Bogged down by negativity

==================================
IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL
The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.
==================================

Wednesday December 3, 2008
Bogged down by negativity
MUSINGS
By MARINA MAHATHIR


We need to change our culture from a disabling one to an enabling one. But, first, we need to change those in charge of reform.

When you have children growing up, part of the challenges of parenthood is to ensure that they make their way safely in the world without being so protected that they can never be independent.

While we warn them of the many dangers out there, we also want them to be curious and creative so that they may learn to be innovative.

Incurious people or those unwilling to take risks never made great scientific discoveries or found solutions to the world’s problems.

To do that, they must have the freedom to think and to explore the world around them. They must live in an environment that nurtures that curiosity rather than suppresses it, that allows expressions of ideas rather than beats them down.

When I look around our current environment, I wonder how we are ever going to produce that kind of citizen. Every day, we are told about the great many things we cannot do, rather than what we can do.

Our emphasis is to take the same old course in life, to keep our heads down and ask no question. We think of those who see things differently, who ask awkward questions and will not take no for an answer, as aberrations, rebels or sometimes even apostates.

When Barack Obama made his victory speech, his simple message of “Yes We Can” struck a chord even with non-Americans. It was a message that was positive and full of hope. Yet some leaders are not trying to fill us with that optimism, that while times are hard we can still overcome it if we work together.

Instead, we see petty issues being made gargantuan and a constant negativism being touted. The good and the upright are the ones who sit obediently and demand nothing while the evil and the lost are those who demand answers to life’s problems and reject simplistic ones. Everything is a big no-no; life feels like a giant minefield we have to navigate, lest one wrong move results in us being blown to pieces.

How do we innovate if we constantly have to think of whether our souls can survive? What new things can we discover if we’re constantly told to take no risk?

How do we solve the big problems of the world when we are constantly being distracted by minutiae?

The polio vaccine would never have been found if Dr Jonas Salk had not discovered that injecting someone with dead poliomyelitis viruses would cause the body to produce antibodies against it.

The result of this discovery is that thousands of people all over the world were saved from this crippling disease. A few years later Dr Albert Sabin discovered the non-invasive form of immunisation by giving children polio drops.

These types of discoveries would not have happened if these two people had not used their brains to find creative solutions. But imagine if someone had told them that they needed to get dispensation from some religious authority first or they lived in an environment where thinking of new ways to solve a problem was discouraged?

Despite 50 years of efficacy, as late as 2003, some Nigerian Muslim authorities saw it fit to make unfounded claims about the polio drops, resulting in this easily eradicable disease spreading to 12 new countries within 18 months.

How do we expect our children to find the next big thing, perhaps a cure for AIDS, when they live in such an un-nurturing environment? When the mainstays of policy are not sound and rational research but personal whims and fancies which brook no dissent from anyone else?

Perhaps that is the real reason behind our inertia regarding reforming our education system. Why should we change it to one that makes our children think, because then they will ask even more awkward questions.

Perhaps we realise that in order to reform our education system, we have to first reform those of us who are in charge of that reformation.

And those people are notoriously unwilling to do so because once that is done, it will be like opening Pandora’s Box.

Imagine, suddenly lots and lots of young people will be asking endless questions! And we might not be able to answer them, or worse, tell them they should not be asking such questions at all.

Yet, among a thousand annoying questions, there might be one really brilliant one that lets us think in a new way. By not allowing the many, we may never find that one that can change our lives for the better. What a loss that would be!

We need to change our culture from a disabling one to an enabling one. But it won’t happen if we allow the negativists to rule.

Read More

Open the minds of the young

==================================

IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL

The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.

==================================

Wednesday November 19, 2008
Open the minds of the young
MUSINGS
By MARINA MAHATHIR


For there to be an intellectual renaissance at university level, we must have students whose minds have been primed from young to be open to new ideas.

YEARS ago when my daughter was getting her UPSR results, I waited at home chewing my nails. She had refused to let me accompany her to school for the results so I had to wait, hardly able to breathe, at home.

Luckily she had a happy score to give me and we all celebrated afterwards.

As I scanned photos of anxious parents waiting, I recall that time and sympathise. No matter what anyone says about how standards are slipping, you still worry for your children and want them to successfully get over this hurdle.

It is only when you do not have children going through this process, that you begin to look at our exam-oriented education system with a more dispassionate eye.

We groan and moan about how our kids are only learning to pass exams and nothing else, yet every year we exult in the numbers of As our kids get.

Each exam cycle, we reinforce the importance of As even while we complain about how our children are automatons who are unable to think creatively or apply whatever they learnt.

