tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-111666772024-02-20T15:04:54.968-08:00THE PAPERS OF AZLY RAHMANA collection of research papers, incidental pieces, and thoughts in the fields of Political Science, Philosophy, Education, and Cultural Studies written at Columbia University, New York City, Athens, Ohio, Universiti Utara Malaysia, and for my column ILLUMINATIONS in Malaysiakini http://www.malaysiakini.com.Dr. AZLY RAHMANhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07437908281114330911noreply@blogger.comBlogger48125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11166677.post-1134255740465422012005-12-10T14:53:00.000-08:002006-10-04T18:02:53.603-07:0047] Review of Peter McLaren's Revolutionary Multiculturalism<span style="color: rgb(51, 102, 255);"><strong>Revolutionary Multiculturalism: Pedagogies of Dissent for the New Millennium
</strong></span>
Peter McLaren, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1997. pp. 306
Azly Rahman,
Columbia University New York, New York.
Reading Peter McLaren’s passionate and insightful analysis of the current state of educational praxis one cannot escape from images of postmodernity as a backdrop of anomalies in the world we are in as the new millenium approaches. The domino-like collapses of the financial markets of the world beginning in Thailand in July 1997, nuclear tests in India and Pakistan, the revolution which brought Indonesian President Suharto down after 32 years of rule, hunger and starvation in North Korea, and the continuing intensified debates on race matters in America--- all these represent the chaos in the global economic order McLaren’s critical pedagogy can be relevant to those wishing to contextualize their understanding of political economy of education.
McLaren’s Revolutionary Multiculturalism: Pedagogies of Dissent for the New Millineum, albeit with its analytical flaws, is a passionate piece of work highly-charged with honesty in the manner McLaren positions his ideological standpoint throughout. For a relatively slender volume of work on educational theorizing, Revolutionary Multiculturalism contains the essential ingredients of educational and social analysis which dissect capitalism from its transnational operating table right through the ideology of consumerism which pervades the hip hop culture and the issue of whiteness in American race relations.
Including its introductory and epilogue sections, the book is divided into 10 chapters with several of them written in cooperation with critical theorist such as Henry Giroux , Zeus Leornado, and Kris Gutierrez. In chapter 7, an interview with McLaren provides the reader with a valuable understanding of the ideological standpoint the author bases his work on; one in which McLaren narrates his development as a critical pedagogue and differentiates his commitment for struggle with those from the camp of postmodernism.
If his passionate language ala’ Allen Ginsburg’s in the classic Sixties Beat-generation poems of “Howl” and “The Velocity of Money” and his unwavering rhetoric in the Freirian tradition throughout are not enough in demonstrating his honest alignment with Latin American Marxist discourse, McLaren laced his book with, among others a picture of him delivering a speech in honor of Che Guevara against a huge poster of the Cuban revolutionary leader as backdrop (p. 107).
McLaren’s Revolutionary Multiculturalism is a continuing legacy of the work of educators trained and committed to the cause of liberatory struggle against the dehumanizing tendencies of transcultural capitalism with its ideological state apparatuses such as the schooling system, the media and the politics of multiculturalism.
McLaren’s is essentially a continuation of the dialogue of Paulo Freire, thrusted in its analytical context into the world of global capitalism and its interlocking web of domination the world over and within the United States. The critical educator’s ideological standpoint is made evident at the beginning part of the book in which McLaren situates his work within the larger framework of socialism and aligning it with theorists within that paradigm:
<em>Critical pedagogy, in this sense, remains committed to the practical realization of self-determination and creativity on a collective social scale. When I think of critical pedagogy as a practice of liberation, I think not only of Paulo Freire, Augustus Boal, Rosa Luxemburg, Judi Borri, Che Guevara, and Malcolm X, for example, but also of Emilio Zapata… Like Zapata, critical educators need to wage nothing less than war in the interest of the sacredness of human life, collective dignity for the wretched of the earth, and the right to live in peace and harmony (p. 13).
</em>
It is within those standpoint and the honesty of linking his work with leaders and theorists of the Freirian tradition that McLaren’s work is worthy of attention.
What is impressive about McLaren’s Revolutionary Multiculturalism is its fresh call for educators to redefine the term “multiculturalism.” It questions the fundamental pedagogical belief by educators, particularly those from North America, in looking at America as a “melting pot” unto which schooling and the curriculum must address and celebrate of its cultural differences without being aware of the political economic nature of schooling in America.
McLaren believes that such multiculturalist thinking is not only reductionistic and avoids the issue of class struggle but also dangerous to the critical pedagogist’s struggle to dismantle political, economic, and social structures which are anathema to the true meaning of human liberation.
Only through the engaging in dialogue which demystify power and language of the power elite, deconstructing our understanding of race relations into one which includes class, race and gender, and reconstructing our hope and struggles for a transformation of the transnational and local capitalist order, can we realize the true meaning of praxis in the revolutionary sense of the word.
McLaren attacks neo-liberalism of American democracy as “a hidden service of capital accumulation, often [reconfirming] the racist stereotypes already prescribed by Euro-American nationalist myths of supremacy … (p.8). Thus, chapter after chapter, McLaren provides the context of objectivity, which needed to be subjectivized and a newer understanding to emerge. Some highlights from McLaren’s work need to be mentioned.
In Chapter 1 entitled “Writing from the Margins: Geographies of Identity, Pedagogy, and Power,” written with critical theorist Henry Giroux, the authors draw attention to the kind of language needed for educator-activists to analyze power and domination in order that existing realities be understood and transformed. They claimed that “most educational theorists have been so caught up in describing the reality of existing schools that they have failed to take up the question of what it is that schools should be.” (p.19).
Not only educators, they write, need to be equipped with the language of critical pedagogy which contains moral, ethical, and visioning frame of reference in their struggle for liberation but students need also be provided with such linguistic tools to “assume a critical distance from their more familiar subject distance.” (p.37). Only through the grasping of such analytical skills can both educators and students in the Freirian tradition, understand what oppression means and how they can work collectively across cultures towards a just and equitable educational, political, economic, and cultural transformation.
In Chapter 2, “Liberatory Politics and Higher Education: A Freirian Perspective,” which read like an essay in honor of the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, McLaren provides a postmodern analysis of capitalism as it relates to the need for educators in higher education to pay attention to the Freirian perspective of critical pedagogy. McLaren notes that in the Freirian sense, “the university is invited to become truly plural and dialogical, a place where students are not only taught not only to read texts but to understand contexts.” (p.69).
It is through the Freirian approach, McLaren asserts that the meaning of individuals as makers of history can be realized to counter the dehumanizing effect of capitalism in its attempt to relegate individuals as objects of history, particularly in “U.S. culture in which history has been effectively expelled from the formation of meaning and hope.” (p.73)
In Chapter 3, “The Ethnographer as Postmodern Flaneur: Critical Reflexivity and Posthybridity as Narrative Engagement,” McLaren described the difficulty of the urban ethnographer’s situating of his/her existence; as one attempting to critically analyze society in a postmodern setting he/she is also inescapably in. The postmodern flaneur as one whom has to mediate the tension between being a detached observer and one drowned in the sea of images, signs, and symbols within what is to be observed, must become a critical theorist in order to effectively do reflective sociology.
Drawing heavily upon Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of reflective sociology and illustrating the chapter with excerpts from his flaneuriel notes, McLaren called upon the need for the urban ethnographer to recognize the importance of emancipatory possibilities in one’s nature of work. “Ethnography as postmodern flanerie need to be conjugated with the contingency of historical struggle in terms of establishing a posthybrid dialogism.” (p.94).
Throughout other chapters in Revolutionary Multiculturalism, the reader can expect McLaren and his co-authors’ analysis of language, power, and pedagogy in issues such as media control over the postmodern mind, hip-hop music and global politics. In each, the ideology to be scrutinized is described in language of postmodernity, as though McLaren is illustrating that the illusionary world of postmodernism must be demystified via explanations of its inner linguistic logic, using its own language---all these done in order for the claim for the superiority of Freirian critical pedagogy be made loud and clear.
Thus, when talking about gangsta pedagogy in “Gangsta Pedagogy and Ghettocentricity: The Hip Hop Nation as Counter Public Sphere,” for example, McLaren writes like an insider well-versed in the development of this brand of popular culture, only in the end, to demystify its creativeness as another attempt by capitalism to capitalize on the expression of oppression among the African-American and Latino community. Illustrative of McLaren’s consistency in providing a final analysis, he writes of the emerging and proliferating genre of music:
<em>Gangsta rap’s relation to the corporate marketplace, its potential
for expropriation, and its reproduction of ideologies historically
necessary to commodity exchange – such as patriarchal ones – is
an important issue that needs to be addressed. In other words, gangsta
rap needs to be viewed not only as an ideological formation, cultural
signifier, or performative spectacle, but also as a product of historical
and social relations. (p.179)</em>
Within such a framework of critical analysis, the author skillfully uses language of sophistication characteristic of many writing in the postmodern genre only to eventually return to a call far action insistently based upon the neo-Marxist framework. The power and the vigor of his oftentimes-long sentences are interspersed with first person narratives of his experiences, which he relates to the subject matter analyzed.
It is within this stream of consciousness point of view and the chanting effect of his expose that Peter McLaren’s perspective is made constantly fresh in the reader’s mind and his arguments difficult to counter. One can almost see Freire alive in these powerful chapters and given doses of vitality by this popular Canadian-born, Los Angeles-based professor of Education and Information Studies at University of California, Los Angeles.
But it is an irony that one needs to read McLaren back to back, dialogue with him in-between the pages, and let the images of dissent and call to a revolution be skillfully made alive through the written word, in order to locate counter-arguments to his claims. To the critical reader, McLaren’s Revolutionary Multiculturalism’s strength can also be its weakness. Particularly significant is his overstated ideological standpoint, which sees the sorry state of society and education purely within his neo-Marxist bird’s-eye view.
He attempts to mesmerize readers into believing that there are no significant effort made by grassroot movements, social activist groups, educators for social consciousness or even the struggling day to day teachers who are making significant changes, albeit incremental perhaps, to make the lives of citizens and school children alike happier, more creative, and critical.
McLaren’s analysis is purely sociological hovering within the realm of theory attempting to grab the attention of policy makers in the social, educational and political spheres. He locates himself from the beginning, strategically from a new-Marxist paradigm, analyzes society and policies within this narrow perspectives and offer solutions which are ideologically apt to the framework he uses.
McLaren, towards the end of the book, advocates “for the development of the ethical self as a way of living within and challenging the historical capitalism” (p. 284) From what spiritual-metaphysical or ethical platform which can unite multiculturalists is not exactly clear in McLaren’s advocacy. McLaren repeatedly made the call as such in calling upon us to “unthink whiteness.” His call is even louder when his advocacy is laced with language of postmodernism epitomized perhaps in a passage as such:
<em>What I am advocating, dear sisters and brothers in struggle, is a postcolonial multiculturalism that moves beyond the ludic, metrocentric focus on identities as hybrid and hypernated assemblages of subjectivity that exist alongside or outside of the larger social totality (p. 287</em>)
What these terms mean, seemingly circular in their usage, and how one can comprehend a situation wherein society can levitate beyond such a condition are not entirely clear. Perhaps this can be possible in a scenario wherein society can be freeze-framed and the ethical segment of it extracted out of the ludic-metrocentric identitied habitat.
Clear to McLaren’s understanding as a sociologist presumably, this is not entirely probable given the fact that society is a complex, intriguing and ever-changing amalgam of peoples with values shifting, pragmatism and relativism reigning, and feeling and emotions dictating. As such, the only permanent thing is change and the most applicable theory thusfar to analyze society is perhaps via Complexity or Chaos theory!
Thus, McLaren’s writing, as well as those who he collaborated with is somewhat weakened by the very framework he hoped to strengthen his sweeping analysis with; a framework weaved out of the fragile, ideologically-laden, and textualized semantic glitters of postmodern language.
Though the author’s critical analysis is brilliant throughout, his is short of providing a scenario wherein a society of revolutionary multiculturalist has triumphed in destroying the old republic and what emerged out of the despotic is, one ethical and moral and constantly aware of another wave of transnational capitalistic world order. What would a society of the next millenium look like? The providing of such a scenario is what makes Revolutionary Multiculturalism yet another well-trumpeted rhetoric of post-Marxism attempting to subvert post-modernism.
Another fundamental anti-climax of McLaren’s grandiose staging up of such a frame of social analysis is perhaps, the absence of political dimension in his writing. Though his calls for action are indeed political as it relates to the subverting of grand narrative such as neo-liberal whiteness in social psyche and the use of multiculturalists-of-the-world-unite-and-revolt slogan, he failed to link his advocacy to political or non-governmental organizations progressive enough to carry the banner of revolution to its final victory in Washington.
One may ask of the value of such revolutionary trumpeting without a concerted effort to harness the voices of the revolutionary multiculturalists into political grandiose carries forth by political parties. Virtually non-existent is this aspect of McLaren’s campaign. To rally against an elusive oppressor such as transnational capitalism and to create a new order in America is virtually problematic, unlike perhaps in the case of revolutionary multiculturalist rallying against the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somozo in the late 1970s.
In the former, the enemy is invisible yet pervasive, whereas in the latter, it is visible and exclusive! Perhaps McLaren conveniently applied the scenario of Latin American politics to that in North America, paradigmed his revolutionary analysis as such, and ended up making an overglossing of solutions to the problems he found. Herein Complexity theory can be of value in framing the issue of multiculturalism in the manner McLaren sees it.
Aside from the contradictions in the analytical framework presented in McLaren’s work, Revolutionary Multiculturalism must still be read in its entirety and the powerful strands of the author’s argument to be put to use. Although the idea of multiculturalism’s revolutionary streaks is not revolutionary at all as they are inherent in each culture and need not necessarily be yanked out of the masses, the freshness of the Freirian tradition McLaren attempt to maintain must be applauded.
What is novel and of commendable sociological analytical value is the postmodernist aspect of McLaren’s neo-Marxism. Like many philosophical, metaphysical, and ethical systems in every culture which has responded to changes brought about by maturing of the capitalist ethos, the neo-Marxism according to Peter McLaren and his band of critical pedagogues has also responded brilliantly to such maturity.
It is a jazz ensemble in a orchestra conducted by Leonard Bernstein, an Indonesian gamelan troupe playing in a Viennese concert hall, and a hip hop group performing at the steps of the Lincoln Performing Arts Center in New York.
And in these, the voices of the subaltern growing louder, with spectators and onlookers beginning to appreciate the beauty of the message conveyed. In corporate transnational America, the tune played by Freire and his band continue to become more refined, sophisticated and gradually permeated into the system of thoughts of multiculturalists; and Peter McLaren’s Revolutionary Multiculturalism, in the next millenium, may become a magnum opus for critical pedagogists all the more ready to sing tunes of dissent.
As the author writes in the epilogue:
<em>… there is a spirit in the making that refuses to succumb to the lure of nationalism, a spirit that is rising up like a serpent of fire. It is a spirit that refuses to die. The world has seen this spirit before. And capitalism’s pinstripe gangsters would do well to tremble before its humble grander… (p. 301)
</em>
And it is that spirit Peter McLaren believes the next millenium will dwell in!
************Dr. AZLY RAHMANhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07437908281114330911noreply@blogger.com104tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11166677.post-1134167623760707612005-12-09T14:32:00.000-08:002005-12-09T19:58:22.010-08:0046] Narratives on Schooling in Albania<strong><span style="color:#3333ff;">“Learning as a ‘Ping Pong’ Game: </span></strong>
<strong><span style="color:#3333ff;">Narratives on Schooling in Albania using the Clinical Interview Method”</span></strong>
by Azly Rahman
Coumbia University
<strong>Goal of the Interview</strong>
Drawing partly from the research framework presented by Collingforth on the purpose of schooling in Cullingford (1991) and largely from Herbert Ginsburg’s framework for clinical interview for understanding cognitive development, the goal of the interview for this project is as follow:i) to collect qualitative data, i.e. in the form of interview responses on the most important thing learned in school that prepared the respondent with the work she has done and currently doingii) to collect data on how the respondent retrospectively perceived schooling and the skills taught in Albania, only several years ago transited from a communist political rule to one based upon democratic principleiii) to gain experience in conducting a clinical interview and writing up the report.
Specifically the major questions asked in this interview are as follow:
i) What is the most important thing you learned in school that prepared you for the work you do?
ii) Are there important things you feel you should have learned in school, that you were not taught?
iii) Are there important things in school that you wished you paid more attention to use for your future work?
<strong>Background Information on Subject</strong>
K is a Fulbright Masters student in the Teaching of English to speakers of Other Language Program (TESOL) at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York. She is 29 years old (born 1969) and was born in Tirana, the capital city of Albania. Her father is a qualified electrician (called a “worker” in the Communist system) and received his education only up to Grade 8. Her mother is an office worker and received her education up to a baccalaureate (2-year) level at one of the Albanian universities.
K graduated from an Albanian University with a degree in TESOL and then worked as an English teacher for seven years and at different ages: from five year-olds to fifty-year-olds. She has also worked as an independent interpreter or translator with The Institute for Pedagogical Research in Tirana and has also co-trained with other researchers in the teaching of English. She secured a Fulbright scholarship to study at Teachers College, Columbia University and is currently a second semester student in the program.
<strong>Testing Condition and Subject’s Response</strong>
The one-hour interview was conducted on Saturday April 11th. 1998 at 6:30 p.m. in the Ground Floor Lobby of the Main Hall at Teachers College. We were seated on the leather sofa and since it was a weekend there were not many people using the facility. The testing condition was thus a comfortable and conversational one because of the acquaintance I have established with the respondent.We talked about academic life in general before
I started switching on the SONY microcassette place on a small table in between us. Mirela was relaxed and took the session as a dialogue between friends. The interview protocol I had prepared was on the table and throughout the interview I managed to ask the key questions in the most natural manner since I have had quite a wide experience in conducting open ended interviews and that the questions to be asked were relatively few.
K responded to the question very well since the questions leading to the key ones gave her the necessary sensitization to the dependent variables being tested for. In other words, she had enough time and opportunities to talk about her schooling from the elementary to the post-secondary level. Her answers were rich and in-depth, given in good narrative forms with minimum interruptions from me.
She spoke in a relaxed, confident and clearly understood manner occasionally laughing at some of her experiences in her Albanian school.The recording session ran for an hour but the conversation continued another hour, as I would say that K had more to talk about how schooling and working in a Communist state was.
We talked about the condition of work, teacher pay and the problems associated with Albania’s transition to democratic political governance.
<strong>Preliminary Protocol</strong>
The nature of questions asked in the one-hour structured open-ended interview is as follow:
i) How’s your semester (at TC) been?
ii) Can you tell me a bit about your background; your early education, you parents’ education, and your schooling experience before coming to TC?
iii) What did you do after you graduated from college in Albania?
iv) What is the most important thing you learned in school that prepared you for the work you do?
v) Are there important things you feel you should have learned in school that you were not taught?
vi) Are there important things that you wished you paid more attention to use for you future work?
<strong>Findings and Interpretations</strong>
K's responses to the first major question ‘What is the most important thing that you learned in school that prepared you for the work you do?’ revealed that being ‘systematic’ or consistent in her studying as well as being very good in the English language which gave her the advantage over her peers in the very selective, demanding and meritocratic schooling system in Albania.
To quote her response on being systematic:
<em>.. uhm as a person perhaps I.. something I learned.. if you were not.. you could not be successful unless you were systematic and working hard… it was as a ‘morale’.. in terms of my academic education perhaps.. I’d say that.. uh… like English worked for me because it was my major in both high school and university.</em>
Being systematic and good in the English language, for the respondent is a pre requisite for gaining a place in the university and success in life is measured by one getting a college education. She talked about friends who were “not consistent” and those who cheat in exams:
<em>… studying on a regular basis… say, everyday consistently perhaps… this is what I mean by systematic… uh… I remember friends of mine who would even cheatShe continued to narrate the consequence of not being consistent in studying with not being able to “make it in life” by getting a university education.</em>
Quoting the case of her friends:
<em>.. say if they got a grade one time [through cheating].. next time they would not [ ] they would not study for the next lesson.. and they were… coz’ there were no consistency in their.. uh.. studying and reading.. which of course created sort of gap in their knowledge and it was even difficult for them to make up for that thing in their future… if you want to go to university after graduation you have sort of “face the life” [made it in life]… because you’ve find a job which was.. well paid… and well paid would be about 6.50 dollars.. no, not 650 not six hundred fifty cents a months.. uh.. that’s what teachers are.. uh [paid].. in a month.</em>
Thus it can be interpreted that for K, her consistency and her good command of the English language worked well for her in the sense that they prepared her to become a university graduate, an English teacher, an interpreter and consequently secured her the prestigious Fulbright scholarship for graduate study at TC, Columbia.Her response to the question ‘Are there important things that you feel you should have learned in school, that you were not taught?’ revealed interesting information about the interconnectedness of learning is approached in her Albanian schooling experience.
