Renew prosperity, bring back English schools

In writing my last column for 2018, having focused mainly on the subject of my 30-year passion as an educator, on education in all its depth and breath, I still believe that there once was moment, a historical block (as the Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci would put it) wherein our country had something going – a political-cultural-educational will – to get this issue of race relations and interfaith understanding and appreciation not just under control but flourishing and set on the path of prosperity.

That was the 70s, at a time when I was in the middle of finishing up my “primary education” and moving into the “secondary”. That was the time when kids were taught the song Muhibbah and schools had an ethnically diverse composition of teachers and students. No Islamisation. No Arabisation. Not yet.

That was when we had English-medium schools. Children instructed in liberal education. A beautiful experience I share below.

I went to an English medium school, Sekolah Temenggong Abdul Rahman (Star 1) in Johor Bahru and went on to a specialised boarding school after being selected through a nationwide filtration process based on how poor my family was and how eager I was to learn things and how well I did in the Standard 5 assessment exam.

I had a voracious reading appetite, my diet ranging from Greek and Norse mythologies and other fun stuff in the Sultanah Aminah Library to Reader’s Digest magazines my mother bought me (she finished only Standard Three of her schooling) and the World Book Encyclopedia grandpa and mother bought on a many-years-long instalment payment plan from Grolier.

Also, anything I could read in English namely, to keep myself occupied if I were not playing soccer barefoot trying to do bicycle kicks like my idol Pele and other great moves from people such as Eusebio, Johan Cruyff and Mokhtar Dahari, of course.

At 13, I was already taken away from my mother and placed in this Mara ashram-kibbutz- concentration-camp type of experimental educational facility in a place that is now plagued with bauxite debris all over, orange as Planet Mars I heard, one I call the Kuantan Darul Bauxite. So, I was there continuing my classes in English.

I had hippie Malaysian teachers and five American Peace Corps teachers who chose not to go to Vietnam to fight the war and instead be with these natives – kampung boys – they could experiment their teaching on. We were proudly called “guinea pigs”. And we gladly told our kampung folks that.

It was a world of strangers I was in and I cried almost every night thinking of my mother. I wrote to her a lot on a fortnightly basis. In Jawi. I had beautiful handwriting. I still practise it today. The immense feeling of sadness lasted for a few weeks. But soon I made friends from all over the country – kids of my temperament, some with bizarre character and bloated little egos, from Johor to Perlis to Sabah and Sarawak. There were Chinese, Indians, Ibans and Kadazan and hybrids of these. Many talked strange.

Most of us spoke English, Malay, and our own strange village dialect. I spoke Johor-Riau Malay, the standard language I mastered through my mother and my kampung folks. I was with kids whose parents were fishermen, rubber tappers, padi farmers, contract labourers and those you would consider today as the B40 group in a country ran by the few wealthy Malaysians.

In other words, those in that “Bauxite High School” with Peace Corps and hippie-looking Chinese, Malay, Indian teachers who were trying to educate us in English, we not children of kings and all the king's men. Not the children of rich businesspersons and politicians, although there was a significant percentage of children from rich and powerful families of the 70s.

Growing up 'English'

But we were taught in English. We joked in English. Our not-so-clean jokes, too, were in that language. We enjoyed English – mainly American – music and movies in English and by the time we finished high school we were off to places of learning whose language of instruction was entirely in English.

I recall as a 13-year-old, I would gather around friends who would spend time talking about “heavy subject matters” outside the curriculum such as Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, Hitler and Rommel’s strategies during World War 2, the nature of the stock market, the nature of Pi, Hardy Boys novels, Mad magazines, Godfather movies, 60s pop music, Rolling Stones, Harley Davidson and Nortons, the Apollo landing, Muhammad Ali and weapons of mass destruction of the 70s.

Yes, we had passionate conversations in English, at that age. Our conversations about those matters were a natural enriched extension of our Science and Maths subjects that were taught in English. (Yes, there were no controversies then on English used as a medium of instruction.) Not much about girls we talked about since there were none yet in that school when we “pioneered and founded” it.

But that was the impact of English Language instruction. Of liberalism. Of the ars liberalis (liberal arts). Of the free man.