The other week our Deputy Prime Minister called for “an intellectual renaissance to open up and liberate the minds of students”, stating that this should start in universities.

While I agree that we should certainly have such a renaissance, surely starting at university level is just way too late.

How do you undo twelve years of robotic learning and the total suppression of curiosity and enquiry?

For there to be an intellectual renaissance at university level, you must have students whose minds have been primed from young to be open to new ideas.

Yet in both primary and secondary school, children are generally not encouraged to ask too many questions or to use their own initiative to find answers that they need.

The sole purpose of school is to get through the syllabus and to be ready for exams. How do you have an intellectual renaissance (which means “rebirth”) when you have not given birth to it, nor nurtured it in the first place?

We complain about the quality of graduates that our universities are producing and how unemployable they are. But did this unemployability start in university or even sooner?

If you come to university without the necessary skills to cope with whatever “intellectual” acumen you are supposed to pick up there, can three years bring you up to speed?

Last August, I had the opportunity to visit a wonderful project called the Asian University for Women (AUW) in Chittagong, Bangladesh.

Set up to provide tertiary education to young women from poor families around Asia, the AUW aims to produce women leaders who will go back and become assets to their own countries.

New students do not go straight to university courses. Instead they begin at the Access Academy where they are taught four subjects; English, Mathematics, Computer skills and Critical Thinking.

When I met them, the first batch of students had been there only four months. But they spoke excellent English and were able to give highly sophisticated presentations using computer and video­making skills.

They could articulate what they wanted for their own futures. The Cambodian girls, for instance, were envisioning what they themselves might do for their country were they to take over the helms of government.

These girls came from even less-advantaged backgrounds than many of our own back home. Yet their confidence was impressive.

One student even wrote to me to correct something I had written afterwards. You just know that these girls are going to become something one day.

So why can’t we do the same thing? Why can’t we spend time and money to prepare our students for that intellectual “renaissance” by teaching them what they really need? Critical thinking particularly is something they could all use.

Of course for them to be able to use their skills effectively at university, you need university environments that are open, liberated and conducive to debate and discussion. Otherwise university is simply an extension of school. And we’ve seen what that produces.

As the AUW has shown, English is an important skill that every potential leader needs. I am heartened to see that most UPSR students answered their Maths and Science papers in English. Hopefully, that would discourage any move to reverse the policy.

Indeed it should be reason to extend the policy to include other subjects or at least to have innovative programmes to improve English proficiency.

All parents want their children to have a good education. I doubt any parent would be selfish enough to seriously disadvantage their child for merely political reasons.

If that happens, I fear the day when students graduating from a new university in Bangladesh would be more employable than any from ours.

Read More

Energised and empowered

==================================
IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL
The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.
==================================

Wednesday November 5, 2008
Energised and empowered
MUSINGS
By MARINA MAHATHIR


Even if we don’t have all the religious knowledge, we still have a conscience. And it tells what is right and what is wrong.

EARLIER this year I attended a workshop by two female Indonesian Islamic scholars. It is rare that I would leave such a workshop feeling good but this one left me feeling energised and empowered.

These two women undoubtedly had all the religious educational credentials. They knew their Quran and hadiths thoroughly.

But what was different was that they were able to apply their knowledge to real-life situations and were able to see how misinterpretations can lead to injustices, the very opposite of what Islam intends.

In the course of the workshop, they were asked about the frequent criticism thrown at people like me who are critical of religious scholars who pronounce unjust edicts. Apparently, I am not allowed to criticize because I never studied at a religious institution, am female and don’t cover my head.

The two women scholars had a very simple answer to that: even if we don’t have all the knowledge, we still have a conscience. So if something feels wrong, it probably is.

We are all given a conscience which acts like an internal compass, which tells us what is right and what is wrong. Regardless of what religion we profess, our conscience tells us the same things. This is why nobody can say that killing is ever right, for instance.

Thus, when certain people claim that women hold a lesser position in the eyes of God, you know in your heart that that cannot be right.

Similarly, with other claims that just don’t sit right in your conscience, the ones that ensure that certain people are discriminated against, or are just unfair; you know that they cannot possibly be right in a religion that places justice and equality front and centre.

Of late, there have been several religious issues that have been greeted with howls of protest by people of conscience. Yet there are others who say that such pronouncements must never be questioned because ‘highly intelligent and expert’ people make them.

How one knows this is questionable, since the process of passing fatwas is hardly transparent.

When questioned why there are no fatwas on corruption and other contemporary blights on society, the response is that these things are in the Quran and ‘everyone’ already knows they are haram. If that were so, then why is it that corruption is so rampant?