K first talked about how ‘reading for understanding’ is not in the pedagogical vocabulary and that rote-memorization or “parroting” is the dominant methodological approach. This training created difficulties for her at Teachers College:
<em>I remember when I first came to TC how much I struggled… uh.. and still remembered from our papers [laugh].. but anyway.. uh.. with my readings and writings.. and these are the things actually that I’m not taught, in my.. in our education system.. with reading I mean comprehensive reading [reading for understanding].. uh.. because we do not write papers.. or reflections.. or responses to what we read.. uhm… this is sort of uh… uh… not exactly parroting perhaps but sort of much of uh… memorization.</em>
As a consequence of her thinking that readings are to be memorized, she related how during her first semester at TC she almost had a nervous breakdown:
<em>I remember the first time I was trying to.. I would [ ] to stop and then I said ‘well… how can I memorize everything in here?” I’m going to forget everything… because there was like.. a minimum could be seventy pages a day.. so… how would I finish everything we read and then also memorize them?Mirela used an interesting expression to describe what she went through in learning as a ‘memorizing enterprise’:.. this is how school is in Albania.. like learn and memorize.. I’ve used a very funny expression.. It’s just like playing ping pong… like… the teacher says something.. the student receives it and tells it back… so it’s really like a ping pong [game].</em>
Another aspect of learning she felt she should have learned was the interconnectedness of reading, writing and relating both to one’s personal experience.
<em>.. so these are the things [relating reading, writing to personal experience] that I really will… have appreciated if I have learned.. or I have felt more comfortable or find it more easier when I came to the United States… so doing comprehension reading or stretching beyond what you read, thinking metaphorically.. or… uh… critiquing.. and something which I didn’t learn at school was putting personal experience and feelings to.. everyone has his own understanding of the reading he or she does.. so it makes meaning when it relates to that person some way or another…</em>
Thus, K felt that she should have been taught how reading and writing relate to personal experience instead of the pedagogical approach being one which is predominantly of rote-memorization and disconnectedness of what is read to real-life experiences.
As to the third question ‘Are there important things in school that you wished you paid more attention to use for your future work?,K could not find ways to answer it as she insisted that she has paid attention to them.
She explained that she was a good student and considered one who studied hare enough to be able to graduate from high school, college, gotten a good job and then secured herself the Fulbright scholarship for a Masters program in TESOL.
<strong>Discussion</strong>
To a large extent this clinical interview achieved its objectives in that data generated gave me the insight into the main research questions. It also helps achieve the following:
i) It helps me understand the value of the clinical interview as a powerful research methodology in ‘entering a person’s mind’ as importantly guided by Ginsburg (1997) as well as relate Piagetan approach to understanding cognitive development.
The hour-long interview with Mirela has furthered my interest into researching not only what happened in the schooling of a child of a Communist system but also into looking at potential research areas such as the meaningfulness of schooling in capitalist America, Islamic republic of Iran, Iraq, Israel or any Third World countries released from the shackles of colonialism. Not only one can look at what went on in the process of indoctrination but also the relationship between school, curricular content, and their relationship with political and economic socialization – all these can be potentially fertile areas of investigation.
ii) K’s retrospective insight into what went on in her schooling can be further understood by conducting more interviews which would generate data on other areas such as the ‘paradigmatic shift’ in her thinking after having been exposed to ideologies different from Communism.iii) Albania at present continues to be in turmoil with the recent massacre of ethnic Albanians in Kosova.
My respondent would perhaps be a valuable source of information on what education and nation building mean in a nation-state undergoing a difficult transition.
<strong>Self Criticism</strong>
I have chosen to a less challenging subject for this clinical interview exercise as compared to for example an Albanian child. K’s fluency in the English language and well-articulated answers to my main research question has made this exercise an exciting and valuable one.
Since I have had a valuable enough exposure to open-ended interviewing, especially in my study of 30 top Malaysian Chief Executive Officers conducted to find out about their Management Philosophy (Research done 1992-94) and one as recent as in November 1997 on narratives on schooling for creative and critical consciousness, my session with the Albanian respondent was largely a success.
I followed closely Ginsburg’s (1997) guidelines to ensure that the respondent’s narratives would flow smoothly. Criticisms if any would be that more should be probed on specific teaching strategies used in a Communist state.
In short, ‘in what ways are thinking encouraged? In what ways they are not?’ would be a good question to be explored, should time had permitted. Nonetheless, throughout the interview, the respondent perhaps spoke 90% of the time thus giving me enough information needed for the few main questions.
Conclusion
In this brief but valuable exercise, important insights on one’s schooling related retrospectively have been gathered. In this case it is the experience of one schooled in a once Communist state. The clinical interview method proved to be a valuable tool for my understanding of such experience.
It has provided me the interest to explore further in depth similar fertile areas of research in the field of schooling, and learning, and indoctrination.
<strong>Bibliography</strong>
Cullingford, C. (1991). The inner world of the school: Children’s ideas about school.London:Cassell. Chapters 8 and 10.
Ginsburg, H.P. (1997). Entering the child’s mind: The clinical interview in psychological research and practice. New York:Cambridge University PressDr. AZLY RAHMANhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07437908281114330911noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11166677.post-1133982938215908962005-12-07T11:14:00.000-08:002006-02-05T20:17:35.246-08:0045] Memo to a Malaysian Minister of Education<span style="color:#3366ff;"><strong>MEMORANDUM ON MALAYSIAN “SMART SCHOOLS”
To: The Malaysian Minister of Education
From: Azly Abdul Rahman </strong></span>
<span style="color:#3366ff;"><strong>Center for Digital Democracy
New York, New York
.
Date: November 23, 1998</strong></span>
<strong>Subject: On Malaysia’s “Smart Schools” Initiative and
the Question of Digital Divide: Some Policy Recommendations</strong>
<strong>Rationale</strong>
Writing from the perspective of the Chief Investigator of the Center for Digital Democracy, the purpose of this brief news is to make some key policy recommendations on the Malaysian Ministry of Education’s megatransformation efforts in creating “Smart Schools” out of the 10,000 Malaysian public secondary schools by the year 2010. This memo will focus on the following areas:
i. within the perspective of philosophical and pedagogical considerations in providing ‘basic quality education in the domain of digital literacy’, it will discuss areas the Ministry should skillfully address in providing equity and universal access to such education to the poor and the disadvantaged in Malaysia’s move towards such second order changes involving initiatives to democratize technological learning and teaching.,
ii. within the perspective of policy implementation, deriving from the Ministry’s blueprint for the Smart School initiative, this memo will highlight the dimensions and directions of procedural changes which needs to be undertaken in order for the crucial question will mean the closing of the gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots” in Malaysia’s plunge into the Information Age.
Lessons learned from programs of participatory action in basic quality education from developed and developing countries will be included as anecdotes of best practice in democratized learning initiatives in Malaysia’s plan for such a quantum leap in educating its citizenry for the Information Age.
<strong>Introduction</strong>
The Center for Digital Democracy find it admirable that Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s Vision 2020 and Malaysia’s Multimedia Super Corridor Project present a grand designed for the nation’s more towards a social transformation based upon the premise that the nation will continue to progress via full scale initiation, implementation, and institutionalization of cybertechnology in virtually all spheres of living – commerce, administration, health, and education.
As one of the flagship applications of the MSC project, Smart Schools will be a feature of the initiative attempted in Malaysia program to socially reproduced its citizenry. In our analysis, the idea of “wiring” up of the Malaysian schools can be summarized by the Ministry’s communique which states:
By the year 2010, all the approximately ten thousand schools will be Smart
Schools. In these schools, learning will be self-directed, individually-paced,
continuous and reflective. This will be made possible through the provision
of multimedia technology and world-wide networking. (p.1)
The plan for such a purposeful change is thus to utilize computer-mediated learning technologies particularly the Internet and the World-Wide web so that the national agenda of creating a “cyber society” will be realized by a targeted metaphorical date of 2020.
Echoing Sarason (1996) on the need to look at changes in the school system as derived from inside and outside the schools (p.12), Fullan and Steigelbauer’s notion of politically and educationally- motivated innovation (p.27), the case of the initiated “smart school concept can be said to be derived not only out of “first order analysis”, but particularly apparent and dominant out of “second order” dictates --- out of political economic perception of what constitutes progress and how education must respond to them. As the “smart school” concept relates to this second order changes, the Ministry of Education (1997) notes that:
<em>Malaysia needs to make the critical transition from an industrial economy to a leader in
the Information Age. In order to make this vision a reality, Malaysia needs to make a
fundamental shift towards a more technologically literate, thinking workforce, able to perform in a global work environment and use the tools available in the Information Age. To make this shift, the education system must undergo a radical transformation (p.1)
</em>
The Miinistry of Education announced that the first Smart School is being built with a cost of Malaysian Ringgit 144.5 million of which, aside from it being “wired”. Will also be equipped with a hostel for 800 students, an Olympic-size swimming pool, a hockey pitch, a hall and other facilities (Business Times, 1996, p.3).
It is also said that the school will start operating in January 1999 and eventually all Malaysian schools will be operating based upon this concept.
Having stated the philosophical, pedagogical and policy domains of Malaysia’s “Smart Schools” project, we now provide some of our research insights into the question of equity and universal access.
<strong>Capacity building and the Role of the Ministry</strong>
We believe that the Ministry as a “top-down” reformer can best play the role of capacity builder not only in generating the awareness of the teachers, students and parents of the importance of making technological access universal but also in making aware the idea that constructivist learning and technology can be a powerful perspective in providing inroads to basic quality education. At the heart of this preposition is the question of the degree of decentralization involved. We analyzed some best practice case studies in this context.
Close to home, the Thai experience provides insights into how that state can mediate potential conflicts in its policies to initiate capacity building and resource allocation in its education reform at the primary education level. Schwille and Wheeler’s (1992) study of the variable role of the state in education suggest that state initiative must be let to develop as a multi-level strategic initiatives within the centralized-decentralized man.
In Malaysia, whilst the Ministry has provided that blueprint for such a purposeful change, it must now generate a debate and brainstorming sessions of various levels of implementation so that capacity building can be generated at the grassroots level.
Related to the lesson of the Thai experience, we share Mc Ginn’s (1994) idea that whilst the state has done the job of outlining the mission, vision and operating principles of reform, democracy then entails multilevel participatory efforts in translating such strategic plan. Malaysia’s Smart Schools, we suggest, must be owned by those who will translate the vision into a reality wherein the wired-up schools must first and foremost and primarily benefit the poor and the disadvantaged. The Center for Digital Democracy in this recommendation for such equity and universal access dimension of reform, cannot compromise in its principles of suggesting for such policy directions.
Models of progressive movements striving towards providing such egalitarian awareness are growing albeit their work not specifically deal with “wiring up” educational systems. We suggest the Ministry to look closely at and to understudy initiatives such as Professor Henry Levin’s the Accelerated Schools Project based in Stanford, Coalition or Essential Schools based in New York, The Swadhaya Movement in South Asia, and perhaps, The World Bank “renewed initiatives” in providing funds for developing countries to improve its basic education.
These models can become documents of best practice management in liberatory education for Malaysia’s dealing with the question of digital divide. Be they directly related to progressive movements at the school level or to broad-based policies of grassroots capacity building in general, they can provide insights into the philosophical and pedagogical dimensions of how democratic changes in school reform ought to take place.
The Center of Digital Divide thus believes that the Malaysian Smart School Initiative should not merely showcase an RM 144.5 million “children of the elite” populated wired up school but must, in its planning, showcase how schools in the most impoverished areas must be made to benefit.
<strong>Some Recommendations</strong>
Malaysia is borrowing the discourse from educational reform currently sweeping the United States. President William Clinton’s Goals 2000: Developing America’s Talent highlights, among others the creation of a technologically literate society. The Telecommunications Act of ---- provides the so-called “e-Rate” in which corporations and state boards of education must work hand in hand in realizing the meaning of universal access to technology in the classroom. This entails that upto 90 percent of funding for wiring up schools must go to the poorest of schools computed by the percentage of those receiving free lunch. We believe that Malaysia’s Smart School Initiative can adopt the following framework of egalitarian intitiatives in that:
i. corporations collaborate with state departments of education to initiate
grassroots reform in providing training to teachers and students , hardware
and software to school districts in accordance with the level of socio-economic
levels of the children attending.,
ii. the Ministry creates state-level volunteer groups consisting of professional
from the private and public sector which will work as agents of change in
digital democracy for the purpose of speeding up reform efforts outlined by the
Smart Schools project.,
iii. the Ministry moves aggressively in securing funding from international
agencies such as The World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and other
philanthrophic foundations, to be channeled to districts for smart schools projects.,
iv. faculties of education must orient their research towards exploring the meaning of
“appropriate technology, available resources” in the use of educational technology
so that the hype embedded in the rhetoric of technological change and determinism
cannot easily translate into policies which will further divide the “digital haves and
the have-nots”.
v. scholars and researchers in the field of technological change in education
ought to heighten their research efforts and undertaking towards institutionalizing
models of culturally-relevant, dependency-free, and grassroots-approached reform
so that ultimately Malaysia’s Multimedia Super Corridor can become a model of
cybernational framework of strategic planning able to achieve its autonomy as an
independent cybernation liberated from the shackles of post-colonial dominations.
<strong>Conclusion
</strong>
By way of concluding, The Center for Digital Democracy in its analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats related to the Smart Schools project attempt to offer insight into the question who ought to benefit. Since this mega project involving billions of ringgit of public investment is still at its early implementation stage, it is hoped that such issues urgent to the discussion s on social change – equity, democratic learning and decision-making, economic and social justice, etc. – must be brought into the big picture.
A nation ruled by technocrats in which its citizenry is in the process of being socially, economically, and politically reproduced to be integrated in the “professional and corporate-like” machinery of the international technological-based capitalist system must stop to ponder and reflect upon its policies concerning universal access and distributive justice at critical junctures.
In relation to above, the task ahead for the Ministry is certainly a daunting one. This memo signifies certainly the beginning of a dialogue between the Center for Digital Democracy and The Malaysian Ministry of Education to further explore the philosophical, pedagogical, economic, and management dimension of the reform movement initiated via The Smart Schools Project.
The discussions ahead will leave a great deal of space for all those involved to explore creatively, critically, ethically, and futuristically what can be possibly implemented to avoid the pitfalls of nations undergoing what we call “cybernetic revolutions”. The United States as an example of an advanced capitalist society struggling with the isssue of digital haves and have-nots can certainly provide us with an example of “contested reform” Malaysia must certainly analyze.
The Center for Digital Democracy believes that if technology and the new media must liberate us from mundaneness, issues such as democratization, universal access, and humanistic approach to its use must be made profound.
We look forward to further fruitful dialogues.Dr. AZLY RAHMANhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07437908281114330911noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11166677.post-1133982746963832602005-12-07T11:10:00.000-08:002006-02-05T20:16:25.416-08:0044] Postmodernism, Education, and National Development<span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; COLOR: rgb(51,102,255)">Education, Human Capital Revolution and Some Thoughts on the Postmodernity of National Educational Development</span>
by Azly Rahman
Columbia University
<strong>Introduction</strong>
In this brief essay, I shall attempt to answer questions pertaining to the relationship between education an economic development within the context of international education development. This complex task will be aided by the following analytical foci:
i) within a historical context and paradigm, what does the literature summarizes as the key themes in the neo-classical/structural/functionalist point of view on education for economic development?,
ii) what literature summarizes the contending viewpoints to such a view paradigmed within the neo-Marxist/conflict perspective?,
iii) what literature illustrate a shift beyond looking at the structural functionalist and conflict paradigms which has arisen out of postmodernist/contemporary perspectives?
Whilst the three subcategories of the main question will attempt to form the first part, my own experience and knowledge regarding education and economic development will form the second and concluding part of this brief essay.
<strong>Education, Economic Development and Structural Functionalism </strong>
<strong>
</strong>Whilst, within a historical context, economic development and education as corollaries to social reproduction may have its roots in the Utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, the body of literature which has evolved particularly in the middle of this century can best be termed as ‘structural functionalism.’
In it, the role of the State is key to economic growth in that the issues of economic growth with equity is central. Economic development of a nation is contingent upon investment in human capital (Schultz, 1971) in that the more a nation invests in human beings through educating its populace, the more productive it will become when a positive growth will entail higher earnings for those educated and contribute to a competitive labor market.
Pscharapolous (1994) for example researched on the rate of return in investment through education in which a nation will benefit both through private investment to the individual as well as social investment.
Lewis (1965) attempted to answer the question of the desirability of economic growth and concluded that excesses of modernization and individualism aside, there are intrinsic and extrinsic benefits of growth, which must be pursued albeit a nation’s undergoing of painful transitionary stages.
One may recall Rostow’s (1973) transition stages in the form of the five stages of growth by which any society undergoing ‘progress’ must pass through. Economic development within the neo classical/structural functionalist perspective attempts to address the issue of equity and distributive justice though education as a means of social reproduction and as such, measurements to validate its effectiveness, according to Seers (1972) must then address questions of poverty reduction, unemployment, and inequality.
Thurow (1997) writing in light of post-Cold War scenario of economic growth, added the dimension of international economic development as arena of competition for sites and human resources in the age of ‘brain-power industries’ in which knowledge, information and highly specialized skills become capital to be moved around this borderless world.
Thus briefly, key to neo-classical/structural functionalist perspective is the idea of education as basis for national development so that economic growth in linear progression true to its utilitarianistic and scientific-rationalistic ideological path. Herein lie the internal and external critiques of this mode of thinking when one considers the point of view of Conflict theorists.
Particularly those who emerge from the neo-Marxists, Dependency and World Order/World Systems theorists who not only question the fundamental axiom of neo-classical economics but looks at the question of international distributive justice in international economic development.
<strong>Education, Economic Development, and Conflict Paradigm</strong>
Illustrative of the internal critique of the view that more education results in productivity can be found in Tsang and Levin’s (1985) excellent analysis of the economics of overeducation in that the authors challenged the view of neo-classicalists that a firm’s productivity can in fact be negative if the labor force is over-educated. Tsang and Levin drew their conclusion from data gathered from industrial psychology, literature using contemporary labor-market models of industrial productivity.
Whilst Tsang and Levin’s (1985) critique goes into the innerworkings of the modern capitalist mode of production as it relates to human capital investment in education, literature abound on the external critique of the structural-functionalist perspective. The work of Andre Gunder Frank (1966), Phillip McMichael (1996) and Poonah Wignaraja (1993) are among those illustrative.
Conflict theorists look at the internal and external contradiction in capitalist formation and see education particularly as a means of social reproduction in a world wherein economic development is colored with structural violence via distributive injustices.
Gunder Frank (1966) for example, analyzed the development of underdevelopment of the so-called developed and underdeveloped countries within a Center-periphery matrix of capitalist formation drawing from case studies of nation-states in Latin America. His is illustrative of the genre of writing within the Dependency perspective, which looks at the Metropole-Satellite uneven capitalist development.
One may find a plethora of writings as such which has come from others such as Wallerstein (1981), Carnoy (1984), and Amin (1993). Thirty years after Frank’s (1966) analysis, one can benefit from such an external critique of economic development with the work of McMichael (1996) who analyzed not only dependency as a theme, but extend such analysis to late capitalist, post-Cold War period of borderless economics characterized by global production systems, transnational banks and corporations and the precariousness of sophisticated and advanced elite formations.
McMichael’s (1996) work is and extensive critique not only of colonialism and post-colonialism but indirectly, an exposé of how international dimension of the human capital revolution has taken shape. Whilst the aforementioned writers espoused on the internal and external critique of neo-classicalism/structural functionalist view of education and economic development,
Wignaraja’s (1993) enlightening view on the subject brought into the discussion an alternative paradigm of economic development which has emerged out of progressive grassroots movements in the South; particularly from the Indian subcontinent.
Illustrating the case of Swardhaya as a liberating dimension of the Praxis and Participatory Action, Research Wignaraja concluded that neither neo-classical nor Marxist perspectives on economic development could explain what education should mean. In PAR lies the spiritual dimension of education which champions basic needs more than “created wants”, participatory democracy more than protectionism, voices of conscience more than the rhetoric of developmentalism, and poets of meaningful reforms than grand designs in education for economic development.
