKL - for your information, Malaysia is all along crazy. just that with the Information Technology age, they can't hide it anymore

A Gust of Wind said...

Poison Kagero

I already leave Malaysia for 6 years. But I still feel all this stupidity. Believe me, the more you love your country, the more you feel the stupidity

A Gust of Wind said...

Wenwen - Newspaper? Try read Utusan Melayu. Then you'll realise it's not a newspaper. It's more like a novel nowadays.

Jerine said...

Back in the days when my dad was doing his phd in USM, the entire country had less than 100 students doing their phds. I don't know if government is stupid or smart in their plans. It's common sense that if the increase the numbers of phd student and build more universities, the quality of education is flushing down the drain. It's not rocket science.

LOL @ the pen drive case. Actually the fella was in the same class with my brother in Taiwan. What I heard is, he couldn't get a place in local uni because his BM was bad. WTF?

@PoisonKagero: Thank God I'm out of the country already.

wenwen said...

Shall not try reading any Malay magazine, didn't like that language anyways.

Sadly I'm still stuck in here, can only leave Malaysia in September next year, and for a single year only. :(

wenwen said...

I totally agree with what Jerine said about the quality of education system - it's gonna be flushing down the drain.

I'll just add this, I don't like the current government exam style of "if you do this you'll score, if you don't you'll fail". And I do not like how much they pull they graph so that there will be more people scoring A's. And I think if possible, it'd be better if the student is told which part of the paper he scored/screwed up.

Jerine you certainly know many people? LOL. Anyway I agree that bad BM is a ridiculous reason for not being acknowledged in our country.

A Gust of Wind said...

haha, and those M***y in Malaysia kept saying that their counterpart in Singapore are being discriminate. Imagine this, both M***y in Singapore and Malaysia went to USA for a job. U think they will hire a 'I no speakee Inggeris' M***y or a fluent English speaker? Now, who is at the worst?

wenwen said...

Look, discrimination only exist when like cases are not being treated alike.

So who are those discriminator? I thought we're all Malaysians. xP