I remember as I reached Form Five, I wanted to be either one of these three things - a rock star, a psychiatrist or a rocket scientist who also designs a better version of the atomic bomb! Sinful thinking. Our parting song was Queen’s We Are the Champions which I still love, although Donald Trump used it as an opening tune for his glitzy-burlesquey campaign victory TV appearance. What a horrifying murder of something I loved and much to the annoyance of Dr Brian May, the band’s great guitarist, who objected to the American president’s use of their hit song.

I was bored while waiting for my Malaysian Certificate of Education (MCE) results and at night till early morning, at home in Johor Bahru, I’d read this textbook on Psychology of Human Development meant for teachers takings their Master’s degree. I was fascinated by the Freudian Theory, how Einstein’s (photo)mind worked and a range of contemporary psychological issues in America.

I was obsessed with that subject matter at 17. I read my encyclopedias and also my set of books on medicine. It was like a learning explosion and implosion. I read, played my guitar, listened to tons of 70s rock music. I could be passionate because I had access to the language I had used with ease since the first day I entered school.

Because there were English medium schools. Schools to ignite exploring, thinking and to create new things.

I wrote about my passion for reading, a few years ago. This year marked my 31st year I have lived without television. Yes, I stopped watching it and prefer reading, not only because my profession requires me to read and read but because I had access to the gradually different levels of sophistication of the language. I read 100 books this past year, fiction and non-fiction. All in English. I am now more fluent in English than in my mother tongue.

The ease of using the language got me accepted for PhD work in International Education, at the Stanford and Columbia universities. I chose the latter. New York City and Harlem and the ideas of a pedagogy of the oppressed and radical multiculturalism lured me there.

And also, Columbia was where the American pragmatist philosopher John Dewey conceived "Progressive Education", the philosophical foundation of American schooling and democracy. I must have written a strong personal essay on why they should take me in. An essay in English. Of what it means to be an educator and how culture and consciousness shape cognition.

An English poem

A few years ago, sitting by my window sill watching the world outside, I wrote an English poem on my being-ness of neither here nor there:

Snow-covered bamboo leaves

Today I looked out of my window. The world was white.

As white as the snow:

falling and falling as if each snowflake must become

A postscript.

Of the longest story ever told.

Each bit of snowfall become one amongst millions and billions.

Of snowflakes that will become a blanket of whiteness

That will be weaved like an endless design of a carpet of a story.

Again, postscripts of a life that will be concluded in white.

Today I looked out of my window. I saw not a single snowflake.

The world was not white.

Leaves from those bamboo trees fall: falling as if each must

Become what a child’s dream is made of.

I saw a child barefoot

Playing with a blowpipe he made out of the postscript of his future.

Running, laughing.

Away from his sorrows, I suppose.

He is a child of Nature.

He looked at me as I looked outside of my window.

We locked eyes.

I saw snowflakes.

I did not know what he saw.

From amongst the bamboo trees, his eyes pierced into mine.

He disappeared.

Not a smile.

Not a frown

he offered as a gift.

In between the snowflakes and the bamboo leaves lie our story weaved.

So what, then?

Essentially, I have shared a fragment of my personal evolution as a consequence of being “languaged” in English. While still a Malay, by definition (what is race and ethnicity anyway but artificial constructs).

I believe it is still a powerful lingua franca. I believe we must change the course of how we school our children. Maybe my experience was unique and my story is a memoir of language use and how English has become my reality and how I continue to construct, deconstruct, and reconstruct realities based on the elements of race, culture, spirituality and religion that have defined me.

Maybe it’s just “my” story. I cannot explain more. It would be an over-story. You will be bored. Just bring back the English Language if we are to gracefully ride the waves of the 21st century. We can renew our educational prosperity. In a world plagued with grave challenges and possibilities.

I love our Malaysian people. I want them to succeed. No child left behind. Whatever colour, race, religion, caste they are from. We had models of great English-medium schools from way back then. No radical Islamisation. No Arabisation. Not yet. Bring them back, still alive. Let’s just do it. Before we see them too, turninginto medan dakwah.

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AZLY RAHMAN is an educator, academic, international columnist, and author of seven books available here. He grew up in Johor Bahru and holds a Columbia University doctorate in international education development and Master’s degrees in six areas: education, international affairs, peace studies communication, fiction and non-fiction writing. Twitter @azlyrahman. More writings here. - Mkini