<strong>After Swardhaya: Education or Liberation?</strong>
My professional experiences and the amount of information, knowledge, and understanding I have thusfar gathered concerning the issue of education and economic development has brought me to continue to visit and revisit the meaning of education and the possibilities of liberation. I have had ten years of teaching experience in Malaysia; five years at a gifted and talented high school and five years at a Management university in the northern part.
My undergraduate background in English education and my double Masters in Education and International Relations have given me the theoretical perspectives on what education can imaginatively be. For ten years, my praxis have been essentially Deweyian, Freirian, and derived from the work of metaphysical thinkers addressing education for spiritual development. I have in my teaching, employed perspectives which attempt to bring about critical, creative, spiritual, and futuristic dimensions in the education of those
I have been entrusted to share knowledge with. My five years of teaching at the university as a lecturer in Thinking Skills, Ethics, Language, and Foreign Policy have allowed me to be in contact with those training to become corporate leaders ready to become managers of change and for many of them, aspiring to become millionaires before the age of forty! Malaysia as a developing nation was ready to offer thousands of my students with such avenues.
The Southeast Asian financial crisis of 1997 which continues to devastate the capitalist world and which has currently brought Malaysia to the brink of economic, social, and political quagmire never before seen since its independence has forced me to revisit the meaning of education.
I now find the questions even more perplexing, particularly those concerning the role of the State with its ideological apparatus within the international capitalist context.
Materials on human capital investment, Dependency and World Systems theories, and grassroots efforts in education have made me ponder if national development is at all meaningful if measured primarily via gains in economic well being and political stability.
How much formal education should one receive? How pervasive should consumerist ideology be made to prevail in a particular nation? How can an individual be educated to prioritize metaphysical/spiritual capital over material capital?
Perhaps my experience of having been brought up in poverty, having then tasted wealth, having been with those living “below the poverty line”, and having understood that national development can also mean the licensing of a few people to acquire as much national wealth leaving national crumbs to trickle down to the masses – all these have made me sought the avenue leading to the word “liberation”.
The international system is chaotic. Arms and hunger proliferate. Trade wars continue to be fought. Trade blocks created. National governments educate citizens via seduction so that perhaps one percent of the world’s most powerful capitalists can continue to be served by the world’s cheap labor.
The global capitalist machinery continue to be run by high tech means so that capital can flow freely in this borderless world in the process displacing jobs daily by the thousands.
I am still searching for answers. And I still continue to be both a skeptic and a cynic of any forms of government which attempt to socially engineer and reproduce human beings via the mass-babysitting enterprise called schooling.
I may one day find the meaning of education and the possibilities in liberation. Such is the postmodernity of my thought on education and national development. But till then, I will continue to enjoy what this course has to offer on the many ways to look at how education and international development translate into theoretical and pedagogical perplexities.
<strong>References
</strong>
Carnoy, M. (1984). The State and political theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Frank, A. (1966). The development of underdevelopment. Monthly Review, 18 (4), 17-31.
Lewis, W.A. (1965). Is economic growth desirable? The theory of economic growth (pp. 420-435). New York: Harper Torch Books
McMichael, P. (1996). Development and social change (pp. 1-43). Thousands Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.
Psacharopoulos, G. (1994). Returns to investment in education: A global update. World Development, 22 (9), 1325-43
Rostow, W. (1973). The stages of economic growth. Cambridge University Press.
Schulz, T. (1971). Investment in human capital (pp. 24-27). New York: The Free Press.
Seers, D. (1972). What are we trying to measure? The Journal of Development Studies, 8, 21-26
Thurow, L. (1997). Plate two: An era of man-made brain-power industries. In The future of capitalism (pp. 65-87). New York: The Penguin Books.
Tsang, M., & Levin, H. (1985). The economics of overeducation. Economic of Education Review, 4 (2), 93-104.
Wallerstein, I. (1981). Dependence in an interdependent world: The limited possibilities of transformation within the capitalist world economy. In. H. Munoz (Ed.) From dependency to development: Strategies to overcome underdevelopment and inequality (pp. 267-293). Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.
Wignaraja, P. (Ed.) (1993). Rethinking development and democracy. In New social movements in the South (pp. 4-35). London and New Jersey: Zed PressDr. AZLY RAHMANhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07437908281114330911noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11166677.post-1133982510554492452005-12-07T11:06:00.000-08:002006-02-05T20:15:36.176-08:0043] Cybernetic Technology and Ideology of Schooling in Malaysia<span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; COLOR: rgb(51,102,255)">Issues and institutions of educational reform in a developing and cybernating society: Case study of forces of influence in the Malaysian “Smart Schools” project</span>
By Azly Rahman
Columbia University
<strong>Introduction
</strong>
Third World countries undergoing economic changes modeled after the advanced industrialized West most strategically focus their human capital revolution efforts via the process of educational restructuring which attempt to shift society from industrial to information-based.
Thurow (1997) wrote of this phenomena in the historical development of capitalism in which advanced communications revolutions in the telematics industry has coerced nations into shifting their educational agenda for social reproduction to cultivate “brain power industries” in order to gain competitive advantage.
McMichael (1996) analyzed the complex relationship between the so-called developing states in the international capitalist system, concluding that the former are relegated to the role of production houses for the advanced nations progressing into the Age of Networked and Digital Economy.
Among the nation states in East Asia, Malaysia has been categorized (at least before the financial crisis of July 1997) by the World Bank (1993) as one of whose growth rate is “miraculous”, an “East Asian miracle” as it is termed, judged by indicators such as Gross National Product, per capita income, and openness to foreign investment.
In this essay, I shall look at the relationship between Malaysia’s strategic plan for creating , via educational process and schooling as mechanism, a citizenry literate in technologies of cybernetics, the role of governmental institution involved in this plan, and the issues arising out of the mega-structural reform movement. This essay will be guided by the following questions:
i. as it relates to a change in developmentalist paradigm, what is the nature of educational change engineered in the Malaysian “Smart Schools” project and how does it relate to international institutions involved, using Conflict paradigm as a framework of analysis?
ii. as it relates to process of change, in what way is the project illustrative of the transfer of ideology and discourse relating to cybertechnology inherent in the global phenomena of a “wired and borderless world”?
iii. as it relates to the players (actors) involved, what role do the multinational corporations and the government play in the initiation, implementation, and institutionalization process?
In attempting to answer the questions, I have outlined the discussions within the context of the initiation, implementation, and institutionalization of the idea and weave through the issue of the embededness of political-economic discourse and the institutions involved in this structural reform.
<strong>Scenario</strong>
Independent Malaysia which emerged from centuries of Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese and British colonialism is an example of a nation-state which recently embarked upon a developmental quantum leap, from a semi-agricultural base to a high tech-high touch information-based social and educational transformational paradigmatic evolution via its announcing of the creation of “Smart Schools.”
The concept, directed by the centralized top-down Ministry of Education and made to co-exist in tandem with Malaysia’s transformation into a “cyber society” is an attempt to technologize schools so that “democratization of learning, teaching and living” can be finally and fully realized.
The case study from its initiation, implementation, and institutionalization aspects will discuss Malaysia’s “smart schools” as a planned change effort in light of its political-economic, sociological, and pedagogical dimensions.
Fullan and Steigebauer (1982) in their analysis of the sources of educational change, note that changes in educational policy entailing in educational restructuring effort oftentimes are initiated out of society’s need to respond to complexities emerging; those which force governments or institutions to respond to the pressures which arise. “We can take it as a given that there will always be pressures for educational change in pluralistic societies.
These pressures increase as society becomes more complex.” (p. 17). Quoting Sarason, Fullan and Steigelbauer (1982) summarized that “innovations get generated through a mixture of political and educational motives” (p.27). What pressures for change and what political and educational motives then lead to the Malaysian initiative of the nation-wide, internationally linked, ideologically inspired concept of wired or cyber learning and teaching called the “smart school” project?
<strong>Initiation history </strong>
<strong>
</strong>In early January of 1997, as a lecturer in Thinking Skills, I was invited to represent the university I worked with to the first session of the unveiling of the idea of the smart school. The idea of the “wiring” of the Malaysian schools can be summarized by a communique from the Ministry of Education (1997) which read:
<em>By the year 2010, all the approximately ten thousand Malaysian schools will be Smart Schools. In these schools, learning will be self-directed, individually-paced, continuous and reflective. This will be made possible through the provision of multimedia technology and worldwide networking. (p. 1)
</em>
The plan for such a purposeful change was thus to utilize computer-mediated learning technologies particularly the Internet and the World-Wide web so that the national agenda of creating a “cyber society” will be realized by a targeted metaphorical date of year 2020.
Echoing Sarason (1996) on the need to look at changes in the school system as derived from inside and outside the schools (p. 12), and from Fullan and Steigelbauer’s notion of political and educational motivated innovation (p. 27), the case of the initiated “smart school” concept can be said to be derived not only out of “first-order” analysis, but particularly apparent and dominant out of “second order” dictates --- out of political-economic perception of what constitutes progress and how education must respond to them. As the “smart school” concept relates to this second order changes, the Ministry of Education (1997) notes that:
<em>Malaysia needs to make the critical transition from an industrial economy to a leader in the Information Age. In order to make this vision a reality, Malaysia needs to make a fundamental shift towards a more technologically literate, thinking workforce, able to perform in a global work environment and use the tools available in the Information Age. To make this shift, the education system must undergo a radical transformation (p. 1)
</em>
The Minister of Education announced that the first Smart School is being built with a cost of Malaysian Ringgit 144.5 million of which, aside from it being “wired”, “will also be equipped a hostel for 800 students, an Olympic-size swimming pool, a hockey pitch, a hall and other facilities” (Business Times, 1996, p. 3)
It is also said that the school will start operating in January 1999 and eventually all Malaysian schools will be operating based upon this concept.
The idea of democratizing the school system via the “wiring up” of learning would be an interesting area to be analyzed if one takes as a point of analytical departure Darling Hammond’s (1997) assertion on the criteria for schools that will work:
<em>The success of today’s effort will ultimately rest on whether educational policies continue to enforce a bureaucratic approach that emphasize standardization and prescription of practice or whether they support a professional approach that arms teachers with the knowledge they need to teach skillfully and make appropriate decisions. (p. 34</em>)
Along this line of assertion too Darling-Hammond (1993) talked about the need for reform movements to take into consideration the developing of “communities of learning grounded in communities of democratic discourse” (p. 761)
In the case of the Malaysian “Smart schools”, it is thus the focus of this case study to mediate between the top-down mega-structural changes imposed by the Ministry of Education with the bottom-up response from those affected by the changes within the context of the meaning of educational change. Will the initiated change work? How does one measure the “democratic-ness” of the intended and purposeful change?
Can equality and equal opportunity be achieved particularly in the distribution of resources needed to make future generation of Malaysians “cybernetic” in thinking? Which socio-economic class will benefit from this technology-intensive, political-economic driven educational transformation effort?
These are the questions, which will be explored further in the next section on implementation and institutionalization. As to whether equality and equal opportunity will be achieved, a scenario of social transformation goal constructed within a perspective using the Conflict paradigm can perhaps answer the question of “who will benefit?”.
<strong>Implementation </strong>
<strong>
</strong>Whilst in the previous section on initiation history I have alluded to the idea that the Malaysian Smart School project signify a phase in educational change situated within the context of paradigmatic insistence that the nation must be technologized as such so that its citizenry can become technologically literate and hence be able to participate as information workers in the laissez faire international system, the political economic context of such a proposed mega structural change need to be elaborated.
The guiding question will thus be: what is the context, modus operandi and intended roles and relationship subsumed in the project’s implementation stage? More specifically, as this section will address are the philosophical, ideological, psychological, and pedagogical issues relating to it which guides and provide the driving force of this new technicist thinking about what educational change must constitute.
Although Sarason’s (1996) analysis of the culture and problem of change is powerful in attempting to provide us a point of reference of moving from looking at change from its regularities to alternatives, it merely and particularly describe change at the micro level of schooling in the American context.
The value of Sarason’s (1996) idea may perhaps be in his call for us to adopt the ecological approach in looking at change. Transposing this idea to the context of the Malaysian Smart School thus not only require one to look at the project within the macro level as it relates to curricular and pedagogical issues but also at the macro level of what Steiner-Khamsi (1998) called the “circularity of transfer” and the “displacing of reforms” of post-colonial educational system, Wallerstein (1990) called dependency in the world order and Bourdieu (1994) called “habitus” vis-a-vis to the transfer of discourse.
We proceed, in the following paragraphs to look at the universe of alternative undertaken in the smart school project by drawing upon the “big picture” notion of implementation as described by Fullan and Steigelbauer (1982).
Sarason’s (1996) concluding remark, that “…[c]onstant attention to both the content and process of reform and their complex interrelationship is required” is useful in my ecological analysis of the implementation of the Malaysian Smart schools.
It entails one’s looking at the big picture of ideology and schooling and how the latter as a process of economic, political, cultural, and social reproduction is intrinsically-linked in a matrix of complex relationship within an ideological nemesis that perhaps only a critique of ideology can offer analytical help in order for it to be understood.
Or perhaps the postmodern tool of Chaos or Complexity theory grounded in the critique of ideology can best be of utility. What then is this big picture?
The picture of change is, in the Baudrilliardian sense, a fascinating one. Malaysia, under the rule of its Prime Minister of 17-years, Mahathir Mohamad has of late embarked upon the creations of a cyber-society run from an administrative capital called CyberJaya within the techno-cultural context of so-called a “Multi-Media Super Corridor” (MSC). The MSC is a built in on several hundred square kilometers of area in which “seven flagship applications” will be its feature.
It mimics California’s Silicon Valley and Singapore’s cybercity concepts among others of which Malaysia will be moved to a new paradigm of living based upon the “humane application of high technology” manifested in the sub concepts of electronic government, tele-medicine, electronic banking, electronic commerce, and pertinent to our analysis, the smart schools.
The biggest airport in Asia, the Kuala Lumpur International Airport was recently opened to facilitate the development of CyberJaya. From the “wired-up” capital city as the initial program of mega-structural change, the Malaysian government planned to create cyber-principalities out of the thirteen states constituting the federation.
It is envisioned that by the metaphorical year of 2020 the country will have achieved the status of fully industrialized nation able to compete with other advanced industrialized nations namely the United States of America, Europe, and Japan and that such an advancement would however be based upon a strong foundation of religious and moral values.
Thus, through its “smart schools” of which the prototype will be operating on January 1, 1999, future generation of this nation will be able to fully and democratically participate in the Information Age.
The country has now specialized universities among them moving towards the total implementation of the Internet as a mode of delivery. One that was recently established itself as the first “virtual university” in the country prides itself in its total absence of physical interaction between the student and the instructor.
The implementation stage can be looked at from the international and national dimensions within the perspective of the institutions involved as well as the issues at hand. The international advisory panel of the mega-structural change project is perhaps more impressive than those who sat in the 1980s Nation Commission of Educational Exchange (NCEE) who amongst of others insisted on creating a technologically literate America able to sustain the unchallenged preeminence superiority of the most powerful nation on earth.
In the case of Malaysia, the government has invited, as advisors among others CEOs of the following corporations: Acer Incorporated, Alcatel Alsthom, Microsoft Corporation, SUN Microsystems, Bechtel Group Incorporated, British Telecom, Cisco Systems, Compaq Computer Corporation, DHL, Ericsson, Fujitsu Limited, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Motorola Corporation, Netscape Communications, Reuters, Motion Picture Association of America, and tens of other giants in the telematics and media-related industries.
Professors of Business and Public Policy from Silicon Valley’s Stanford University and Alvin Toffler of Toffler Associates are also among those guiding the development of Malaysia’s cyber initiatives. Malaysian subsidiaries of these giants in the world of trillion-dollar club transnational corporations have been set up in the development of the Multimedia Super Corridor. The multi-billion dollar airport recently opened thus is an important infrastructure to help these trillion-dollar companies land quickly and safely to the MSC.
At the national level of implementation, a landmark decision (passed in August 1997) is the creation of a Ministry of Multimedia and Information as a restructuring project of the Ministry of Information. The cybercity and all its cyberstate ideological apparatuses, the “seven flagship applications” will be under the electronic and telematic tutelage of this new ministry.
The smart school project is currently under the Ministry of Education and with the creation of the Ministry of Multimedia and Information, it is not entirely clear yet how the context of its operation will be situated.
Reflecting upon Sarason’s (1996) notion of ecology in social and education change, and focusing upon the case study of the Smart Schools, I have attempted to situate the macro-level context of the implementation, drawing upon the idea of the transfer of Silicon Valley idea of how a society is engineered to look like.
I have also mentioned the context of change at the national level, characterized by a planned effort in paradigmatic shift, akin to what futurists such Alvin Toffler and John Naisbitt talked about as, respectively “the third wave” and “megatrend” of which structural transformations are conjured and brought to heights determined by the semantically- and semiotically-driven notion of “Information Age” under the shibboleth of “corporate developmentalism” of which technological advancement and its attendant demands is presumed of its neutrality.
A critical analysis of this discourse on technologism and “techno-hype-ism” will be dealt with in the final part of this essay subtitled “institutionalization”. As a further point of case-study focus on the issues and institutions in the development of Malaysian education, I proceed to look at how the “Smart School project” is to be implemented as a top-down, technology-driven, corporate-capitalist ideologically- constituted agenda as it relates to its philosophical, ideological, semantical, psychological and pedagogical dimensions. Through such a level of ecological analysis, the picture of change can perhaps be logically perceived.
In looking at the implementation stage at the national educational philosophical and curricular levels, it would be worth looking at the scenarios conjured by those in the Ministry of Education on the potentialities of computer-mediated learning as a “liberating force”.
Since this case study looks at the Smart school as concept in the process of being implemented and not one which has been, discussions on its implementation will thus take the form of an analysis of the project’s intended outcomes relying upon analysis of scenarios.
The description of the scenes from a day in a Malaysian Smart school (see Appendix) almost read like Arthur C. Clarke’s scenario of life in the year 2010; one in which the human being is further “liberated” from the mundane and uncreative aspects of learning to living and learning in a cyber society via telematics and informatics.
Before moving to a critical discussion on the contexts related to the implementation at the national level, it is imperative to look at a view, in the paragraph below on what constitutes “technological determinism” as an ideology as it relates to the issue of professional control in this age of infomatics and how this in turn relate to the structure of teaching and learning, how knowledge is conceptualized, as well as how the technological model of teaching is to be employed in the Smart school project.
I now turn to a brief discussion on the issue of the presumed neutrality of technology.
Taking Beninger’s (1993) notion of “control revolution” as a point of concern and a framework for analyzing the human dimension of technological change, we can look at the Smart School project as a Third World nation’s economic developmental phase in integrating itself in the advanced stage of Computer Revolution which has historically emerged as an apparatus of human and social control.
The tone of the communiqué on the Smart School, is one of a nation having the unquestionable faith in the inevitable progress of the Computer Revolution and the post-positivist euphoria of Information Age. It echoed the believe that technology, in all its neutrality will bring forth creative evolution for generations ahead via the social reproductive means called education, in the tradition argued by Herbert Simon, the “Father of Artificial Intelligence,”.
Simon (1986) believed in our keeping of options in our planning for alternative futures through the epochal advances in our society, and in this aspect, the advances made in the Computer Revolution.
Simon’s ideological orientation in equating social progress with the parallel development of technology can be logically understood. This orientation can be derived from many a common-held belief in the presumed neutrality of technology and the paradigm of equating human thinking with the inner-workings of the artificial intelligence manifested in computers.
There are however, issues which need to be addressed both, in case of Malaysian Smart Schools and in the overall interpretation of educational planning, implementation, and institutionalization within the domain of human-machine interface.
Whilst at the megastructural level the changes which have been influential in the decision to create Smart school is characterized by the ideological notion that Malaysia need to progress via technologizing society, at the nation-state level, educational restructuring takes the character of top-down reform within the matrix of the creation of the billion-dollar Multimedia Super Corridor.
Zooming in on the implementation of the Smart school, particularly in the nation’s preparation for the radical technological shift in the manner educational change is framed, the following paragraphs will discuss ways by which the implementation process takes shape. Particularly important will be those on the infrastructural changes undertaken, teacher training initiatives planned, and the nature packaged knowledge designed.
