Home sweet home, and on Hong Kong, Snowden, education and meritocracy in high education

I was welcomed by the thick haze at KLIA yesterday, and my small daughter, being a winter baby, has started to show some complaints with the heat. Otherwise, it's home sweet home baby! For a while at least, before going back to Hong Kong this Friday and another trip to Shanghai and Beijing next week. They want to learn about how to plan and develop a new high-speed rail (HSR) system. I've involved in a HSR feasibility study before, but it's interesting that they want to learn about how to do the planning better even though they have already have a HSR system, and from a Malaysian who works in the U.S. where HSR is non-existence in both Malaysia and USA. I'm being mentored by a world-renowned expert in the field though, so I'm happy to share what I've learned. After all, the best way to learn is to teach. I'm just a student of the field.

My first visit to Hong Kong (HK) was great. Besides teaching all day Saturday and Sunday, we explored the city in the evening and went to the Disneyland. The transit system is efficient and super clean. People might not know that it's also financially sustainable. Like Singapore and Japan, HK used a lot of revenue capture and joint property development strategies to cover the cost to run the system, and some to cover the construction cost too. Anyway, I had a few thoughts running around my head since the last time I wrote so I want to share these now before I forget.

The biggest news in HK was the Snowden guy, a security analysts who ran to HK to disclose some U.S. confidential information. Having read the New Digital Age early this year, this saga is quite interesting to me. China is having a field day criticizing U.S. based on the disclosure. China and other countries need to worry though as there is nothing to stop someone in their countries to do the same thing, especially if they read a related article showing Ecuador's sunny beaches with some scantily clad girls in the background. Rules are there for reasons. When it comes to confidential and security-sensitive information nobody should bend them. The bad guys are having a field day too figuring out what they think they know what the the good guys know and don't know.

Yesterday, I got my hands on some Malaysian newspapers on board of the new A380 upper-deck (this flying machine is impressive by the way). I saw quite a number of articles on education systems especially related to multi-racial relations in Malaysia, specifically about the vernacular system, reminiscent of the old English schools and about the status of Malay language. I think the vernacular system especially Chinese schools are here to stay without better alternatives. The government needs to address the supply side before meddling the demand side. Meanwhile, I do think sharing a language is indeed something special so it's a good thing if all of us can converse in Malay. Having said that, there are a lot more sources of knowledge, books etc in English than in Malay. There are also a lot more people in the world speak English than Malay. Young educated parents, Malay or non-Malay, know this and have already taken proactive role to emphasize English to their kids from small. The current education system doesn't do justice to young kids from low and middle-income students from rural areas. They will miss out without a stronger emphasis on English. I want to give a tip of the hat to respect Malaysian Airport Holding Berhad (MAHB) for their Beyond Borders initiative to help underprivileged children to learn and use English at a handful of schools. I saw and article in the Star yesterday about their success just in the last 3-5 years or so to improve the passing rate at these schools from about 50% to high 70s - if only we could have a national implementation.

Do you know that elite schools in the West have also emphasizing Chinese Mandarin language? A private kindergarten in NY allocate one day per week for their students to learn and communicate in Chinese. There is a sheer number of people in China and more and more of them are started to have something we call money! It makes economic sense. Malays without full mastery of English will have a double-whammy as compared to Chinese Malaysians in the very new future to survive in the global economy.

Last but not least, a friend of mine shared an online article about some groups who claimed that Malays are losing out with the meritocracy policy to enter universities in Malaysia. Affirmative action at higher education institutions has always been quite contentious. It's somewhat coincidence that the U.S. Supreme Court recently has just "punt" the issue back to a lower court, in essence refusing to make a final judgement. Anyway, the article said Malay only account for 35% of the total university students in Malaysia. There was a 55% allocation to all Bumis before the meritocracy policy was implemented in 2002.  I wonder if meritocracy has actually screened out the unqualified Malays from getting in OR rejected the qualified, but not as good as other Malays and non-Malays. It's acceptable if it's the former as for example, you don't want to accept Pangkat 2 SPM students to a medic program - they will struggle and fail (similar cases when Harvard lowered their entry requirements to their law school for underprivileged groups). There are more suitable places like politeknik for the mediocre students to be technicians, mechanics or entrepreneurs. If it's the latter, it's actually a failure to provide enough infrastructure or opportunities to accommodate qualified students, no matter what race, to higher education institutions. This is where a color-blind affirmative action is needed to help the not so rich no matter from any race to get good education.

