The forgotten children

AUG 24 — I read the article about the teenager suing Khazanah over a scholarship with some bemusement.

I’m not too worried about the young man: his smarts, and a sympathetic public and family will find a way for him to be awarded financial support . He will go to Cambridge, or an Ivy League university. His future is set already.

Frankly, I don’t busy my mind over stellar students who achieve straight As annually and win places here and there. I do wonder sometimes whether they have any emotional intelligence or are actually robots in human form. But there is a place for them in society, and in an Asian society like ours, which places great importance on achievement, strategic social networks and contacts, they will thrive.

As I said at a roundtable I took part in recently, the emphasis on bright people and their futures will create an unbalanced society, and outweigh the urgent needs of the marginalised young.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers and website spoke of how “... Success is seen as a matter of capitalising on socioeconomic advantage, not compensating for disadvantage.” The middle class family will strive to afford and provide their children with tuition and other activities, while the rich already have tutors, Kumon per se at their hands.

What of the poor child of average intelligence? He or she may not have the luxury of dreaming of a better life, for already the cards are against him. A child of average intelligence cannot be doomed to failure and a life of mediocrity.

True, what determines the winners are determination and drive, and focus. But the child from a marginalised society will not know how to fuel his dreams. He can daydream all right, but he will not have the tools, the motivation and skills to turn the dreams into reality. He may well be doomed to a life of obscurity.

There was also talk of how the Bersih Rally was similar to the London Riots. I’ll tell you what we Malaysians should be frightened more of:  The New York Times on August 9, 2011 reported on the disenfranchised youth of the UK, and had interviewed 19-year-old Louis James, whose  “… circumstances are typical. He lives in a government-subsidised apartment in northern London and receives US$125 in jobless benefits every two weeks, even though he says he has largely given up looking for work. He says he has never had a proper job and learned to read only three years ago.”

Louis James was 16 when he learned to recognise the alphabets.

I do not want to sound like an alarmist: The Malaysian literacy rate documented by the UNDP, World Bank, UNICEF and the Jabatan Perangkaan Malaysia show that we are far from being buta huruf.  However, when my friends and I volunteered for Nursalam some years ago, we were shocked by the children’s literacy understanding. They parroted whatever they learned in school, and whatever they wrote in the writing workshop we organised, was memorised. What they wrote were the memorised excerpts they learned from school and had practised writing over and again in their exercise books.

One boy, who wrote the Surah Al-Iklas perfectly, did not recognise the Arabic alphabets. He had captured the calligraphy in his mind, and practised writing it on his own. His rendition of the surah was a memorised one, and he had learned to do it by listening hard to his teacher.

This is not literacy.

The United Nations Millennium Development Goals Malaysia Report 2010 tells quite a frightening picture:

Literacy in Malaysia is actually calculated based on primary school attendance — hence enrolment is not actual literacy (2010 Malaysia MDG Report pg 38).

According to those familiar with the exercise, Malaysia recently participated in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2010. PISA is a worldwide evaluation of 15-year-old school pupils’ scholastic performance, performed first in 2000 and repeated every three years. PISA tests literacy in three fields: reading, mathematics and science. Apparently, the results were so staggeringly low compared to the MOE data that it has not been published or made available as yet. It is even possible that the results will most probably never make it out of MOE. Malaysia does not measure literacy rates using international standards but instead through school attendance/ enrolment.

The estimated literacy rate utilising the international definition: 60-70 per cent.

Let’s not even talk about critical thinking and creativity. There are many children like the ones we met, who do not appear in our national statistics because their births have not been registered. Many Malaysians think that these children are not Malaysian. You’d be surprised to know that they are.

Poverty, shame, lack of education, simple-mindedness are some of the contributing factors as to why the children’s births are not registered. Because of this, they do not have access to education and have limited (access) to public healthcare. These children are able to feel, and to see and to know how embarrassed they are about their poverty, families and little education is heart-breaking. They deserve better.

Marvel at our brilliant young minds, but don’t forget the others too. They are the Malaysians who most likely will stay behind in this land, because they have nowhere else to go.

On that note, Selamat Hari Merdeka ke 54, Malaysia. Here’s a video which should inspire all of us.

[1]  Graphic from www.statistics.gov.my

[2]  Some sites for your reading pleasure:

www.gladwell.com

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/malaysia/literacy-rate-youth-male-percent-of-males-ages-15-24-wb-data.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_rate

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_literacy_map_UNHD_2007_2008.png

http://www.statistics.gov.my/portal/download_Labour/files/BPTMS/PST-Siri11.pdf

* The writer would appreciate any leads on Mrs Yeo, the former Assistant Headmistress of Convent Bukit Nanas 1987 to 1988. She’d like to say thank you.

* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.