As it pertains to infastructural changes, the ambitious Malaysian Smart School project which attempt, by the year 2010 to technologize 10,000 schools has its focus the setting up of tools of cyberlearning so that knowledge can be electronically distributed through high-tech high touch means. As noted in the communiqué:
<em>Smart schools invariably demand a heavy investment in multimedia
infrastructure. The hardware would include computers and peripherals,
video and voice-conferencing equipment and the backbone of telecommunications infrastructure … The software will comprise word processor spreadsheets, networking software, e-mail-software, Internet browsers, authoring tools and training software. In addition, schools will require the creation of interlinked national and local databases and research center. The infrastructure is not incremental to the current information technology deployment but orders of magnitude higher. The successful
planning, procurement, installation and maintenance will require a radical change in approach. (MoE Communiqué, p.1)
</em>
Indeed such a plan to adopt infrastructure mimicking the way information technology is used in advanced industrialized countries is characteristic of a Third World nation’s ambivalence towards the concept of “appropriate technology, available resources.”
It misses the point concerning transfer of concepts natural to the environment of advanced nations which already historically rich in technology and enculturalized into it.
Fullan and Steigelbauer (1991) quoted research by Scandamalia and Bereiter (1989) on the use of computer-assisted learning to enhance understanding of subject matter in a cooperative learning manner. The project, CSILE – Computer-Supported International Learning Environment is one in which:
<em>Students interact with outreach databases to pursue and pose questions, construct plans for gathering information, elaborate what they know, and wonder, and the like. Students identify certain notes as “candidates for publication” (sharing) or as “candidates for submission to our biology expert” (either the teacher of someone designated outside the classroom). Thus ‘learning becomes exploration rather than task-driven.’ (p. 188)
</em>
Indeed the above-quoted scenario of cyber-learning can perhaps contribute to the democratization and in-depth ness of learning if we look at it from a pedagogical perspective. However, albeit a liberating picture of technology utilization portrayed in the CSILE project, the case might turn out to be different for the Malaysian Smart School project.
It must again be looked at from the standpoint of an implantation of a radical concept which will carry with it an expensive educational price-tag in foreign investment, technology transfer and the cost involved in restructuring teacher training to meet the demands of the cyberschools.
For Canada, United States, Europe and Japan – owners of the means of production of cybertechnologies related to teaching and learning – the infrastructural development and the technological culture seem second nature. For Malaysia and other Third World nations wishing to “catch-up” with the West, the race might never be a fruitful one after all.
From my experience as a visitor to the Open Learning Agency in Vancouver Canada and my discussions with those involved with the Smart School project, the information gathered is that the prototype for the Malaysian Smart School is a high-tech, wired high school in Vancouver visited by key policy-making officials of the Malaysian Ministry of Education.
Perhaps out of the fascination of how technology can help “democratize learning” and out of the misunderstood notion of the meaning of educational technology as it is related to the meaning of education itself, the officials overlooked the nature of infrastructural changes which will have to be implemented and the astronomical budget involved. It is thus a political-economic issue with transfer of discourse at its core.
At the level of teacher training, plans are being outlined to train cyberteachers to work with cyberlearners in cyber schools within cyber cities soon to be governed from a cyber capital. The communique from the ministry, concluded in a language synthesizing technological determinism, top-down reform and “swim or sink attitude” can be illustrated as follow:
<em>The most crucial aspect of training would be teacher training. There needs to be a careful mix of intensive training and counseling to help teachers adapt to the new environment. This will be critical in order to dispel the natural insecurity and fears of redundancy that will arise from this radical paradigm shift in teaching methodology and hence the very role of teachers. (P. 1)
</em>
The language is hence illustrative of the limited choice given to teachers in determining the options open for understanding what teaching means. It seems to focus entirely on enabling technologies themselves rather than enabling teachers to master a repertoire of teaching techniques which do not necessarily demand high technological investments.
In short, the language is illustrative of the idea that teachers need to be prepared “what to think about” rather that what Darling-Hammond (1997) would say “how to think” and design their own methodologies so that the concept teaching for understanding can be realized. To quote Darling Hammond on the critical success factor for teaching:
<em>The success of today’s effort will ultimately rest on whatever education policies continue to enforce bureaucratic approach that emphasizes standardization and prescription of practice or whether they support a professional approach that arms teachers with the knowledge they need to teach skillfully and make appropriate decisions. (p. 34)
</em>
Although the communiqué allude to the idea that the mindset of the teachers need to be prepared for the Smart School environment which will be characterized be “self-paced, self-directed, and self-accessed learning” (p. 1) the cyberschool project is predominantly clouded in language of heavy infrastructural investment colored by the idiom of corporate restructuring focusing on infrastructure more than intellectual endeavors:
<em>Effective implementation of Smart Schools will require funding for the building of new schools will all its multimedia infrastructure, upgrading facilities in existing schools and teacher training institutions and for the maintenance of new technology introduced. Over the duration of this project, this will require several billion Ringgit Malaysia (RM). While the dramatic increase in budgetary allocation is necessary, it is unlikely that it will be sufficient to fund this mega-project. Innovative methods such as private sector funding, corporate and community involvement and sponsorships and smart use of the excellent infrastructure after schools hours, will need to be explored</em>.
It is also interesting to note that parallel to the implementation of the Smart School as a cyber learning initiative is planned and purposeful change to implement the principles of Total Quality Management so that Malaysian Schools will, like the manufacturing sector, be certified with the ISO 9000 (International Standards of Operation 9000)
The Ministry of Education has announced this initiative as a vision to turn schools as “a wellspring of knowledge” and for them to become world-class education centers consistent with the Total Quality Management concept and ISO 9000 quality standard” (p.1). In elaborating this vision, the Deputy Education Minister is quoted as saying that:
<em>The implementation of the systems would also alleviate disciplinary and social problems… [and that the systems are to be implemented because]… TQM and ISO 9000 have become global benchmarks reshaping competition and organizations around the world which is why its concepts must be learned and factored into our education system. (p. 1)
</em>
If the top-down efforts are characterized by the demands of transforming the entire system into one technologized in nature demanding shifts in teacher mindset and quality assurance in the manner schools will be controlled, what then could be the nature of implementation relating to the body of knowledge to be passed down to the student?
In other words what kinds of learning and teaching paraphernalia will be used in creating a learning environment, which has the vision and mission of creating a technologically literate citizenry? What courseware will support the implementation process?
These questions will be explored in brief before we move on to the scenario of an institutionalized concept called Smart School. The discussion on courseware and the mode of teaching and learning via electronic means can offer an insight into the shape of education to come circa year 2020 in a cyber Third World nation such as Malaysia.
<strong>Institutionalization </strong><strong>
</strong><strong>
</strong>The setting up of the Smart Schools within the Malaysian government’s project to establish Cyberjaya and Putrajaya claimed and trumpeted as two of the world’s first intelligent cities, is a technological deterministic step towards further linking the nation to the world’s financial capital.
And within the perspective of school as a means of social, economic, political and technological reproduction, Smart Schools are aimed at producing citizens able to function effectively in the Information Age.
Whether the control of high-technological production is in the hands of the few in the techno-industrialized West and whether nations such as Malaysia plunging itself in this long term of uncertainty and in the wheel of international capitalist machine, are not the issue in educational reform.
The idea and implementation of such a controlled paradigm of development and progress, once institutionalized, will carry consequences anathema to the idea of educational reform based upon the use of “available technology and appropriate resources” constructed within a paradigm celebrating grassroots, bottom-up and humanistic initiatives.
The impending question of technological-based education reform movement in the case of Malaysia will perhaps miss the question of “who will benefit” in such claims
(contd.)Dr. AZLY RAHMANhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07437908281114330911noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11166677.post-1133981797229762232005-12-07T10:51:00.000-08:002006-02-05T20:14:32.290-08:0042] "Personacracy": Towards A Cultural Philosophy of the Self<span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;color:#3366ff;" ></span>
<span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;color:#3366ff;" >REFLECTIONS ON MARTIN BUBER’S I-THOU AND THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF PERSONACRACY </span>
<strong><span style="color:#3366ff;"></span></strong>
by Azly Rahman
Columbia University, New York
<strong>PROLOGUE
</strong>
“Race, ethnicity and culture are dynamic constructs that are part of an evolving discourse in American society as well as in cultures around the world … the course will investigate what all this means for the individual and our collective work as educators”
- from Course Description, "Race and Ethnicity in Education", Columbia University
<em>“ It appears that you have gone from being immersed in the contradictory, and yes… sometimes oppressive constructs in which we are socialized to a position where you now consider yourself above the fray of ‘illusions’ that you claim govern our existence. How do you expect to have any voice in relieving the oppressive conditions that so concern you if you are off into your own ‘inner –world’ condemning the rest of us for living in our socialized little boxes? While I agree with the need to be governed first internally and to conference the world through spirit… How can we effectively be not of the world yet in it and seek to bring that spirit to the concrete world of human suffering with all the illusions that accompany it!
</em>
- Instructors' comments
This essay proposes to illuminate the above quotations in order to highlight my views on the issue of constructs within the parameters of discussion on race, culture, and ethnicity in education. It is, I believe necessary to be such a length in order to justifiably explore particularly the second quotation and to situate my views on the construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction of the idea of race, culture, and ethnicity as constructs and to extend them to a paradigm of action.
I wish to make myself clear on the view that eventhough I recognize the strength of the arguments for race, cultural, and ethnic consciousness, I believe they can be look at within a metaphysical framework as well as from one which synthesizes the essentialist, progressive, and postmodernist perspectives within the paradigm exploring the possibility of a global and humane world order.
The most fascinating and highly stimulating class discussions facilitated by an energetic and very knowledgeable instructor, the cutting edge readings on traditional, modern, and postmodern conceptions of race, ethnicity, and culture, the excellent views from the guest speakers, as well as illuminating data gathered from preliminary site visits to the Harlem Congregation for Community Improvement, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Exhibition of Traditional African Sculptures), and The Nuyorican Poets Café – all these have benefited me tremendously in understanding issues which are real to the question of race, culture, and ethnicity.
Through this important essay, I wish to assert my uncompromising view that I am indeed committed, as an educator for creative and critical consciousness, to looking at “liberation” from the lens I am much socialized in: a metaphysical lens which looks at constructs within the matrix of injustices at our global and planetary level, As such it draws upon the rediscovery of essentialist themes in major religious tradition, modernist critique of the role of excesses in technological domination, and the postmodernist sensibility in the analysis of constructs.
I have chosen all these perspectives, synthesize them, and look at how, as an educator I can believe that it is imperative to look at how the world within us can be perceived and thus, through recognizing the “government within” can help me design agendas to liberate human thinking within what I call “cosmotheandric, trialogical, and personacratic view of education” which addresses issues of constructs beyond the boundaries of nation-states.
I thus draw my arguments and formulations for action based essentially upon Martin Buber’s “I-Thou” philosophy and link it with major metaphysical themes derived from established religions to then look at the universality of ethical ideals concerning education of the self.
<span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">INTRODUCTION</span>
As we come close to the turn of the century, issues brought before the 52nd General Assembly of the United Nations illustrates a dismal view of how we conduct our affairs on planet Earth. Wars are constantly being fought, militarism continues to be on the rise even amongst the Third World nations whose citizen survive on barely US$1.00 per day, human rights violations continue to be exposed, authoritarian regimes prevail, trade blocks are operating more intensely in the language of the war system, technological progress, controlled by the few in the advanced industrialized countries continue to become potentially dangerous engines of planetary destruction, international distributive justice remains a tedious forum of debates amongst nations and environmental destruction continue to threaten the survival of the world we have inherited for our children. (UN-USA, 1997)
The urgent call for the global society to works towards peace can best be illustrated by the opening remarks in the report by the Commission on Global Governance which stated:
The collective power of the people to shape the future is greater now than ever before, and the need to exercise it is more compelling. Mobilizing that power to make life in the twenty-first century more democratic and more sustainable is the foremost challenge of this generation. The world needs a new vision that can galvanize people in areas of common concern and shared destiny (The Commission on Global Governance, 1997, p.1)
Autobiographical reflections and the issues brought before the 52nd UN General Assembly above, points then to the intent of this essay in which, I shall argue that in order to arrive at a state of being conscious in the sense Jean Paul Sartre talked about as “being and becoming” within the human and social dimension of peace we ought to begin to radically reframe educational issues along the lines of global ethics and planetary consciousness by drawing upon our search for universality in humanistic and philosophical terms with view of praxis in mind in order to “achieve higher levels of cooperation in areas of concern and shared destiny” (Commission, 1997,p.1 )
Whilst highest levels of international decision making will continue to dwell upon the intricacies of peacemaking, peacekeeping and peace-building (Boutros-Boutros Ghali, 1992) and whilst sovereign governments will continue to do similar within the confines of their nation-states, education as a enterprise of developing one’s potentials within ought to play its role in conceptualizing what in means to prepare the citizens of the next century to become authentic beings, in the Freirian sense; beings who are conscientized of the needs for a human and world order.
Thus, in arriving at this reconceptualization, I shall be guided by the concepts of “cosmotheandry”, “trialogue” and “personacracy” in our re-framing of our educational philosophical priorities and our perceptual lens in looking at constructs.
In them I shall draw my arguments from Martin Buber’s I-Thou philosophy synthesized with a cross religious mystical concepts and culminate them in the context of what I term as “personacracy” meaning “government of the self, for the self and by the self” as opposed to that of democracy; the latter having been subjected much abuses and adulterations in its interpretations.
<span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">CONCEPTS</span>
By “cosmotheandry” I mean the vision of reality in which the Human and the Cosmic are integrated into a whole more or less harmonious according to the performance of our human rights” (Pannikar, R.). This is a mystical conception of being and becoming in which the philosophical concepts of religion, which unites rather than divides, are taken and applied to one’s ontological vocation.
By “trialogue”, I mean the extension of the often used term dialogue, in which it does not only mean one taking place between the persons and the transcendent reality, but to quote Boehle (1995) one of which the meeting is between “the Ultimate Self and Ultimate Reality. I will apply to this concept to any definition of trialogue as the interaction between the Self, the Surreal (technology and creativity) and the Spirit.
By “personacracy” I mean the juxtaposing of the understanding of the mystical with the transient self and the meeting of both in a rendezvous wherein the mystical guides the transient in order to gain the full realization of the self in its journey towards enlightenment and self-realization. Personacracy thus require one to travel the path of self-knowledge and to realize “the power within” which is a reflection of the power bestowed upon at the onset of existence.
The three mystical concepts above, of which Buber’s I-Thou philosophy points out to is methodological in our re-framing of educational paradigm of looking at, among others, racial constructs towards the next millenium as we analyze the historical development of materialism and industrialism as an I-it experience upon which human beings must come to terms with.
These concepts entail one to search for the Inner Self within which has allowed the domination of the Ego to the effect that through creativity we create representations of ourselves in the form of technologies which, in their most negative and excessive use has threaten the world we live in to destruction, anathema to the concept of peace, and in Buberian philosophy failed to realize the meeting of the Thou with the I.
Whereas these concepts are discussed with Buberian I-Thou as a focal point, the religious-mystical dimension of other religions, the “cosmotheandric” vision in them are brought into play so that the unity and universality of Buber’s Hasidic tradition can meet the vision of Sufism, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, as the major beliefs which in reality brings peoples together albeit the divisions they also set when interpreted in the strictest religious and political sense.
It is my view that much of the inter-religious and inter-racial conflicts which carry the banner of “organized” rather than “metaphysicalized” religious and racial consciousness stem out of the misinterpretation of the doctrines at one level, and the misguiding of the philosophical understanding of their inherently peaceful and humanistic dimensions at another. A cosmotheandric reading and deep understanding of the varieties of religious doctrines concerning the cultivation of a peaceful self must then be the agenda beyond those to be achieved at the institutional and the ecumenical levels.
It is when one’s understanding of religion as a comprehensive way of life and adapt this understanding metaphysically at any changing times and cultivate this experience in the most intellectually experiential sense that issues such as dehumanization, war-mongering, environmental destructions, xenophobia, racial intolerance and bigotry, and all those which constitute pathologies of the transient self can be contemplated and acted consciously upon.
And when dialog of the Thou and I is extended to include the dialogue of I or the Ultimate Self with its Creative Faculties (which produces technologies,) in the presence of the Thou or the Ultimate Reality, then this trialogue becomes metaphysically and spiritually authentic in that human use of technology and what he/she creates is not devoid of the Inner Conscience which can guide him/her from Ego, self-destruction and the destruction of others (beings and non-beings) who and which together share living and breathing space.
And in realizing the meeting between the Ultimate Reality and the Ultimate Self, or in which the Thou meets the I, what must proceed would be the I’s or the Ultimate Self’s understanding of what constitutes his/her essence. “Personacracy” then, within the claims of this essay, can be a powerful starting point to prepare oneself to travel the path in meeting the Thou.
It is when the path is not taken that the “thyself is not made known”, as Socrates would put it: that the world of the I will only meet It, which constitutes merely the worldly, experiences non-relational to the Thou. This state of being in turn brings forth realities such as Man’s utilitarian conception of one another, nations creating boundaries to alienate each other, and technologies being developed to subjugate the planet one era after the other, and design and perpetuate constructs to gatekeep one another.
<span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">ON BUBER’S I-THOU PHILOSOPHY</span>
The scope of this essay would certainly not permit enough discussion to do justice to Martin Buber’s complex philosophical discourse not only in his disposition of the religious outlook of the Self but also how it governs race, ethnic and social relations, morality, nationhood, and international relations. Buber’s profound thinking, which champions the mystical Jewish tradition of Hassidism, can however be largely discerned from his 1923 publication of I and Thou.
The range of writings essential to the understanding of Buber’s contribution to humanistic philosophy is one which is edited by Herberg (1956) in The Writings of Martin Buber. As it relates to the intent of this essay, I and Thou is concerned with the nature of Man’s relation or non-relation with God. Here Buber talked about the levels of awareness of one’s existence in relation to the world he/she occupies and experiences and to the Supreme Creator of whom he/she comes forth from and would thus return to.
Buber distinguishes between the primary I in I-It and I in I-Thou in which the former operates at a level wherein we experience things around us as objects, as “It” and the insignificant-ness of this experience minimizes our existence as merely relational as far as how they govern our transient affairs. It is when we work towards realizing that the relations are one of I- Thou in which the beings and non-beings are experienced as part of Thou that relations become authentic and that the manner we conduct our affairs will become more authentic and moral, imbued with a deep sense of religiosity which then allows us to frame our thinking that, all that exists is the Thou.
Authentic meaning in being and becoming in this world can be achieved by one’s setting of the preconditions “to meet the Thou” rather than to “go out and seek the Thou”. The Thou is present in It but is not part of It, as Buber wrote “… the Thou meets me through Grace – it is not found by seeking… the Thou meets me.. but I step into direct relation with him” (p.11)
In defining the authenticity of being, Buber wrote of the meaning of the strengthening of one’s person-hood in order to have the Thou meet him:
<em>The stronger the I of the primary word I-Thou is in the twofold I,
the more personal is the man… [a]ccording to this saying of I –according
to what he means, when he says I-it can be decided where a man belongs
and where his way leads. The word I is the true shibboleth of mankind.(p.65)
</em>
It follows then that the weakening of the I in the I-Thou relation subjugates Man to the experiencing of the world and others around him/her as It. It is then logical to assume that the conditions that are herein plaguing Man at the turn of the century -- dehumanization, militarism, environmental degradation, identity crisis and fragmentation and paralyzing and excessive claims to religious and racial identity -- are a result of the paralyzing of the I in the I-Thou primary word.
The resultant, Ego, in its crudest sense coupled with the utilization of Man’s creative instinct to develop alter-egos of themselves in the form of technologies of mass destruction and environmental subjugation, are those which are characteristic of the Buberian notion of the failure of Thou to meet the I.
Buber thus believes that Man must create the meeting place for the Thou to meet the I so that humanity may reach its authenticity. There is no barrier between the primary word I-Thou in that:
<em>The relation to the Thou is DIRECT. No system of ideas, no fore-
knowledge and no fancy intervene between I and Thou. The memory
itself becomes transformed, as it plunges out of its isolation into the
unity of the whole. No aim, no lust, and no anticipation intervene between
I and Thou. Desire itself is transformed as it plunges out of its dream into the
appearance. Every means is an obstacle. Only when every means has
collapsed does the meeting come about. (Buber, 1958, pp.11-12)
</em>
If we understand the underpinnings of Buber’s poetico-religious conception of “desire” as the veil separating the I and Thou, we can attribute this to the idea that Man has reached a stage in civilization that in virtually all levels of human organization that “desire” or Ego has continued to alienate himself/ herself with others. At the personal level, we distinguished ourselves by our oftentimes excessive claims to individuality, at the cultural level by our nationhood, at the societal level by our class and race distinctions and our economic ideologies, at the territorial level by our geographical boundaries and at the regional-political level by the trade, economic, political, and military blocks we create to render each other aliens.