I accept that fatwas are to clarify things that are unclear. But that unclear nature means that it is open to interpretation that, in turn, is subject to human fallibility.

Contemporary issues that did not exist in the time of Prophet Mohamed are not mentioned in the Quran. Therefore, modern religious scholars have to transpose Quranic guidance onto these issues, a process that is fraught with danger, not least because contemporary issues are often complicated and require sophisticated research.

You have to wonder about priorities, however. What endangers a society more; corrupt citizens and leaders or yoga practitioners and females who dress in a masculine fashion?

Yet there are so many of us who are unwilling to trust our own conscience and would prefer to trust the robed and the turbaned to make rulings on things which we should be able to judge on our own.

We do have choices, and we make our choices by listening to our conscience. Yet there are so many who say that we should not question any such rulings, even when our conscience tells us that they cannot be just.

We never seem to wonder why is it there are no positive fatwas at all, those that tell us that we can do something rather than forbidding us. It does not take much thought to simply forbid every contemporary challenge; it takes much more intelligence to encourage people to move forward and face them by themselves.

Sometimes it seems that we believe ourselves to be babies who constantly need our hands to be held so that we don’t fall. Yet it is when we fall that we learn how to stabilise ourselves and learn to walk properly.

At the moment, we can hardly breathe for fear of finding ourselves on the path to hell. What a great atmosphere to grow in.

If we need fatwas to clarify, then perhaps we should have the National Fatwa Council make a ruling on the following: And if ye fear that ye will not deal fairly by the orphans, marry of the women, who seem good to you, two or three or four; and if ye fear that ye cannot do justice (to so many) then one (only) or (the captives) that your right hands possess. Thus it is more likely that ye will not do injustice. (Surah An-Nisa 4:3)

Read More

Banning won’t solve anything

==================================

IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL

The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.

==================================

Wednesday October 22, 2008
Banning won’t solve anything
COMMENT By MARINA MAHATHIR


Wise leaders should know that when people are united by a common cause in their heads, it is very hard to dislodge this idea. Banning something or an organisation will not change their minds.

One of those “truisms” that parents have to contend with is that if you tell your kids not to do something, chances are that’s exactly what they will do.

Which makes life hard for parents trying to protect their children from harm but nevertheless necessitates some creativity in finding ways to get the message across in the right way.

I think sometimes governing a country works in the same way. If you tell people not to do something, they are not really going to listen unless you have credibility.

That comes with being able to give persuasive reasons why something must not or cannot be done, as well as what would happen if they did do it.

I don’t think that banning anything works. For one thing, it is a shortcut for not explaining the reasons why banning happens and for another it shows a lack of creativity in trying to get people to understand.

In our country, we happen to like banning books.

Most of the time we are given no real reason why certain books are banned other than that they are likely to “cause confusion”. Why exactly that is, we are not told.

Hence, people find one way or another to find these books elsewhere and to smuggle them into the country. If nothing else, the reason why they do this is just to find out what exactly is in these books that would cause them to be banned.

I’ve read a few banned books and thus far, I cannot see anything that anyone who is educated and well-read would object to in them.

The same thing happens with organisations.

After Sept 11, the United States banned anything to do with al-Qaeda. Anyone who had even the remotest of links with the organisation (or even less than remote) had no chance of ever getting a visa to visit America.

In fact, very few countries in the world, including Muslim ones, would welcome al-Qaeda within their borders.

Yet it lives on, precisely because it is not an organisation built like other organisations with formal structures. It simply exists because of the commonality of ideas (and grouses) among its “members”.

The same can be said of other organisations that come together because of a common grievance or cause. They may have nothing to do with any form of terrorism and their leaders may have dubious reputations.

But once the idea behind it has taken off, there is no way of banning it on a legal basis. Membership exists only in people’s heads, not on any piece of paper.

Wise leaders should know that when people are united by a common cause in their heads, it is very hard to dislodge this idea.

In the 50s, once the idea of independence had lodged in the heads of the people of Malaya, it was very hard to get rid of it.

The road to independence became inevitable and whatever was in people’s heads soon translated into legal papers.

The British saw the futility of insisting on keeping the colonies under their thumb.

As a result, they let them go mostly peacefully and relations have remained generally good until today and benefited all sides.

Colonial powers that have resisted independence movements elsewhere have found themselves in very expensive wars to keep their colonies, to the benefit of no one.

We should learn to differentiate between structured organisations that we can see and deal with, and the more difficult organisations that only exist in people’s minds. We can bring all sorts of punitive measures on the former but virtually nothing on the latter.

