Mara colleges for the rich won’t help Malays move forward

 

Somebody somewhere (probably many bodies somewhere) wants to turn Mara’s junior science colleges, or Maktab Rendah Sains Mara (MRSM), into private schools to cater to the T20 crowd – the term T20 being a convenient euphemism for the wealthy.

MRSMs were once, and perhaps still are, elite high schools meant to further the agenda of helping the Bumiputeras (another euphemism here, it means the Malays) as part of various national affirmative action programmes.

And no, T20 is not a cricket competition where two sides are allowed equal opportunities to bat and bowl and show who’s better in 20 overs before retiring in the spirit of sportsmanship for tea at the pavilion.

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But in the Mara T20 game, there are no two equally matched sides – the T20 are the wealthiest 20% of Malaysia’s population while the B40, the bottom 40%, aren’t topping anything except the league tables on hardship, poor health and being exploited by many, including the T20s.

First, let’s examine Mara the way people in coffeeshops do it – without much evidence or data, but with a lot of emotion.

Here’s the first, and strongest, emotion: the MRSMs are meant to help poor Bumiputeras!

That was the rationale for setting up Mara, the parent agency, back in the days when government agencies, and other organisations of public trust, seemed to care about fulfilling their charters and oaths.

What’s the outcome?

Have they succeeded? I’m sure said agencies have reams of paper showing how much has been achieved. But their detractors can also produce reams of paper, such as court documents, audit reports and investigation papers, showing that many haven’t quite been so successful.

If you have listened to the many loud voices telling us how desperate and shaky the positions of the Malays are, the only conclusion is that such agencies haven’t achieved their mission at all.

You can argue things could’ve been a lot worse without them, though you can similarly argue things could’ve been a lot better if they’d actually delivered on what they’re supposed to deliver.

Poor return on affirmative action

I wouldn’t actually say the entire affirmative action initiatives have failed, but I’d say they came short when you look at their returns. The return on the investments in these initiatives, both in the benefits to the Malays and the opportunity costs paid by the non-Malays, are meagre.

I had the chance to attend one of these elite schools myself in the days before the MRSMs. We had some of the best school facilities and were taught by excellent teachers, some of whom actually wrote the textbooks used by students in the country then.

Sure, our school has produced many high achievers, though surprisingly no prime ministers yet, which is a puzzle as they’re a dime-a-dozen nowadays.

But these high achievers are almost all in politics or public service. No doubt many are excellent at what they do, but such achievements are hardly proof of success in meeting the original goals set a few generations ago.

I’m so grateful the school plucked me from poverty and gave me the opportunity to change my life, and that of my family too. So too the many others who were rescued from otherwise being one of today’s B40s.

Why they came up short

But I can also argue that such elite institutions have underperformed. Why they produced such meagre returns is down to two core reasons.

The first is the lack of a culture of excellence and continuous improvements. There’s the feeling we were the elites, that we own such privileges and that they are our birth right, and that there’s nothing anybody can do to take them away from us.

When you start having such attitudes, bad things happen. You start resting on your laurels, take things for granted, and inevitably become complacent and entitled. Today, such schools are hardly bywords for excellent education in the world at large.

This happened principally because there isn’t enough competition in the schools. Once you were in, you were likely to be there until the end of schooling, as long as you didn’t get expelled. You became elite by association, not by achievement and hard work.

Another reason is the belief that children will have a good religious education, which is both putting too much trust on bureaucrats handling this as well as abdication of parents’ own responsibility to set the kids on the right path.

Building resilience

Second is diversity. In biospheres, diversity guarantees the continuing success of a species. There should be diversity in our education system too. MRSMs and similar schools are mono-cultural, after which their students have to enter into a highly diverse and competitive world, one they’re not prepared for.

Hence many such alumni gravitated towards similarly mono-cultural employment such as the government, the religious sectors and many of the GLCs.

Over the years, such elite boarding schools have become very popular among the Malays, but possibly for the wrong reasons. It’s not because parents feel their kids could stand tall and proud, but rather that they’ll be protected from the vagaries of the real world.

Obviously many did succeed in the real world because of their other qualities and possibly in spite of their schooling. But it’s been shown that the biggest determinant of success in life is resilience – and you don’t build it by being mollycoddled from the real world.

While nature, through evolution, guarantees diversity, humans tend to favour the opposite – tilting the scale in favour of whatever is comfortable and safe, often whatever that brings them easy power and wealth, and not what’ll ensure the success of their future generations.

Quality education free for everyone

What if we’d put our money and energy into improving our overall education system? I don’t mean putting it into the venerable urban schools and institutions in the more prosperous urban areas, schools which back then were pretty much unavailable to people like me from the ulus.

What if we’d done what Finland did – provided public education of uniformly high quality such that there’s hardly any need for elite private schools. Hired teachers based on quality and not because they’re a vote bank. Taught critical thinking and what’s needed to succeed in today’s world, not what’ll make us politically popular or powerful.

Let’s give every child in the country their birthright – quality education for free. Let their own efforts and motivation decide who wins at the end of it, not an accident of birth or, increasingly, family wealth that can afford private MRSMs or swanky and expensive international schools, which only widens the wealth gap further.

Ironically, for an agency supposed to help Bumiputeras become a strong, entrepreneurial race, such unfair competition seemingly being encouraged by the government would seriously hurt the many private educational institutions already set up by Malay entrepreneurs and educationists.

It would be sad indeed if Mara, set up to help the Bumiputeras to advance and progress, ends up crippling or even killing off those who actually have made a good start! - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.