Communitarianism, in the manner we order our political lives fueled with “Thou-less” political philosophies contribute to our misguide notion of what universal destiny means. And in our relationship with Nature, our I-Thou becomes I-it in the manner we dominate planet Earth to our Ego’s desire. We may have failed to look at the “Thou-ness” in our relationship with our planet.
Reflecting upon Buber’s analysis of the I-it condition of the modern Man, we relate to the Freirian concept of Man’s inability to be liberated from the presumed objectivity of hi/her nature and to fully understand his ontological vocation and vice versa. (See Friere, 1970) We saw this condition of man in Albert Camus’s Sisyphus in which, after being condemned by the Gods, the central character Sisyphus was condemned to eternally roll the rock and in which Camus asked us to imagine Sisyphus happy.
Or in the context of violence and the war system, as analyzed by Reardon (1996) in Sexism and the War System that Man has constantly struggled to deal with the Ego or the “primal wound” wherein his lack of full realization of his androgynic nature has contributed much to the structural violence (slavery and racial discrimination as examples) created since the dawn of history. It is with the “Thou-less” condition of the I that distributive injustices as analyzed by Shue (1980) argued in Basic Rights is rampant as we approach the millenium and that violations of human rights in all sense of the word is ever prevailing, as analyzed by Felice (1996) in Taking Suffering Seriously.
Human condition is to be reversed if it is to meet the situation of I-Thou and as John Rawles note that we may have to play the game of distributive justice all over again when our veil of ignorance is lifted for us to make choices in our attainment of the true meaning of the word “justice” (Rawls, 1971) in a seminal work The Theory of Justice.
In Buber’s term, we can only reverse this capricious state of human affairs by bringing the Thou into a relational being-ness and by reaching a level of awareness wherein the Thou responds to the I’s awareness of it. Such a state of being then will transform our relationship with Nature, other human beings, and spiritual beings – all these share the experience of being-ness and becoming-ness in their desire to have the Thou meet them.
This is a profound mystical notion of Self-hood which destroys the notion of other-ness and instruct the Ego to bow down to the conditions set by the I-Thou relation in its pre-Oceanic stage. It is as if there is a covenant between I and Thou prior to being born, in the moment of conception wherein the Thou meets the I in the womb called by the Semitic term “Raham”, “Rahim” or Love.
Perhaps Man becomes It in I-Thou as he progresses through life because he drank too much from the River of Forgetfulness, to use Socrates term in his Doctrine of Reminiscence? From the womb then, Man is transgressed into the world of It – of things, events, other persons, etc., -- and some remain in the I-It relationship in the worldly experience leaving only a few (such as Buber and other mystics) to work for the setting of the preconditions to have Thou meet them. Buber indeed, does not see the evil in I but sees it as one’s denial of the possible meeting with Thou. Buber (1958) wrote:
<em>The primary word I-It is not of evil – as matter is not evil. It is of -- evil
as matter is, which presumes the have the quality of present being. If a man
lets it have mastery, the continually growing world of It over-runs
him and rules him of the reality of his own I, till the incubus over him and
the ghost within him whisper to one another the confession of their own
salvation. (p.46)
</em>
Like many a humanistic philosopher would look at it, Buber believes that human nature is neither good nor bad; it is the inability of him/her to master the Ego within and to acknowledge the possible meeting of the Thou that has brought the I-It world into the present-day crises.
Buber’s work has a great many similarities with the mystical conception of Self, desire, and I-Thou relation in the major religions of the world: Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and Islam. It is necessary thus to find common themes in the Hassidic mysticism with that of others.
It would then give legitimacy to the following section’s discussion on the cosmotheandric feature of the next millenium’s educational philosophical priorities and how we deconstruct constructs and consequently to relate this notion with “trialogue” as another dimension of being-in-this-world notion; one which is preconceived upon the interplay between the Ultimate Self, the Surreal and the Creative Instinct, and with Ultimate Reality.
<span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">ON COSMOTHEANDRY</span>
If the power of Buber’s philosophy is in its mysticism brought down to the level of praxical philosophy coupled with his view that the world is to be made conducive for the Thou to meet the I, this notion must be extended in a cross-religious mystical context. The philosophical dimension of religion, as I’ve argued in the previous section, can be more powerful than its institutional and ritual dimensions.
It should be through the philosophy of religion, albeit seemingly contradictory to the mind of the orthodox and fanatic, that one can explore the essence of the dialogue between the Thou and the I, the Ultimate Self and the Ultimate Reality, between Man and Creator. In addition, and pertinent to the intent of this section, if Buber’s philosophy or in his words, “his pointing out to Reality”, can be taken to be universal and contains the realism of the Ultimate Reality, then it must be conceived to be compatible with the dimensions of other religious mysticism.
This is what is meant by the cosmotheandric nature of mystical discourse. In addition too, given the fact that Buber’s philosophy may be taken to be, by (again) the orthodox and fanatic, to be exclusively Jewish, whereas in I-Thou contains a profound statement of Man’s ontological vocation, a cosmotheandric view can best be an avenue which can appeal to educational philosophers intending to explore universality in mystical thoughts. I now illustrate some of the salient mystical ideas in consort with Buber’s relational philosophy; namely those from the Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, and Islamic traditions.
The cosmotheandric dimension of I-Thou relation in the variety of religious experience points out to the ultimate Reality and the illumination to self of which when this stage of enlightenment is achieved the “goodness” in Man is brought out, Humanity reaches its moral epitome and the I-it world is imbued with the presence and vision of Thou-ness.
In Christianity it is the Jesus of Love and the love of Jesus, which runs through the idea of the setting of the precondition of the I’s rendezvous with Thou. Illustrations of the yearning for self-illumination and the inner beauty of self-government is St. Francis Assisi’s parable of the seeker of God and poor man of a church, the Master of his own kingdom:
<em>The Master asked… : Whence are you come?’
“From God”
Where did you find God?’
When I forsook all creatures’
When have you left God?’
In pure hearts and in sea of good will.’
The Master asked: What sort of man are you?’
I am a king.’
Where is your kingdom?
‘My soul is my kingdom, so I can so rule my .
senses inwards and outward, that all the desires
and powers of my soul are in subjection, and this
kingdom is greater than a kingdom on earth:
‘What has brought you to this perfection?
My silence, my high thoughts, and my union with God.
For I could rest in anything less than God. Now
I have found and in God have eternal rest and
peace. ( Underhill, pp. 209-210)
</em>
In Buddhism, the self acknowledges the Thou-ness of his/her existence through meditation and the following of the noble path in order to for Nibbana to be attained. The I-it world can only reach salvation and prepare the meeting of the Thou through the Noble Eight-fold Path that leads to the cessation of suffering (Radhakrishnan & Moore, 1967) which among them call upon Man to:
<em>know suffering, the origin of suffering, the cessation
of suffering, and the path that leads to the cessation
of suffering; … to renounce the world and to do no hurt or
harm; … to abstain from lies and slander, from
reviling , and from tattle; … to abstain from taking
life, from stealing, and from lechery; … (p.277)
</em>
It is when these are taken to be a part of one’s program of self-purification that the I-it world may be raised to a higher level of consciousness.
In the Hindu tradition, the I-Thou meeting can be preconditioned by Man’s adherence to the Law of Manu, a code of conduct written as metrical sutras of which deals with the religious, legal, customary, and political aspects of the Hindu philosophy .The aim of life as conceived by the Hindus is to obtain fullest realization of his/her existence through dharma (righteousness), artha (wealth), kama (enjoyment) and moksha (spiritual freedom) (Radhakrishnan & Moore, p.172)
Man is to live anthromophically with Nature in a world wherein beings and non-beings have their significant in the cosmic and metaphysical order of creation. It is when the world is looked upon as an “It” -- to be dominated and peoples to be utilized that this order is violated and Mother Earth is raped and the cycle of destruction begins.
In the Taoist tradition, the character of Lao Tze, controversial to many a Confucionist of his philosophy of Nature, is an epitome of the “Thou-ness” in thought. In Lao Tze, Nature is not to be tampered with at all, illustrative in his symbolic metaphor of the uncarved stone of which creativity of Man would carve into representations. If there should be a great grandfather of ecophilosophy, Lao Tze would be one. In one of the most powerful dialogues in the Taoist philosophical thoughts, in which Kung Fu Tze (Confucius ) is said to visit Lao Tze to consult him in matters of propriety:
<em>Lao Tzu said: “Those of whom you talked about are dead and their bones are decayed. Only their words have remained. When the time is proper, the superior man rides in a carriage, but when it is not, he covers himself up and staggers away. I have heard that a good merchant stores away his treasures as if his store were empty and that a superior man with eminent virtues appear as if he were stupid. Get rid of your air of pride and many desires, your insinuating manners and lustful wishes. None of these is good for you. That is all I have to tell you. (trans., Chan, 196, p.36)
</em>
The essence of the passage and of Taoist philosophy is to live a life of humility through the subjugation of the Ego. It is this essence of naturalism in philosophical though which has brought Lao Tze’s mysticism comparable to Buber’s “Thou-ness” in which nature is seen as one amongst the many beings in the world of the Thou. The Tao The Ching (The Way) is to be followed in order for Thou to meet the I in the Taoist tradition.
The Islamic conception of mysticism must begin with the mentioning of the Prophet Muhammad as one of the world’s greatest mystic whose entire life was spent preaching the Thou-ness of living. Allah (God) is to be made present in the heart mind and soul of the believers so that the I-it world may become one in submission to the will of the Supreme Being. Peace for, oneself, for society, nations and the world order can be attained by adhering to the true spirit and meaning of the Quran.
The mystical aspect of Islam nonetheless involves one to take the path to self-purification best illustrated by those “seeking God” through, among those, Sufism. The writings of poet mystics such as Qadir Jailani, Fariduddin Attar, Jalaluddin Rumi, Omar Khayyam, Al Ghazalli and of one widely recognized in the west, Idries Shah, illustrate the Thou-ness of the tradition. The popular profound sayings of the Islamic mystics “know thyself and you will know God”, and “God is closer to you than your jugular vein” has remarkable similarity with the Hassidic belief of the closeness of God to those who seeks to meet Him through his Grace.
It is to be noted that Moses and Jesus are revered to be two of the major prophets of Islam and the monotheism in these two are but a continuation of the God’s message brought also by Muhammad as the last prophet in the lineage of those beginning with Adam.
Thus, the mysticism inherent in the religions I have scantily mentioned point out to the cosmotheandric paradigm inalienable to Buber’s idea of I and Thou. It is my view thus that the inherent philosophical aspects of those religious traditions points out to the need for their believers to work towards peace from within the self so that this boundary can then be extended to others, to beings and non-beings and ultimately to the planet and cosmos in which then, we will realize that all there is the Thou of whom which we are to provide rendezvous.
It is when the self is “lost” in the finiteness of the Thou that humanity can take its true character and that the ego is subjugated from its need to manifest all forms of behavior and acts anathema to the Thou-ness of the I.
Perhaps one may conjecture that politics being the art and science of constitutionalizing and unconstitutionalizing of power relations has been a predominant influence of the ego that Man has been veiled by the notion of the apolitical and beauty of the Inner self, that Man has created psychological, cultural, social, economic, political and global structures which mirror the triumphs of the ego over the primordially pure self.
This may perhaps explain manifestations of mania that have historically color our activities as human beings: The two World Wars, slavery, the holocaust, Nuclear Arms Race, Environmental Degradations and a range of other madness in our civilizations. The “I” seeks power, seizes it and uses it to shackle the I-it primary word so that an I-Thou relation is no longer possible. The power sought is then used to subjugate others and to threaten Nature. We then become shackled by constructs.
It is not the intent to do a dissertation on the meaning of power in the realpolitik-al sense as opposed to the mystical but a pertinent question which correlates with the Buberian and cosmotheandric view of power is that how can the self be made to realize its power within and what does it mean to be powerless yet powerful compatible with Buber’s Thou-ness of the self? I will turn to my notion of the powerful self and personacracy; “the government of the self, by the self, and for the self.” after relating trialogue with Buberian philosophy and cosmotheandry.
<span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">ON TRIALOGUE</span>
As we have seen in the previous section, at the core of the cosmotheandric view if we also juxtapose its notion with Buber’s I-it predicament in Man, is the Thou-nesses of humanity, which must be re-framed. Taking Lao Tze’s metaphor of the uncarved stone as the symbol of radical naturalism upon which Man must live by, we find a common strand in these integrative theme: it is that Man’s technological progress has reached such an advanced stage that we are able to create the most sophisticated machines which have not only make our lives easier but also, in the case of aerospace industry, have stretched our imagination to probe the meaning of Creation.
The dark side of the Lao Tze-ian or Taoist “carved stone” metaphor however has illustrated the fact that, coupled with the Thou-lesness of our I-thou primary, technology we fashioned has also contributed to environmental destruction, colonization and imperialism, militarism and transfer of national currencies (to render nations bankrupt thus affecting the lives of millions upon millions of people who do not own such sophistications in economic warfare). Those are illustrations upon which Buber may term as the I-it of or relation of virtually all levels.
Whilst Buber talked about dialogue in his pointing out to reality, we may extend this notion to a trialogue in the sense that the dialogue should involve the I’s or the Ultimate Self’s constant dialogue with what it creates (technology) in the presence of the Thou or the Ultimate Reality. We could also sum up this tripartite in this trialogue with the idea of Self-Surreal-Supreme Being.
The supra-real energies we manifest, in the form of “the stone we carved” (if we must insist on its “inevitable progress” in celebration of human creativity) must then be an act of creativity in the moral domain. We may then find countless illustrations of how technology is used to promote peace in all the domains known to Man.
It could be as though Man has brought along the carved stone in his meeting with the Thou or even more imperative would be, in Man’s urge to constantly carve the stone he/she may do it in the presence of the Thou. This is the essence of my conception of the Self-Surreal-Supreme Being or the Thou-ness of man’s acts of creation.
Technological progress, which has been heralded from one epoch another; particularly in modern history from the Industrial Revolution to this Age of Higher Species Cloning has often been assumed that it has life on its own. This presumed neutrality of technology, as illustrated for example in the “inevitable march of computers” as a triumphing engine of progress, has often mask the real actors behind the push for such progress: the multinational corporations situated predominantly in Silicon Valley. (if we analyze the United States as a source of such progress).
The inherently profit-motifed industry which perhaps produce the personal computers as spin-offs of supercomputers employed for the manning of missiles in Desert Storm or maneuvering the Space Shields in Reagan’s “Star Wars” program some time ago; these two illustrations are, in Buberian philosophy a clear example of the Thou-lesness of the human condition.
The historian David Nobel in his classic1977 work on the progress of technology in America, documented in America by Design for example, provided the historical materialistic paradigm of looking at how the owners of the means of technological production, i.e. the most powerful transnational corporations, have dictated the terms of socio-economic and educational changes not only in the United States but also extending imperialistically to the Third Worlds nations, so that the entire world become a huge production line based upon the excessive drive for profits. (See Nobel, 1977)
Taking the development of military technology as a case in point to illustrate the It-ness of our thinking, the post-Cold War era, (albeit has lessened the threat of the world being blown away ten times over), has continued to portray progress in the development of more sophisticated conventional, chemical and biological weapons.
And as stated in the lamentations at the of the beginning of this essay, one must imagine how much sophistication would be involved if the producers of the weapons of the three European countries combined their technological intelligence to produce arms more powerful and plenty in anticipation of the strength of those produced by the United States. In a world wherein the boundary between the threat to the liberal democracies par excellence, the Soviet Union as once as powerful arms producing Communist state is eliminated, in what countries would the market demand for such weapons be created?
The self who is in dialogue with the Surreal in the case of the contemporary escalation of arms race is in Buberian and cosmotheandric terms Thou-less. Man’s creativity has lost its moral basis although the cognitive faculties may have advanced beyond the thermonuclear age. In a brilliant analysis of the inconceivable blend between the I-it-ness and I-Thouness of this creative development as it relates to technological progress, an eminent professor of creativity asked this question:
<em>What is the essence of this pathology? Its essence is the failure of
civilized man to evolve appropriate new social institutions to manage
a powerful new technology. Society changes fairly slowly. Technology
changes rapidly… This unbalanced growth is especially true today,
when vast sums are spent on research to find new ways of changing
technology but those in charge of spending these funds, the political
leaders of each country, have no desire to provoke important changes
in the societies they enjoy governing. (Gruber, 1997)
</em>
As long as the world is looked upon as an “it” in Buberian philosophical term, we will then expect such imbalances in the cognitive-emotional development of Man as it relates to the developing of weaponry. The technology we develop is deployed to make each other the “enemy” within the paradigm of love-hate with the planet.
The absence of the Thou in the Surreal will remain a major obstacle in our dialogue with Ultimate Reality. Gruber (1997) who studied the paradox of this love-hate relationship with the world we have in is illustrated the case of the eminent scientists who played important roles in the development of the atomic bomb:
<em>The vacillations of the physicists who created nuclear
weapons make a well known story: Sziland, the prophetic
physicists who first tried to mobilize physicists against
contributing towards nuclear weaponry, and who then took the
lead – when a Nazi victory seemed possible – in calling
for making such weapons; Einstein, lifelong pacifist, who
followed Sziland’s lead in helping to persuade Roosevelt
to initiate the Manhattan project; Oppenheimer, who directed
that Project and then, when he saw the first mushroom cloud
at Los Alamos said, ‘we have known sin.” (p.127)
</em>
If science, as the soul of Man’s Surrealistic representation of himself/herself via technological progress, produces men of eminence who harness their brilliance in the interest of social and political institutions governed by leaders trapped in the I-it frame of existence, how then can ultimate use of science for peaceful purposes be attained?
It is prophetic if we return to Lao Tze’s metaphor of the uncarved stone as a powerful vision, which contained the relational element of the I-thou and I-it. Lao Tze would predict that should Man be not tamper with Nature and to not create, we would not have Man’s technology destroying the Earth and each other. Should Man tamper with the Earth and create, he would not be able to control what is created.
If we analyze the state of technological progress at its most excessive stage, we will come to the conclusion that it is because the dialogue between Man and his Creativity is stripped off of the presence of the Supreme Being that Creativity and Technological Progress has fallen into the immoral domain. This is the main idea of this section on trialogue as a concept, which can be a guide to thinking about the educational framework for peace as we race towards a century, which may perhaps be filled with more anxieties and perplexities.
Too radical it may perhaps be for us to accept the Taoist conception of creativity – to not create at all –, as it would mean living the life of a Thoreau, a Longfellow or a Robinson Crusoe. The “Ego” or Desire in its most positive aspect could mean the creative instinct in us bestowed upon by the Supreme Being, the Supreme Creative Mind so that we may meet them in Grace after undergoing through the trials and tribulations in life by using our creativity and problem-solving skills. Perhaps the scenario of peoples of this Earth living in lives of isolation in a Taoist imaginary world may also produce technologies of a different breed; one of metaphysical powers perhaps as claimed that many among of religious mystics possess.
Certainly this is not a forum for discussion for we may also find that in such an imaginary world with metaphysical, magical, or mystical technologies there would be no guarantee that different forms of domination and destruction may also be cultivated by the Ego. The trialogical perspective in our discussion entails the discussion of what can constitute the transformation of the Surreal into the sacred in which the Ultimate Self’s development of Creativity and the deployment of his technology will always be in dialogue in the presence of the ultimate Reality or the Supreme Being.
What kind of Self do we develop then, should we wish to see technology developed in the I-Thou paradigm? How do we understand the Franciscan idea alluded in the previous section which illustrated a man who called himself a king without a kingdom yet governs a world within larger than the world outside?
This is certainly a mystical concept, which goes beyond the idea of modern-day democracy in the individual. Can there be a more logical, systematic and in depth analysis of the I, beyond the I and selfhood described by Buber?
Can we conceive and make intelligible for the modern man a condition wherein the self is larger than the world outside and at the same time offer explanations compatible with the notion of individual liberty so ingrained in the modern-day democratic tradition? What should be a philosophy much deeper than the combination of demos and kratos? I now turn my notion of personacracy in the following section; one which attempt to frame selfhood within the I-Thou and, cosmotheandric and trialogical concepts.