We cannot go around asking people what is in their heads because they will never trust us enough to tell us the truth. So they may all say they do not belong to an organisation but instead remain true to the idea.

To win that battle, it is important to recognise why such ideas even take root. Perhaps they have a germ of justification. Perhaps what they were complaining about has some basis.

When we wanted independence, the British understood that there was a basis for it. While Americans these days are wanting out of Iraq, not recognising that fact can be detrimental to people wanting to lead them.

To simply dismiss such ideas as being totally without basis, that people’s grouses are just imagined, is stupid and dangerous.

Like our teenaged children, there is no better guarantee to keep an idea fertilised and ever-growing than by insisting that they are imaginary and therefore not worth anyone’s time.

Today’s parents are told to respect our children’s grouses and to listen properly in order to gain their trust and find some solution that suits all sides. Surely governments should do the same?

Read More

Up close with the contenders

==================================

IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL

The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.

==================================

Wednesday October 8, 2008
Up close with the contenders
Musings
BY MARINA MAHATHIR


The US Presidential debates give voters the opportunity to closely watch the candidates in action and really get to know what they are like.

I’M SURE many Malaysians have been watching some politicians with great interest on TV and in the newspapers lately. No, I don’t mean Malaysian politicians but American ones.

As the race in the US Presidential elections enters its final stages, I find the whole process riveting. We may argue whether it is truly democratic or not, given that voter turnout is often far lower than ours, but it’s still fascinating to watch.

This has already been a historical election because, for the first time ever, an African-American has a serious chance of being President of the United States, something unimaginable less than a decade ago.

But if he loses, some history will be made because they will have a woman as Vice-President, and only one heartbeat away from being President as well.

But it is the whole process of electing the president that is fascinating. Complicated it may be, but it doesn’t matter if it works.

It does give the choice of who gets nominated right down to the individual member of each party as caucuses of party members all over the country decide the nominations. Without getting their blessings, there is no way of becoming a candidate on either party ticket.


Anima ted: Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin responding to cheers at a St Louis rally last week. The candidates reveal a lot through their expressions and gestures. — AFP

Then when party candidates are nominated, they go through a gruelling campaign period where you really get to know what they are like, or at least what their spinmeisters would like you to know.

It all costs a lot of money no doubt but it gives the voter plenty of information on what the candidates’ policies, priorities and values are, as well as the trivialities about their families and background.

On their websites, you can read where each candidate stands on just about everything from the economy to religion to women to sex education.

In the past week, the Presidential debates have begun on TV. Set up by the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, there will be three Presidential debates and one Vice-Presidential debate. Two have already been aired live and another two will be coming up soon.

I watched almost all of the first Presidential debate between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain.

It amazes me that two people can debate so civilly in such an important arena, aware that millions of people €“ not just Americans €“ are watching them. Undoubtedly they were prepared fully for this, almost scripted, but still things can go enormously wrong on live TV.

I like the format where questions are put to each candidate and then they can rebut each other for a stated length of time before moving on to another topic. You get to cover a lot of ground that way.

The Vice-Presidential debate was more controlled, apparently because the Republicans were afraid that their candidate might trip up. It did not have much in the way of substance, but I found it interesting that while the Republicans stressed experience as their Presidential candidate’s best quality, they then underscored the opposite for their Vice-Presidential candidate.

What I valued most about the debates was the opportunity to really watch the candidates in action and see whether they reveal more through their body language, expressions and gestures than they intended.

Leaders tend to look like leaders, and people do sometimes choose them by instinct. In my book, Obama looked much more presidential and that no doubt helped to up his ratings.

I wish we had such debates here. I know we had some recently but they were after the elections so they made little difference. We should have a commission on debates at election time. Like the US one, all parties should be part of it, decide on the format and when to air them.

We should have one by heads of parties, deputy heads and the candidates most likely to take on particular portfolios, such as finance. I’d love to be able to compare candidates (or rather parties) on women’s issues or human rights or the price of eggs. It would be so nice to be able to have an informed choice for a change.

But most of all, I’d love to be able to decide whether I can trust my country to someone by seeing how they respond and react to ‘live’ questioning.

I’d like to be able to look into their eyes and see if I can spot unease or deviousness, watch if their hands flutter nervously or if they display other signs of being uncomfortable.

I’d like to see if they can think on their feet and not get caught out by a sneaky question. It would also be great if we had moderators who didn’t feel obliged to be too polite.

Mostly the debates would show up calibre. Which is what we truly need now.

Read More