In any case, I believe affirmative action is like a medicine - you take it in a small amount to get well from a sickness, but you may get addicted if you take too much. I truly understand the need for affirmative action in education as I was highly benefited from it. I have 5 siblings and my dad was a driver with the old Sri Jaya bus company in KL. I wouldn't be half of myself today without some of the help from the government. But, as I said give preference to the needy, not based on the skin of the color.

Education system: Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.

I came across a re-posting of Alina Amir's FB status recently. A former Illini, Alina is among the most charismatic, elegant and hardworking person I've met at Illinois (the university). With her education background, personality and leadership she could have earned a lot working in the financial industry. However, like other Teach for Malaysia teachers, she selflessly follows her passion and teach instead. I respect and envy you all, and I wish you all the best.

I definitely agree wholeheartedly that Teaching for Malaysia is a really good thing to be involved with. I do have somewhat different philosophy on how best to tackle the lack of quality education among kids, summarized in two words "Early Education". 

It's unfair to give all the burden to teachers or the education system itself. There is a 5-7 years gap before  kids in Malaysia go to school. Different kids will arrive the first day at school with different level of skills, education and manners. We as parents or future parents should play a bigger role. I've talked about read-aloud and some potential implementations before.

We individually can play our roles to develop a brighter and more talented future generation of Malaysia. Small things will add up. Like all problems or issues, its always wise to identify the things within or beyond our control, and focus on the former. Borrowing the famous quote from John F. Kennedy, "ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

What can we learn from Pakistan, seriously, for better governance?

Arguably, better government in the future with more transparency and higher efficiency will revolve around one thing - technology. Let's look at what the Pakistanis are doing (more here):

• They equipped 1,500 city workers with $100 smartphones and asked them to take “before and after” photographs of their anti-dengue tasks and to upload images, tagged by location, so that they could be plotted on an online map, made available to the public. Besides enabling some analyses to determine the effectiveness of the tasks, knowing they were being monitored and tracked in public, municipal workers also applied themselves more assiduously to their tasks. Anyone looking at the online map could see if the work being done in a particular area was adequate—and complain if it was not.
• Other officials, such as veterinarians who are paid to travel to farms to deworm cows, have to take smartphones to record themselves at work and upload geotagged self-portraits to an official website. This makes it possible to check that they are actually turning up for work. They are also required to record the phone numbers of farmers they visit, some of whom are randomly called afterwards to be asked if the service was up to scratch.
• Making random calls to users of public services—including the police, health services and administrative services such as registering property—to inquire about the quality of service and whether they were asked to pay a bribe. [No-fault provision to bribery reporters with petty crimes or wrongdoings should be established so that they won't be prosecuted to report police wrongdoings]

Here is something simple everyone in the government should do - spend the last 15 minutes everyday to summarize daily work on a personal blog. The blogs don't have to be public, but peers should be able to read each others' to create healthy competition. What seems to be a 15-min non-productive work will actually increase the overall productivity. This approach has been working pretty well in my case managing a handful of 19-20 year old kids (undergraduate researchers, formally).

Reducing Crime

I was in Taiwan for a month or so last year for on-site HSR construction visits in preparation for a new class I was developing. I found out that all cars I rode were equipped with this mounted video camera (I got mine for about RM100):

Their motivation was to protect them from insurance claims during accidents. I thought, hey this could also be used to deter crimes and bad behaviors in Malaysia. Here is my pitch (feel free to run with it to start your next business - selling car video cams):

Smart technologies, specifically, cars with dashboard-mounted video cameras, smartphone app and a website can be used to record and report street crimes, traffic violations, littering and other public nuisances. Captured and submitted video proofs can be evaluated for cash rewards to motivate public involvement in ensuring a safe environment in major cities in Malaysia. 

This initiative is a drastic measure to reduce crimes and problems like snatch theft, robbery, hit-and-run, driving under the influence (alcohols or drugs), etc. in major cities in Malaysia. Everyone will think twice before doing anything wrong in public for the fear of getting caught red-handed by any passing-by car or people with smartphones. This is the key advantage over the common approach to install CCTV cameras at strategic locations in some major cities worldwide to deter crimes. 

A one-year trial phase in Klang Valley areas could involve developments of the app and website, a distribution of a few thousand cameras, and a multimedia public campaign, for an initial cost of between RM2.5 to 3 million. The success of this initiative could support the “packaging” of the whole initiative in the future to be sold as a made-in-Malaysia intellectual business product to other countries or major cities around the world.