<span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">ON PERSONACRACY</span>
If Buber’s philosophy is to brought further down the level of analytical philosophy, if the cosmotheandric view from the varieties of religious discourse is to be made understood beyond their mystical garb, if the I which governs the Surreal is to be recognized as the I of Thou, and if democracy is to be practiced at the most meaningful and personalized level, and if human and social dimension of peace is to be grown as a perspective, we may have to define what “government of the self, of the self and by the self” means. We now look at the concept of “personacracy” as a synthesis of the perspectives thusfar presented.
My own reflection over the years on the meaning (or the loss of meaning) of democracy as the idea of government by the by the people (demos & kratos) and my disillusionment of its development of one which is for the privileged few, coupled with my believe that the government which governs the least governs the best, and my question of “who should rule, why should we be ruled, and a range of other reflections -- all these have awakened the fundamental urge to search for the meaning of “governance”.
In addition, my own quest for the meaning of existence through intense reading of Sufism and the universality in the spiritual quest in all religions have contributed to this conception of what personacracy means. And it is within this personalistic experience that I too look at race, ethnicity, and culture as constructs we can move beyond from.
If the “I” in Buber’s philosophy is to prepare itself for the meeting with Thou, how would the nature of preparation be? If we entrust a human being to rule others, how would we wish the nature of governance be?
If democracy is to be the one best political ideology thusfar conceived, how would its interpretation be if we are to live in system based on this idea and yet wish to see militarism, oppression, environmental degradation, racial discrimination, and all other forms of pathologies which may develop, be absent in such a system? In short, would the form of government be based upon the rule of the I-Thou person, or one of I-it?
The common theme, which runs through this essay, is the concern that the I-it world is a reality and the I-Thou is a hope. The I-it person who governs, or enjoy governing others manifest his/her I-it-ness, the I-it technology created, or is used by its owner, manifest itself in its destructive and misanthropic forms, and the I-it system of government being created, destroyed, or sustained projects the excesses of power as manifested in authoritarianism, corruption, illusions of grandeur, misguided priorities, and control of the state apparatus for distributive injustice intents.
History has shown us examples of I-it governments, kingdoms, civilizations and the like, which have undergone their rise and falls. The Babylon of Nebuchadnezzer, the Egypt of Ramses, the Rome of Pontius Pilate, the Germany of Hitler, and the Soviet Union of Stalin are among the major few which illustrate the governments of the Thou-less it.
My conception of government is that it must begin with the self, the development of personhood, liberated of the I-it ness of its existence and evolve via dialectical dialogical means adhering closely to the Socratic tradition so that when the self has at its disposal any technology it embodies and employs, it will be used for peaceful purposes and so that the Thou-ness is present in the Surrealistic dimension.
The personacratic I if he/she may be asked to govern others will govern them with the Thou-ness of governance of which the society which will emerge and the organic-ness of the culture will be Thou-ful in its civility. The personacratic I will be one with Nature for in Nature, like in I contains the Thou. Thus the ontology of the personacratic I is one of constant trialogue of the Ultimate Self and the Surreal with the Supreme Being constantly present in its Absolutism. What forms of civility will then personacracy contain?
If personacracy is “a government of the self, by the self and for the self” it must contain the attributes of the Thou if it must meet the Grace of Thou in its existence.
Being and becoming, as Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus have championed, becomes an essential pedagogy determining our understanding of the beauty of personacracy as self-government contained in them are the questions: What is it to be a human person? What is it like to explore the gifts of the intellect? of understanding liberation? of free world? of having died before Death comes? of being embodied by the Human spirit? of having power over Ego? and of coming to understand our personhood as an image of God?
Personacracy is an existential metaphysical notion which may allow one to understand the image of God within and to understand that forces outside (which are representations of the inside) oppressive and anathema to human liberation can never subjugate the free self. Personacracy rests on the maxim that “the government of the self governs the very best.” It entails one’s understanding and living with the cosmic dimension of the self; dimension which are in essence the Beauty and the Bounty of the Thou.
If Man is said to have been created in the image of God, how is this image hence manifested? It is when Man is aware of the elements and forces within that the meeting with Thou can be authentically Graceful. Herein lies the branches of the government of the self; one’s understanding that his selfhood is one of existence, balance, persistence, eternity, harmony, uniqueness, power within, decisiveness, knowledge, living, ability to hear, see, speak and the ability to understand with reverie and profundity who sees what is seen, who speaks what is spoken, who hears what is heard, who knows what is known, who decides what is decided, and who powers what is powered.
If the Thou may meet the I it must be through thus common ground of the common language spoken, of the unity within and without. If Man is to be Creative, then the Created is that of the Supreme Creator, and if Technology is to be deployed the Technicity is that of the Supreme Technician. “The “I” proposes, the Thou then disposes.” What the I touches becomes those touched by the Thou. The veil of ignorance is lifted and the mundane becomes the sacred and profound. It becomes the Thou and the essence of humanity becomes illuminated. The Ego is then but a slave to the I in the I-Thou. If the elements outside – earth, wind, fire and water are to constitute the physical world then they must be compatible to Man’s being-ness as a Creation.
In the cosmopolitan tradition then the four element-constituted self thus is merely differentiated by the skin color bestowed upon by the Ultimate Reality so that they may perhaps learn to go beyond their communitarianism in their attempt to cultivate, at least in their one lifetime, a suitable place for the Thou to meet. And it may be through self purification and managing of the Ego that the veils of ignorance can gradually be lifted so that the self may not be shadows mistaken as real by those in chains, projected onto the walls of the cave in an allegory conjured by perhaps a personacrat called Socrates.
Democracy in a society of personacratic I’s then may not be necessary of its existence in that one would in such a society need food, shelter and clothing and be in constant business of preparing for the meeting with Thou. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, much popularly employed by the I-it world of mass advertising, may be reduced to two levels; one of meeting the basic needs and at the next and final level, of meeting the Thou.
The Internet as an extension and Surrealistic notion of Man’s telepathic power may not be needed to be developed as the purity of thoughts of the citizens in a personacratic state is powerful enough to destroy any physical boundaries of communication. Communication, defined as the equal exchange of social messages can take its true definition as the personacratic “I”s communicates in the presence of Thou.
Weapons of mass destruction will be inconceivable as their development would violate the most fundamental doctrine of personacracy, i.e. to be at Peace with oneself so that the Absolute Peace – the Thou – will only come to meet the I in such a condition. Slavery and other forms of dehumanization on others may also be inconceivable or all personacratic I’s will be judged the worth of their existence in the amount of Thou-ness in them.
We may continue to envision a scenario of a global and planetary community of personacratic I’s in their Thou-ness of their existence, in all spheres of human activities but the essence of their section points to the notion that it must began with one’s recognition of the I as a government in itself; a kingdom wherein the I is a king. Perhaps only when there are more personacratic Is are created, the form of governments other than the ones I-it in nature prevalent and contagious of their presence will be gradually eliminated. We do not then wait for the Messiah, for Jesus’ Second Coming, or for alMahdis to establish a kingdom of God but create personacratic I’s who would be sparsely distributed on the face of this earth to pose non-violent threats to the existing “I-it ‘forms of government.
The ultimate aim would then be for the global society to see a thesis-antithesis-synthesis and praxis of the movement of the personacratic I’s so that in the end all that will exist will be a grand meeting place of the Thou and the I. Such is a conjecture. If the world may not see such a scenario, it may perhaps be blown up ten times over as a culmination of the march of progress of the Thou-less I. What then can be a middle path?
<span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">ON PEACE AS PROCESS</span>
Instead of a conclusion, I am offering the following closing passages of hope and activism in our view that that peace must be conceived and constituted as a process and an evolving system with the personacratic “I”s playing their role as makers of history and guardians of humanistic futurism.
Before we reach the final exit of this essay which calls upon one to realize “self government which governs the very best” and one which can most meaningfully define the human and social dimension of peace, we look at the aims of an educational framework which is based upon the themes we have discussed thusfar in the previous section.
I have argued for the value of Buber’s Thou-ness in being and becoming, align this concept with mystical dimensions of a variety of major religious thought, offer arguments for the need for technology and creativity to be developed in the presence of the Ultimate Reality, and lastly to offer an introduction to the concept of the kingdom of the self.
These arguments represent and yield premises to our reconstructing of educational framework and the deconstructing of communitarianism in the way we perceive race relations as we come to the close of this century, and step with anxiety into what could be a more turbulent century.
From the formulations of premises and the conceptualization of an alternative definition of government above, the aim of education for deconstruction becomes more increasingly of process. It becomes one whose aim is to realize being, living, and becoming as creative and moral act based upon the principles of liberation rather than development, transformation rather than mutation, trialogue rather than monologue or dialogue, cosmopolitanism rather than communitarianism, eco-philosophical rather than ecodominations, and cosmic rather than close–centric.
These aims are to provide a “benchmarking” out of the constructs we have created out of the I’it –ness of our existence; constructs such as oppression, control and subjugation, monological and dialogical limiting tendencies in communication, communitarianism, eco-political anti-philosophical contentions, and atomistic and mechanistic reductionism in ideological formulations.
If the aims of education are to counter the excesses as such constructs supra, what would be the process in to be followed in order for one to attain peace as the ultimate “state of being-ness and becoming-ness” of living? I offer the following strands of activism if we are to travel in the humanistic futuristic path:
i. that we transform power relations which are anathema to the principles
of Thou-ful living for, such a transformation can help us address more profoundly the issue of distributive injustices which has plagued us since the dawn of history.,
ii. that we transform the concept of creativity which leans towards certain
destructive tendencies for, synthesis of major metaphysical strands in religious traditions can give us a futuristic outlook to living as beings on “Spaceship Earth”.,
iii. that we transform the will to use technology for destructive ends for, peaceful use of this Surrealistic manifestation can render technology as an ethical and powerful tool for socialization.,
iv. that we transform knowledge structure and control which is characterized
by its inherent I-it-ness for, such a transformation can make us better understand and act upon orthodoxies in our conception of race, ethnicity, and culture.,
v. that we transform environmental policies which failed to drastically halt
ecological degradation for such transformation and the concern for the common destiny of human beings can help our children inherit a better future from us.,
vi. that we transform our consciousness from one of merely being in this
world to being in this world with the Thou being in it for the spirituality within the paradigm of cosmopolitanism can strengthen our unity and dignity as a human race.
The activisms I profess out of the six strands are but a synthesis of much of the cutting edge thoughts on the precondition of a globally humane and peaceful world order beyond the issues of race, culture, ethnicity, culture, and nationalism. They perhaps can force us to think at the supranational level within the metaphysical plane.
Through the vehicle of education for critical, creative, spiritual, and futuristic consciousness, we can perhaps carry out this process of trialogue by first reordering ourselves along the line of realizing ourselves as kings ruling our own kingdoms and queens ruling our own queendoms, in the presence of Thou. It must begin with a systematic study of our Self drawn from religious and philosophical tradition most dear and familiar to our hearts.
If we must envision a future, it must be one of which wisdom rules and peace reigns. We are to be reminded, in this process, by metaphysical axioms such as “know thyself”, “God is closer to you than your jugular vein”, “ know thyself know thy powers within, one hundred trials and tribulations, one hundred victories."
And in conceptualizing and envisioning the shape of education to come, I end this analytical-praxical essay with the condition of the meeting of the I and the Thou uttered by the great Sufi mystic Jalalludin Rumi:
<em>No lover ever seeks union with his beloved
But this beloved is also seeking union with him
But the lover’s love makes his body lean
While the beloved’s love makes her fair and lusty
When in this heart the lightning spark of love arises,
Be sure this love is reciprocated in that heart
When the love of God arises in thy heart
Without doubt God also feels love for thee. (quoted in Underhill, p. 134)
</em>
PEACE, LOVE, AND DECONSTRUCTIONISM
<strong>BIBLIOGRAPHY
</strong>
Boehle, J. (1997). “Dialogue or trialogue: The personal and transcendent dimension in interreligious and intercultural dialogue.” Available:
http://sun1.bham.ac.uk/j.boehle/pub.html.
Boutros-Ghali, B. (1992). “An agenda for peace: Peacemaking and peacekeeping,” Report of the secretary-general pursuant to the statement adopted by the summit meeting of the security council, January 31. New York: United Nations.
Buber, M. (1958). I and thou. New York: Collier Books.
Commission on Global Governance (1995). Our global neighborhood: The report of the commission on global governance. New York: Oxford University Press.
Chan, W-T. (1963). Trans. The way of Lao Tzu (Tao the ching). New York: Bobbs-
Merrill Co.
Felice, W. F. (1996). Taking suffering seriously: The importance of collective rights. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder.
Gruber, H. (date unknown). “Man or megaperson?” Source unknown. Teachers College, Columbia: in Reader. Course: development of creativity. Fall 1997.
Gruber, H. (date unknown). “Can a baby be an enemy?,” Source unknown. Teachers College, Columbia: in Reader. Course: development of creativity. Fall 1997.
Herberg, W. (Ed.) (1956). The writings of Martin Buber. New York: Meridian.
Nobel, D. (1977). America by design: Science, technology, and the rise of corporate capitalism.New York: Oxford University Press.
Pannikar, R. (date unknown) Source unknown. Teachers College, Columbia: lecture notes. Course: United Nations as Peace Educator. Fall 1997.
Rawles, J. (1971). A theory of justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Radhakrishna, S. & Moore, C.A.E. (Eds.) (1967). A sourcebook in Indian philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Reardon, B. (1996). Sexism and the war system. New York: Syracuse University Press.
Shue, H. (1980). Basic rights: Subsistence, affluence, and U.S. foreign policy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Tessitore, J. & Woolfson, S. (Eds.) (1997). A global agenda: issues before the 52nd. general assembly of the united nations. Boston: UNA-USA.
Underhill, E. (1955). Mysticism. New York: Meridian.Dr. AZLY RAHMANhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07437908281114330911noreply@blogger.com36tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11166677.post-1133760975666631902005-12-04T21:33:00.000-08:002007-10-02T17:36:58.388-07:0041] Hegemony and Spaces of Knowledge/Power<span style="color: rgb(51, 102, 255);"><strong></strong></span><span style="color:#3333ff;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><b> Hegemony and Spaces of Knowledge/Power in the Conceptualization of Malaysia’s new ‘intelligent cities”: a Focoultian analysis of</b></span>
<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><b> Malaysia’ s Multimedia Super Corridor</b> </span>
</span>
<i><b> Introduction</b></i>
This essay concerns how what is connotated by the phrase “digital or cybernetic revolution” is “inscribed” onto the landscape of humanity, particularly that of Malaysia, a state governed by what de Certeau (1984) might term as, the “scriptural economy.” It starts with the premise that a concept can become ideology, and then architectural landscape, and then a paradigm of control over political, cultural, and economic spaces. It hopes to suggest how human beings are conditioned and opiated by signs and symbols produced and reproduced by those who own the means of technological and intellectual productions (Marx & Engels, 1967). The central feature of this brief study is an exploration of the nature of hegemony as consciousness-production and the creation of what Varenne (2003) might term as “constraints of culture” rather than the creation of its “possibilities” for human liberation. I am exploring how ideas flow transculturally, become inscription, get installed as systems of control, and evolve into ideology that becomes yet another indigenized systems of thought and material- formation.
In my exploration of the concept of hegemony, I am concerned with its nature and the subdivisions it produces, as well as with how the system of consciousness-formation is layered in all its complexities and become what Marx would now perhaps call “prozac” of a higher potency and dosage. To this end, this study looks at the conceptualization and the building of the “intelligent” and “digital” city of Cyberjaya in hyper-modernizing Malaysia, a business capital and the economic nerve of a grand-scale real estate project called “Multimedia Super Corridor” (henceforth, “MSC”) of the regime of Mahathir Mohamad, her fourth Prime Minister.
I propose that the introduction of new technologies into social spheres will facilitate the maintenance of ideology, which will then help direct policies, establish new institutions that will then create newer forms of hegemonic conditions that will continue to benefit the ruling class. I argue, hegemonic conditions, processes, and consequences will further advance the development of higher forms of technologies that will then, through the idea of human-machine interaction, establish better systems of control. Such a cyclical and structurally systematic operation, as I have suggested in the cycle of hegemony in Figure 1 below, determines the nature of the sophistication of hegemony. Hence, the owners of the means of production of technologies will also be executive directors of the processes. Spaces of knowledge/power are created.
Rather than addressing hegemony merely from a “Gramscian” perspective, I choose to analyze this concept using a mixed-method approach. I call this formulation “towards a theory of hegemonic formations” and use multidimensional perspectives to look at how the concept of “cybernetics” transforms the development of this state in Southeast Asia. I hope to generate a “thick description” of the hegemonic process. This study looks at the “high and low stakes” of nations undergoing development in the age of high-speed globalization and ideological rapidization.
The idea of Malaysia’s Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC), a grand project of social transformation, is a major feature of its political leadership’s agenda for national development. University lecturers like me were considered part of the class of “knowledge workers” mandated to explain to the people what these changes are about and how these benefit the rakyat (“the people”). I was a lecturer in Malaysia’s sixth public university, Universiti Utara Malaysia in Sintok, Kedah (which specializes in Management studies) teaching courses such as English as a Second Language, Foreign Policy, Management Ethics, and Thinking Skills. The mid-1990s saw the intensification of the development of Malaysia’s management sciences based upon advanced principles of Taylorism (Schmidt & Finnigan, 1993; Vavrek, 1992) which then permeated into virtually all spheres of management, including perhaps “Islamic Management System.” The idea of the MSC was part of the ethos of Information Systems Management, which would then be a formula to “cybernate” the nation towards progress and to “quantum leap” Malaysia into the Information Age (Mohamad, 1998). It was felt that the nation needed a newer set of installation as “commanding heights” of the scriptural economy. Mahathir Mohamad, the fourth prime minister oversaw the major national transformation. The ideology of technological progress and the notion of riding the waves of globalization along with the steering of the nation to a “Vision 2020” (a metaphorical date of the end of the benchmark of national development) —all these became the raison d’etre and the leitmotif of the Mahathir regime.
<i><b> My research question/Inquiry theme</b></i>
My interest in this brief study is to find out how variant the concept of hegemony might be, and how might Focoult’s idea of space/knowledge (Focoult, XXXX) be applicable in looking at the issue of control in the spaces of power human beings create.
Rationale for the Study
Why study Malaysia? It is an interesting state which can be looked at as a “laboratory of social and global experimentation” after having undergone historical periodizations such as pre-colonial kingdomship and “overlordships,” colonialism, independence, development of statehood, and finally, participation in the globalized economy. The rationale of this study lies in investigating the role technology plays in the deep-structuring of hegemony and how it interplays with the political and the productive forces of the state. Another rationale lies in studying the way capitalism is characterized into what many scholars have termed as “informational” capitalism (Castells, 2000). I also hope to uncover the political psychology of control (see Marcuse, 1985) as the system has evolved culturally; a blend of traditional systems of control aided by an emergent system technologically-inspired (see Beniger, 1986).
In studying the idea of “inscriptions,” a key feature of this exploration, the study will attempt to contribute to our understanding of how “concepts get inscribed” onto the landscape and then become ideology which then become consciousness which ultimately continue to change the relations of production and brings about the creation of a technological culture. I now present a background of the country.
<b><i> Malaysia: Geography, Demographics, History, and Politics</i></b>
In the following sections, I discuss the background information, namely the geography, demography, history, and politics of Malaysia that will help situate this study of Malaysian transformation.
Geography
Malaysia consists of East and West Malaysia of which the former is an island that also includes the Indonesian territory of Kalimantan and the latter, a peninsula. The South China Sea separates the two land mass (see the map in Figure 13). The country is located on the Southeastern part of Asia, consisting of a peninsula and the island of Borneo that borders Indonesia and the South China Sea, south of Vietnam. Malaysia has a total size of 329, 750 square kilometers. It has a tropical monsoon climate. Its strategic resources are tin, petroleum, timber, copper, iron ore, natural gas, and bauxite.
Demographics
The 2002 population of Malaysia is estimated to be about 23 million people, with almost 2 per cent rate of population growth. About 34 percent of its population is between the age of zero to fourteen, almost 62 percent between the ages fifteen to 64, and about 5 percent falls in the category of sixty-five and over. Malays and indigenous peoples collectively termed as “Bumiputras” (literally “Sons of the Soil”) consist of 58 per cent of the population, Chinese 24%, and Indians and others 10%. Malay or Bahasa Malaysia is the official language while English, Chinese (of various dialects such as Cantonese, Mandarin, Hakka, Hainan, and Foochow) and Indian (of the dialects Tamil, Telegu, Malayalam, and Panjabi) and Thai are spoken. In East Malaysia, the languages of the tribes of Iban and Kadazan are spoken. The literacy rate is 83.5 per cent of the total population. The current emphasis in this country’s literacy education is on “computer literacy” or the ability to be technologically literate so that the people can fully participate in the “Information Age” and be intellectually resilient enough to participate in the globalization process (Mohamad, 2002).
History
I will now sketch a brief history of Malaysia, particularly of it as a former British colony, to situate the development of The MSC that houses Cyberjaya. Ancient history of the Malay peninsula chronicle the region as a vibrant crossroad of trade called “The Maritime Silk Trade Route” in which the crosswinds help facilitate the maritime trade in Asia (Braddell, 1980; Jacq-Hergoualc’h, 2002). The earliest most powerful kingdom that is linked to the Malays is Sriwijaya (Coedès & Damais, 1992). Arguably, the history of modern Malaysia began with the founding of the kingdom of Melaka (Malacca) in the early 1400. Islam, brought to the Malay Islands by Arab and Indian Muslim traders in the 1300s, was the religion of the traditional rulers of the Melakan kingdom and the feudal system was the feature of statecraft. Melaka was said to be established by a Javanese prince Parameswara in exile from a power struggle in Palembang, Sumatra (Osman, 1997). The prince, before reaching Melaka, transited in the island of Temasik, (in what is now the city-state of Singapore,) and murdered the Siamese overlord that was governing the island under a Siamese tutelage system. Escaping to the neighboring peninsula, Parameswara rested under a Melaka tree in a spot he came to immediately like after he witnessed a kancil (a small reindeer-like animal) overcame a dog. Upon seeing that incident, Parameswara decided to name the declared area of his kingdom, Melaka after the name of the tree he was resting under. Hence generations of the Javanese assassin-prince came to be known as Sultans, ruled the enlarged territory of strategic waterway significant to the growth of the early Malay kingdom (Bastin & Winks, 1979).
The kingdom of Melaka was short-lived; the navigational and gun power of the Portugese was more superior to those of the Melakkans. The kingdom fell to Portugese rule in 1511. The Portugese possessed superior navigational and military technology, facilitating the conquest of Melaka. The date became the earliest of a series of European colonialism. Melaka, after the Portugese, was taken over by the Dutch who saw Southeast Asia as an economic region rich in spices (Andaya & Andaya, 1982).
Next came the period of British colonialism. The superior sea power of the British Empire as well as its sophistication in navigational and gunnery technology, fuelled by the Christian military-millinearistic ideology of "Guns, Guts, and Glory," facilitated Malaya to be handed over from the Dutch. British rule was the longest of the colonial rules; it left an indelible impact on the historical-materialistic and ideological landscape of the once considered glorious Malay kingdom (Funston,1980; Gullick, 2000; Milner, 1982). The British colonization of Malaya, much like that of the Dutch in Indonesia, the French in Indochina, the Spaniards in the Philippines (Tarling, 2001), was the feature of nineteenth century imperialism.
On August 31st, 1957 Malaya was officially and peacefully granted independence. It was in September of 1963 that the Federated and non-Federated states of Malaya, Sarawak, Sabah, and initially Singapore united to form what is now known as Malaysia (Funston, 2001; Khoo, 1991; Ongkili, 1985). In 1965 however, the busy port of Singapore, one of the earliest British Straits settlement, ceased to be a member of the Malaysian federation and became an independent city-state. The newly formed Malaysia had to “expel” Singapore for political, geographic, electoral, and demographic reasons—Singapore had too many Chinese that would threaten the new Malay-dominated federation (see for example, Milne & Mauzy, 1999). There were several reasons why the British gave Malaysia its independence. One is that it is costly for the Britain to maintain the states because of the growth of Malaysia's population, and the ailing British Empire saw that it was no longer profitable to maintain colonies.
Furthermore, the attractive idea of self-determinism was gaining momentum especially in the form of nationalist struggles, armed or un-armed, all over the world, with the Beijing-based Marxist-Leninist inspired Malaysian Communist Party as an example of anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist armed struggle (Chin, 1994). In Malaysia, education in various forms was beginning to produce people within each of the ethnic communities not content to leaving their future entirely in British hands. Anti-colonialist attitudes were stirring in the 1930's, heralding strong Malay political organization later (Khoo, 1991; Milne & Mauzy, 1986).
Independence was granted also when the natives were perceived as already been given enough skills and training to govern the country albeit in the style of British colonial administration known as the Civil Service. Many from the aristocratic class went through the process of education for social and political enculturalization through the British education system. Sons of the Malay sultans were sent to Britain to pursue studies in law and administration. In Malaya itself, English-medium (known as “English-type”) schools proliferated in all the states paving way for a systematic form of education for social reproduction and for the continuation of British Imperialist ideology. In other words, the structuring of hegemony or the inscribing of the ideology of colonialism at the level of education of the nations was a feature of the strategy of British imperialism (Heussler, 1981; Stockwell, 1995).
An important consequence of colonialism was thus the creation of a class of administrative elite among the "Sons of the Soil": or the Bumiputras out of the sons of the traditional Malay Sultans. Malaysia's first Prime Minister, Tengku Abdul Rahman Putra Alhaj, son of the Sultan of Kedah, was educated in Britain. Trained in the British Administrative tradition, he governed like a British official inspired by Malay nationalism couched in British idealism inscribing British tradition of civil service onto the minds of the traditional people. Malaysia's second Prime Minister Abdul Razak, and the third Prime Minister, Hussein Onn, was also British-educated. Malaysia's fourth and recently retired (on October 31st 2003) Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, is the only Malaysian Prime Minister that was not British-educated (see Cheah, 1999). The education of Mahathir Mohamad and the system he evolved through, has contributed much to the manner the state's development policies were engineered, illustrated in his early writings on society, politics, and education (Mohamad, 1995). His fondness of "Looking East," i.e. his deep admiration of the Japanese and "Buying British Last" and his suggestions of creating an "East Asia Economic Caucus" (EAEC) are among the slogans and proposals used to create a sense of identity in the few decades after Independence (Milne & Mauzy, 1999). It is against this backdrop of this Malaysia’s fourth Prime Minister, and his administration's coming back to "Asian values" whilst at the same time, seeing the power of Information Technology that the MSC was created (Moggie, 2002).
Politics
As mentioned earlier, Malaysia was granted independence on the 31st of August 1957 and was established as a Federation on July 9, 1963. Its political system is one of Constitutional Monarch, fashioned after the British monarchy and Parliamentary systems, understandably because of the influence of British colonialism. It has nine hereditary rulers in charge of religious and ceremonial affairs to safeguard the interests and rights of the Malays. The hereditary rulers elect their Supreme Ruler or the Yang Di Pertuan Agong every five years (CIA, 2003). The head of state functions as a rubber stamp monarch to facilitate the operations of the State. The parliamentary system is bicameral, consisting of a non-elected Upper/Senate/Dewan Negara and an elected Lower House/House of Representatives/Dewan Rakyat. There are thirteen states and two federal territories (of Kuala Lumpur and Labuan). The newest federal territory is the city of Putrajaya, an ancillary subject of this study (CIA).
At present, the National Front (Barisan Nasional) which consists of a coalition of communal/ethnic-based political parties has ruled Malaysia since Independence. The United Malays National Organization (UMNO) dominates the coalition that consists of The Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA), The Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) and other ethic-based parties from East Malaysia (Mauzy, 1983). The leader of the coalition has traditionally become the Prime Minister. At the time of the writing of this dissertation, an alternative coalition, called Barisan Alternatif, was formed out of three parties namely Malaysian Islamic Party (Parti Islam Se-Malaysia), National Justice Party (Parti Keadilan Malaysia), and the Malaysia People’s Party (Partai Rakyat Malaysia). It is expected that the coming general election of December 2003 will see the communal-based ruling coalition party being seriously challenged by the new opposition-coalition that aspires to create a new politics organized not along communalism but on social justice, human rights, and inter-racial understanding. The unresolved multivariate issues concerning economic development, democracy, human rights, communalism and class politics will be the areas of contestation of the politics of this nation (Said & Emby, 1996).
Conclusion
In the preceding sections, I have briefly outlined the geographic, demographic, historical, and political aspects of Malaysia. These provide a background to this study of a nation with almost eighty percent of its economy engaged in service and manufacturing, a transition from the agricultural-based economy. The history of the nation is characterized by periods of transformation from one political entity to another: overlordship, kingdomship, colony, to self-government and sovereign state integrated into the closely-knit global production system. In the following chapter, I shall detail the development of the MSC. The medical doctor turned politician became the Prime Minister of Malaysia on July 16, 1981 (i.e. for more than 22 years) in a Malaysia that has been independent for only 46 years. He finally retired on October 31, 2003.
I now proceed with a review of select literature.
<b> Review of Selected Literature</b>
The Mantra of Information Technology and its Sources
In Sanskrit, the word “mantra” (mentera in Malay ) means formula. In the context of this study, the mantra is correlated to the idea of a grand strategy or a belief system in the form of political ideology that permeates the consciousness of the leader and the led or the author and the authored. Inscribed onto the consciousness of the people, via print, broadcast, and electronic media is the mantra of economic success rapidized by information technologies. The formula for success many developing nations, such as Malaysia, is undertaking is one characterized by the dependency on Informational Communications Technologies (ICT) particularly on the technology of the Internet/broadband to fuel the engine of capitalist development, relegating the state as a haven for cheap pool of labor in the microchips industry (McMichael, 1996). The mantra of success is one driven by the belief in the formula of “cybernetics.” I will discuss how the cybernetic chant, one orchestrated and broadcast by the government, permeates through the social environment.
In this section, I shall relate the idea and genealogy of cybernetics to the idea of what is currently known as “Information Age” or its varying and more fanciful terms such as “The Age of Cybernetics,” or “The Networked Economy,” or “The Digital Age.” I will then relate the idea of this “formula” of cybernetics to the notion of “inscription” of the ideology onto the landscape of human consciousness since the beginning of the second half of the twenty-first century.
<b> On Cybernetics
</b> The idea of “Information Society” or “The Network Society” stems out of the revolution in computing and has transformed our psychological, ideological, and material landscape of humanity. Social relations of production are altered and transformed as a result of new patterns of division of labor in what Gleick (1988) would call patterns that arise out of randomness and chaos.
There are different levels of meaning of cultural change as it is impacted historically by “technologies of the body,” such as the Internet. In the case of cybernetics as technologies of the mind, this seems to be a “natural progression of late stage of capital formation” and in fact, as Marcuse (1941) and many a Frankfurt School analysts (e.g. Horkheimer, 1973) would call an age wherein technologies are at its final stage of development which will actually liberate humanity out of mundanity as a consequence of automation. Hence cybernetics, as a foundation of artificial intelligence and a philosophy close to the Cartesian philosophy of the mind and appealing to the "philosophy of human liberation via technological feats," is at the present, the highest stage in the development of techno-capitalism. This proposition is reminiscent of Lenin’s conclusion on the analysis of capitalism made almost a century ago (Lenin, 1916).
Writings on social structures and political theory have primarily centered on the relationship between Capital, Humanity, and Nature. Many have written on how capitalism appropriates natural resources through the creation of labor and surplus value, which will then establish classes (See Frank, 1966; Wallerstein 1981, 1990; Wignaraja, 1993;) and habitus (Bourdieu, 1994). The debates that rage between the proponents of free market enterprise and command or controlled economies revolve around the issue of human nature, and who gets to control the production and dissemination and the monopoly of capital. At times, on a different plane there is also the reflection on the need for capital to be interpreted not only as physical or material, but also as cultural, and metaphysical. The central issue of these writings and debate and reflections is of equality and equity; an issue that continues to plague humanity in this age of rapidized technological developments, as echoed by many a contemporary social theorist (Bell, 1976; Ellul, 1964).
In the age of cybernetics, Rousseau’s (1755/1992) notion of the discourse on the inequality amongst men can be used to explain the evolution of contemporary social problematique such as digital divide, architecture of power, and the erosion of the Self into fragmented and miniscule selves (Turkle, 1997). Other themes also include the furtherance of protectionist democracy via the use of tools of cybernetics, the control over the coding, encoding, and decoding of information by those who monopolize information, and a range of other tools of imperialism and domination and hegemony deployed and employed to the fullest advantage of those who owns the means of social reproduction. And those who own the means to control these processes can also own the means to engineer cultural reconfigurations (see Adorno, 1991; Chomsky, 1989; Horkheimer, 1973; Said, 1993). The nature of thought formation and consciousness production in the world of broadcast media (Bagdikian, 1983) can be exemplified in the media capitalism of Rupert Murdoch whose empire span Britain and the United States (Fallows, 2003) made possible by the modern oligopolic system of capital accumulation (see for examples, Barnet & Muller, 1974; California Newsreels, 1978 for an early analysis of oligopoly).
The scientific paradigm of cybernetics, by virtue of its origin in the mathematical and exact sciences, out of the Copernican Revolution, of Newtonian physics and of Principia Mathematica, onwards to its march of Classical Physics, and next, Quantum Physics and Informational and Decisional Sciences and so on— is a science which has appropriated the "Natural-ness" of the art of being human. Being a paradigm subjected to the development of propositions, verification by the testing of hypotheses, falsification by the rejecting and accepting of the null, and replicating these processes and so on and so forth (Rosenblueth, Wiener, & Bigelow, 1968), cybernetics creates a "space" between what is Natural and what is Artificial. In-between these spaces, Technology as the motivator of civilizations to progress and to dominate, to extent the limits of what otherwise is impossible (for example the navigational technology of Christopher Columbus which made it possible to open up European colonization of the Native Indians of Amerigo Vespucci's America) is also psychologically, a way to create the Technocratic and Authoritarian self. In between these spaces of Nature versus the Artificial lie Media as technology of the mediated self. Technology, as it is developed not by the hands of the "Author" has thence become a powerful tool of the surreal—of inequality amongst men (Rousseau, 1755/1992). Popular culture presents technology as a colonizer of humanity, as exemplified by the theme of the movie, The Matrix (Mason & Silver (Producers), & Wachowski & Wachowski (Directors), 1999).
Cybernetics as a paradigm of thinking about the technology of action and feedback and the loops they produce (see Bertalanffy, 1968; Simon, 1996; Wiener, 1954) is an interesting synthesis of three theoretical orientations: logical positivism, critical theory, and phenomenology (see Bredo & Feinberg, 1982). The paradox is that on the one hand, it is derived from the Classical and Quantum Physics, on the one hand, it is a good foundational philosophy of technologism which combines many fields to form a unified theory of living things (like Critical Theory's attempt to universalize and integrate the disciplines, albeit in a dialectical fashion), and on the other hand, Cybernetics too is phenomenological.
Precisely because we can derive three clusters of theories out of the paradigms above makes Cybernetics appealing and hegemonizing. The Internet as a manifestation of the ideology of cybernetics is a good example of how it is both a technology of advanced logical-positivism, and at the same time, one that is employed to make the concept of democracy more “accessible” when one goes into the study of free speech on the Internet.
Cybernetics and the Idea of Cyberjaya. What is the link between the mantra of Cybernetics and the creation of Malaysia’s Cyberjaya? In Figure 2, I propose a visual representation of a possible link between Cybernetics and Cyberjaya; on how the idea of cybernetics, as Systems Theory (employed to explain the nature of how living systems operate in a loop-feedback fashion, as Bertalanffy (1968) suggested undergoes transcultural evolution. The idea is now interpreted and transmutated by the government of Malaysia to mean the base and superstructure of hypermodern digital cities such as Cyberjaya, a city that embodies a new spirit of national development. Hence, the term evolved from the description of the physics of living things to the politics of domination and control in what I argue, is commonly known in the world of militarism, as the science of Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence (C3 I).
Malaysia’ s economic development follows the path of Western-styled developmentalism and can be characterized as Wallerstein (1981) would propose, attempting to liberate itself from the shackle of dependency of the post-colonial system. The creation of the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) (see Multimedia Development Corporation [MDC], 2003) is a testimony of the political leadership’s subscription to the Rostowian and many a laissez-faire theorists’ model (see for e.g. Rostow, 1960) of economic growth.
Castells and Hall (1994) also wrote about the developmental feature of states undergoing economic transformations as a result of the informational revolution, in what the authors term as the development of “technopoles” or new economic growth centers as a consequence of the computer revolution. The MSC is in fact, inspired by the success of the California’s Silicon Valley and Boston’s Highway 128 (Castells & Hall).
In the preceding paragraphs, I illustrate the notion of “inscriptions;” how the idea of “cybernetics” drawn from Quantum Physics, gets enculturalized onto the landscape of the Malaysian advanced developmentalist project called “Cyberjaya”—all these under the logical-positivist notion of human and national development.
The paragraphs above, by way of a review of a sensitizing concept, thus represent the nature of cybernetics. Because my exploration in this esay concerns the concept of hegemony that is derived from cybernetics, a review of this nature is necessary; that genealogy is an essential tool of analysis.
The thrust of the transformation in Malaysia is in the idea of technological, mainly technological literacy, as a vehicle of change and as a new definition of literacy. A key element of the production and reproduction of the ideology of cybernetics as it made possible the creation of the real estate of Malaysia’s MSC is education. Whilst Stanford University propelled the growth of California’s Silicon Valley and Massachusetts Institute of Technology helped to re-stimulate the growth of The Greater Boston Area (Highway 128), in the case of Malaysia, the establishment of Malaysia’s Multimedia University is designed to help the country achieve a similar impact, in an era the economist, Thurow (1997) would call “brain power industries.”
<b> On Hegemony</b>
Writings on the idea of hegemony, with its Greek root word “hegemon” meaning “to lead,” have mainly been popularly attributed to the work of Antonio Gramsci. For the Italian writer, “hegemony” represents a moment in history, or a “historical bloc” in which the leader (in this case Mussolini,) gains acceptance based on his ability to lead, morally and intellectually (Gramsci, 1971). The status of civil society is achieved when the “masses” or the people led accepted the idea of the ruling class (the regime and its doctrine) as “common sense.” The circumstance of the acceptance of this condition, according to Gramsci, is made possible with the dominance of “Fordism” as a common-sensical ideology; of which man’s creative instincts are controlled, through a rationalization process ideologized by Fordism and Americanism (Gramsci).
Historically nonetheless, the idea of “hegemony” is certainly not new. Religion, myth, and the supernatural have played its “hegemonic role” in maintaining a “common sensical” view of how human beings should be cast and ordered in the ladder of existence and how to behave or be controlled socially and politically. The idea of the “divine rights of kings” in the Middle Ages, is illustrated in the classic case of France’s Louis XIV, “The Sun King” who ruled for 72 years from the age of 4 (Spielvogel, 2003), or universally, as in the case of feudal monarchs in China, Japan, and India. In Marx’s later writings (Marx & Engels, 1888/1967), the analyses centered around the relationship between the development of classes to the maintenance of the ideology produced by the ruling class through hegemonic formations that correspond to the mode of economic production. In a similar vein, Rousseau wrote about hegemony in his idea of “social contract” in which the ruler and the ruled is bound by a covenant that would facilitate the maintenance of an orderly society (1987). World systems theorists write about hegemony and hegemonic transitions in the rise and fall of civilizations and in the historical process of capital accumulation (Frank & Gills, 1993). In modern times, besides the Internet, television continues to play its role in maintaining the hegemony of promoting consumer culture and the ideology of the advanced capitalism.
In the case of the Malay society, the idea of “hegemony” or “political common sense” can be traced to the myth of the covenant between Sang Sapurba (the mystic/philosopher-king) and Demang Daun Lebar (the ruler/representative of the people) in which the myth states that as long as the leader is just, the people will not depose him (Syed-Omar, 1993). Hegemony is also achieved through the installation, imposition, and inscription of the British colonial mode of production (Buckley, 1984; Tarling, 2001) that put the class of colonial serfs or indentured slaves (padi farmers, tin miners, and rubber tappers) in an orderly and appealing master-serf relationship (Alatas, 1977; Syed-Omar, 1993). Memmi (1957/1965) would term this a classic colonizer-colonized relationship in which colonialism became not only a phenomena of economic exploitation but a complex psychological and cultural construct. Syed-Omar especially analyzed the concept of “daulat,” which connotes “the divine rights of the Kings” as a hegemonic state of political being-ness wrought upon the Malays, especially during the Malacca sultanate spanning to the present day of the reign of the Constitutional Monarch and the nine hereditary rulers.
If in the days of the Sultanate of Melaka, “daulat” plays its role as a hegemonizing strategy similar to that of the concept of the “divine rights of kings,” in modern Malaysian political context, the modern state or the “kerajaan” (a synthesis of the concept of kingdom and statehood) operates to maintain that hegemony. The idea of “daulat” is cleverly inscribed onto the consciousness of the Malays. A good citizen is defined as one who is law abiding, God-fearing, and one who pays total allegiance to the Malay sultans or rajas and the Constitutional Monarch such that to question the supremacy of the rule of the Ceremonial King would constitute treason. Khoo (1991) who analyzed the transformation of the Malay society from the times of the Melaka Sultanate to the emergence of the Malay nationalism wrote on the idea of a good Malay subject as one who surrenders total obedience to his/her Ruler (the Sultan or the Raja). The king is said to be “[Allah’s] representative on this earth” (Syed-Omar, 1993, p. 45) and thus bestowed upon him is the Divine Rights. Social status is calibrated based on the sophistication of the signs and symbols of the Malay sultanate. For example, royal awards are presented yearly to those who have demonstrated good service and relationship to and in accordance with the specifications and alignments of the Constitutional Monarchical system. Upon receiving these awards, some recipients would even be given honorific title that would elevate their social status; an endowment of symbolic power as a result of the process of accumulation of “cultural capital” (see Bourdieu, 1994).
The notion of the “daulat” or the divine sanction still continues to this day. One cannot question the legitimacy of the Malay sultans and rajas and the special rights of the Malays and a legal consequence of this would be among others, one can be detained without trial for a maximum of two years under Malaysia’s Internal Security Act (ISA). The rights that came about from the myth now become juridical; as enshrined in the constitution to protect the Malaysia protecting the institution of the Malay Sultanate.
Ahmad (1966) and Maaruf (1984) analyzed the concept of a hero in Malay society in which Hang Tuah, the most celebrated and cultural iconic warrior in Malay history is characterized as one who pledges blind loyalty to the Sultan. The image of the warrior-blind loyalist is well inscribed into the literature and consciousness of the Malays (Salleh, 1999), as powerful as the hegemony of the Hindu epic Ramayana (Buck, 1978) in shaping the development of the Hindu-Buddhist tradition in Southeast Asia (Teeuw, 1979). Today, enshrined is the modern-day doctrine of allegiance to the ruler in the form of the “Rukunegara” or the “Principles of the Nationhood.” The ideological state apparatuses are employed to advance the economic development of the nation as well as to maintain social order so that the state can continue to pursue its development projects along the lines of State-sponsored capitalism that is increasingly taking the character of the corporation nation-state colored by politics of race; a system that continues to prosper via a tight nexus between politics and business (Gomez & Sundram, 1999).
Cyberjaya and Malaysia’s Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) Project
Under Mahathir, Malaysia created what is called a “cyber-society” run from an administrative capital called Putrajaya located in its grand scale project, The MSC. The latter is built on several hundred square kilometers of area in which “seven flagship applications” is its feature. It mimics California’s Silicon Valley and models after what Castells and Hall (1994) call the concept of a “technopole” by which Malaysia (see Figure 18) will be moved to a new paradigm of living based upon the “humane application of high technology” manifested in the sub concepts of Electronic Government, Electronic Banking, Electronic Commerce, Manufacturing, Research and Development, Smart Cards, and National Smart Schools. Interestingly, the word “application” as commonly used to describe a computer program is used in the Malaysian MSC project as a major sector of the economy to be transformed on a grand scale.
The biggest airport in Asia, the Kuala Lumpur International Airport was built to facilitate the development of Cyberjaya. From the “wired-up” capital city as the initial program of mega-structural change, the Malaysian government planned to create cyber-principalities out of the thirteen states constituting the federation.
Mahathir envisioned that by the metaphorical year of 2020, the country will have achieved in its own mould the status of an advanced fully-industrialized nation able to compete with other advanced industrialized economies namely the United States of America, Europe, Japan, and Singapore. Accordingly, the notion of such an advancement would however be based upon a strong foundation of religious and moral values. The Prime Minister eulogizes in “Cyberjaya: The model intelligent city in the making”:
<i> Cyberjaya is envisaged to be the model multimedia haven for leading, innovative multimedia companies from all over the world to spin a ‘web’ that will mutually enrich all those involved with it. Especially created as the first MSC designated cybercity, it enables world-class companies to take full advantage of the unique package Malaysia offers to create an environment that is fully conducive towards exacerbating the growth of information technology and multimedia industries. It offers a high capacity global and logistics infrastructure, backed by a ‘soft’ infrastructure, which includes financial incentives and competitive telecoms tariffs, as well as a set of new cyberlaws that will form a legal framework to facilitate the growth of electronic commerce. (Mohamad, MDC, n.d., p. 2)</i>
<b> Malaysia—Co-authored by International Inscribers</b>
In realizing this dream, Malaysia invited a panel of advisors from the United States, Europe, and Japan, among these Chief Executive Officers/Presidents of corporations such as Acer Incorporated, Alcatel Alsthom, Microsoft Corporation, Bechtel Group Incorporated, British Telecom, Cisco Systems, Compaq Computers Corporation, DHL, Ericsson, Fujitsu Limited, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Motorola Corporation, Netscape Communications, Reuters, Motion Picture Association of America, Twentieth Century Fox, Bloomberg and tens of others of global giants in the telematics and media-related industries . Mahathir chairs the panel whereas the respective companies set up shop in the technological growth area.
Professors of Business and Public Policy from Silicon Valley’s Stanford University are among those guiding the development of Malaysia’s cyber initiatives. Malaysian subsidiaries of these giants in the world of multi-billion dollar club transnational corporations have been set up for such a project. There are also active “world-class” companies in operation in the MSC. Table 1 below summarizes information on some of the world-class companies/international inscribers of Malaysia’s project.
The experience of the technological industry in California became an impetus and hence a text to be translated in the case of the creation of Malaysia’s MSC. The role of the International Advisory Panel as corporate authors can be a good illustration of how under the regime of Mahathir, the state continues to be authored by foreign writers in the guise of an International Advisory Panel to the Multimedia Super Corridor. As of September 2003, there is a total of 149 members of the advisory panel.
The advisory panel meets every year to primarily give advice on strategic matters of the nation’s transformation as well as to give the image that Malaysia’s development is in harmony with the well-being of the world’s giant transnational corporations.
COMPANY COUNTRY OF ORIGIN
NTT Japan
Intel USA
Siemens Multimedia Germany
Fujitsu Japan
DHL U.S.A
Motorola Multimedia U.S.A
Fujitsu Telecoms Japan
Sun Microsystems U.S.A
BT Multimedia Netherlands
Lucent Technologies U.S.A.
S.I.T.A. (Societe Internationale De Telecommunications Aeronautiques) Belgium
Nokia Finland
EDS U.S.A
Unisys U.S.A
Reuters U.K
Bloomberg U.S.A
Ericsson Sweden
Microsoft U.S.A.
Rockwell Automation Singapore/Malaysia
Shell Information Technology Holland
British American Tobacco Britain, U.S.A
Castlewood System U.S.A
Alcatel Networks France
Reach Internet Services Hong Kong/Australia
IBM U.S.A.
Comptel Communications Finland
Lotus Engineering United Kingdom
Technomen Finland
Biodata Systems Germany
Scope International United Kingdom
CISCO U.S.A
Huawei Technologies Hong Kong
Fortum Sendi United Kingdom
IT-365 Malaysia United Kingdom
Satyam Computer Services India
Smart Trust Finland
AVEVA United Kingdom
SAP Learning Technologies Singapore
Shell Global Solutions Netherlands
Schlumberger Technologies France
HSBC Electronic Data Processing United Kingdom
NEC Systems Integration Japan
WIPRO Limited India
BMW Technology Germany
Computer Associates U.S.A.
Figure 19 below suggests the genealogy of the MSC. The experience of California’s Silicon Valley, in which the growth area of the Orange County is aided by the scientific and technological innovative activities of Stanford University, is appropriated in the case of the creation of the MSC. The idea of transforming the nation perhaps existed before the creation of Malaysia’s National Informational Technology Council. Next, came the creation of the Multimedia Development Corporation that oversees the development of The Malaysian Multimedia Super Corridor.
<b> Conclusion</b>
The economic growth experience of an advanced nation such as The United States of America and especially in the case of the growth of the Silicon Valley became an inspiration for Malaysia’s program of national development. While in the case of Stanford University and Orange County California the growth seem natural, arising out of the technological couture that was nurtured through decades of research and development, Malaysia took the initiative of copying the model and downloading the concept to engineer a program of immediate inscription and installation of the ideology of information-based economic growth. The mentorship for this program of hypermodernized transformation comes from the conglomerate of corporate capitalist of the advanced developing world, most obviously form global-reaching and imperialistic companies such as Microsoft, Netscape, Sony, British Telecom, and even Bloomberg and The Motion Picture Association of America. The mantra of informational technology that has its origin in the research labs at Palo Alto California hence is chanted in Malaysia and the chants inscribed onto the landscape through the authoritarianism of its leader. In the next chapter, I discuss in detail how the mantra that became policies and ideology become texts in corporate brochures, ready to be broadcast and disseminated to the international and local corporate investor and to the rakyat (people) of Malaysia.
<b> On Utopianism</b>
Malaysia’s grand design in the form of economic transformation aided by the communications revolution is a form of utopianism. Anderson (1991) might describe the project as the creation of an “imagined community,” and Postman (1993) might call it a deliberate attempt to create a “technopoly.” The idea of utopianism is explored alongside the concept of “hegemony” has its roots perhaps as early as when human beings began to organize themselves into “civilized social groups.” But perhaps it is best to begin with the notion of utopia in the writings of Plato especially in his description of a republic ruled by a “philosopher ruler” or a talented aristocracy who has seen the supreme vision after being educated in the best form of democratic ideals (Plato, 1993). The notion of utopia is also written by More (1516/1999), who expounded on a perfect society governed by those who have evolved into ethical beings and achieved the level of nobility.
Much of the writing on utopianism centered on the idea of ideological migration from a world no longer suited to advance civilization of that particular time and place (Claeys & Sargent, 1999; Manuel & Manuel, 1979). In each society at any historical period, the idea of a “perfect society” played its role as a benchmark of civilization. Perfect societies are imagined, so are those that portray utopias gone wrong — controlled by those who control the technologies of controlling others. Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-four (1948) is one such fictional example that describes a “dystopia” of a totalitarian regime nonetheless; one in which advanced technology played the role of surveillance in a state run on totalitarian principles in which the individual submits to the all-encompassing power of the “big brother” or the State, in a nation wherein the ideology of “doublespeak” or “contradictions” reign supreme.
In this brief study on Malaysia as a developing nation in which Islam is the official state religion, it is necessary to analyze utopianism within the milieu of the Islamic idea of the “ummah” (which connotes a society of people subscribing to the Islamic faith) in which the state’s economic, political, and social development also means the creation of an ideal society based on memory of the glories of the Islamic civilization, particularly the utopianism of Madinah (Medina) as an often-cited model of governance of the Islamic polis. The nature of utopianism in Malaysia hence is religious, making the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) a hybrid of Internet-driven technopoly and Islamic-inspired showcase of glory.
Through the findings, I will attempt to show the fundamental character of Malaysian utopianism as conceived by its author, Mahathir Mohamad; a utopia run on high-speed Internet access. The character of Malaysian utopianism (which has religious undertones) is also then, the ancilliaric subject of inquiry of this dissertation.
<b> On Technological Determinism</b>
A minor, yet fundamentally related concept that I explore in this study is “technological determinism.” It is, the belief that technology is a life force in itself, drives social, economic, and political changes, and becomes a culture (Knorr-Cetina, 1983) that even many social forecaster believe drives global transformations (Naisbitt, 1984; Toffler, 1970). It is a philosophical question with the nature of technology at the center of the inquiry. A survey of writings on this issue can be traced perhaps from Plato’s idea of techne’ (1992/2003) as a fundamental early concept of technics, to those that propose that we are all “being digital” (Negroponte, 1995; Papert, 1999). Ellul (1980/2003) and Mumford (1966) were amongst the pioneers in the debate on the fate of humanity in the face of the advancement of technology; the former writing mainly in the genre of philosophy and ethics of technological progress, the latter, on the architecture of control and power inherent and embedded in it.
Writings in the genre of technology as deterministic can also be found in the realm of early literature particularly in the Romantic period, with the idea of “Frankenstein” as the embodiment of human creation called technology, ran amok (Bennett & Robinson, 1990). Heidegger (1993/2003) particularly paid close attention to the issue, cautioning us of the specter called “technology” that is haunting humanity.
In addition, writings in the genre of technology and social change particularly with computing technologies, evolved from the early writings on science and technics. These writings propose how we surrender our lives to technology (Reinecke, 1984) in city-states called “technopolies” (Postman, 1993).
In this study of Cyberjaya, a “technopole” by definition (see Castells & Hall, 1994), I will explore the nature of “technological determinism.”
<b> On Globalization</b>
In this study, I also look at the nature of “globalization,” as a phenomena of the movement of goods, people, services, and ideas as a feature of hypermodernity (Appadurai, 1996,) that creates a “McDonaldized” world system (Ritzer, 1998) and how this concept is perceived in the creation of Malaysia’s Cyberjaya as an economic nucleus of the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC). A plethora of writings has emerged addressing the phenomena of globalization. Foucault (1978) writes about the idea of “Panopticon” as a human condition of being watched like prisoners in a well-designed and well-surveillanced environment in which those in power controls the means of closely observing those that are powerless. The role of surveillance is replaced by systems of control, or the emergence of “biopower” (Hardt & Negri, 2000). In a similar vein, Bauman (1998) also writes about the human consequences of globalization when technology rapidizes the development of social relations, giving rise to a culture of global surveillance in what he called the “opticon-synopticon” dialectic of globalization’s consequences.
The nature of globalization is thus, if we take Foucault’s metaphor, synthesize it with Bauman’s (1998) analysis of globalization, we get the notion that we live in an environment controlled by those who owns the means of media production. In short, we live in a world mediated and hegemonized by the “culture industry” (Marcuse, 1964). In many a writing on “globalization,” the issue of “structural violence” (characterized by deep divisions between the economic classes of the peoples of the world) is the central theme (see for e.g. Friedmann, 1992). This view is reminiscence of Harrington’s (1977) 1970s analysis of American capitalism and its consequences. Moreover, decades of capitalist expansion since the end of World War II and particularly, since the breakup of the Soviet Union have seen the deep-structuring of the cultural, economic, and political contradictions of globalization. Keen observers of the phenomena have written on the cultural consequences of “late capitalism” (Bell, 1976; Jameson, 1991; Wallerstein, 1981) inspired perhaps by Lenin’s (1916) thesis on imperialism as a logical consequence of capitalism. And some have coined the age of globalization as one characteristic of American hegemony that helped regulate the structural functioning of the American “empire” (Hardt & Negri, 2000).
<b> Methodology</b>
In this section, I discuss the methodology used as well as considerations I made when designing the study. I begin with the choice of paradigm, the description of the nature of fieldwork I was engaged in, the sets of I data collected, and next, the process of data gathering and interpretation. Essentially, this is a semiotic study in which I interpret words and visuals and situate them within the framework of analysis of sign, symbols and signifiers.
<b> Methodological Rationale: On Semiotics</b>
To study the Malaysian MSC with specific focus on the intelligent city of Cyberjaya is a complex task. It warrants a complex mode of analysis that focuses on the role of authoritarianism in relation to the installation of ideological-industrial complexes. In the paragraphs that follow, I outline the development of the study of semiotics.
Much of the writings on the origin, development, and refinement of semiotics lie in the field of linguistics and the study of the way language structures, restructures, or alters reality. Plato’s collection of dialogues on Socrates brings awareness to the idea of reality versus appearance in how we conceive and perceive existence. There is imperfection in existence since human beings are thought to live a mediated life. Plato in his work on this subject, especially in Phaedo (Plato, 1954/1961) and The Republic (Plato, 1993) believed that there is a perfect and an imperfect world known respectively as, Essence and Forms. This theory of knowledge, known popularly as “The Doctrine of Reminiscence” derived from Plato’s Allegory of the Cave proposes that humanity is thought to be conditioned by a mediated world of signs and symbols that cloud true consciousness (Plato). The Christian notion of “word becomes flesh” (Rahner, 1985), the Islamic idea that the Koran is a book of signs (Armstrong, 1993; Cleary, 1993; Nasr, 1964; Schimmel, 1985), and that it is believed that the human struggle in this world is a “jihad” or a constant and theologically-demanded struggle against falsehood in accordance with what is decreed by the book of signs, and the Hindu belief that the whole world is a manifestation of the syllable “Om” (Radhakrishnan & Moore, 1957)—all these are the notions of the centrality of signs and symbols in analyzing the phenomena of existence itself, when looked at from the point of view of theology. Hence, the Platonic and religious perspectives of the individual in his/her environment were meant to explain, in genres such as prose and poetry, the forces that define the subjective experience of existence (Abdulla, 2000; Buber, 1958; Kegan, 1982). Writings on the idea of humanity and signs and symbols continue to be produced in subsequent periods having their parallel development in the historical march of literature and philosophy.
Writers in the Romantic tradition, particularly Byron, Keats, Shelley, and Wordsworth write about the superiority of the human intellect, sense awareness, and the Platonic God (Abrams, 1971) poetizing and narrating the predicament and fate of humanity at the advent of the Industrial Revolution. One might argue that the Romantic period in Western literature precursored the age of Western existential thought of which France and French Algeria for examples, became fertile grounds of powerful analyses concerning the subjectivity of humanity in the face of the structures it lives in (Camus, 1975; Fanon, 1967; Memmi, 1957/1965; Sartre, 1975).
In the twentieth century, Humanity as it exists in history and materiality, continues to be a theme of philosophical inquiry. The question of the influence of signs and symbols on consciousness and how they are situated within the material environment the individual is in, is further explored either directly or indirectly especially by existentialist philosophers and writers such as Camus, Kafka, Kiekergaard, and Sartre, (Kaufmann, 1975) and in plays written in the genre of Absurd Theatre by playwrights such as Beckett and Ionesco (Esslin, 2001; Matthews, 1974). The idea of existentialism and the human condition, particularly concerning the meaningfulness of existence in the face of human conditions such as hunger, poverty, discrimination, war, and oppression as written by French philosophers (e.g. Sartre, 1975) became a common theme of inquiry in the arts and humanities. In much earlier writing on this subject, one can find inspiration from the radically existentialist philosophies that grew from a critique of Marxism (see for example, Bakunin, 1953). In Southeast Asia, works of literature especially in the decades characterized by the struggle against colonialism, reflect existentialist themes that attempt to put the human self as victims of systems of signs and symbols created by those who owns the means of intellectual, cultural, and material production (see for example Rendra,1979; Toer, 1993). Contemporary Marxist scholars continue to link the necessity for the existence of signs and symbols to formation, development, proliferation, and sustenance of ideology (Eagleton, 1991).
As the twentieth century comes to a close, the field of semiotics began to emerge as an analytical discipline in the study of how language liberates or oppresses. One can now be introduced to terms such as “social semiotics,” “discourse analysis,” “critical discourse analysis,” and others that attempt to suggest that researchers look at signs and symbols from a more sophisticated structuralist perspective in order to further understand the human condition particularly in the age of cybernetics wherein raging philosophical debates is taking place on how the self is a product of a mediated process; one that is not only conditioned by the media (Chomsky, 1989, 2001; Gitlin, 1983; Parenti, 1993) but also by the Internet (Turkle, 1997). In the emerging field of Cultural Studies media theorists writing in the tradition of the Frankfurt School of Social Research (Geuss, 1981; Jay, 1973; Kellner, 1989), and those schooled in French Structuralism see the study of humanity in the ideological and built environment as imperative (see for examples Ang, 1985; de Certeau, 1984; Hall, 1993; Jameson, 1988, 1991; Lefebvre, 1996; Williams, 1977). And theorists trained in the Soviet school of “social semiotics” see the field as valuable and inseparable to the study of human beings and cybernetics (Ivanov, 1977). Citing names such as Barzini, de Saussure, Durkheim, Godel, and Pierce as pioneering contributors, Lekomcev (1977) for example, writes about the multivariate fields the study of semiotics has evolved from. It is also believed that the field of semiotics has its origin in the work of the Russian philosopher Volosinov (Eagleton, 1991). Others have written about the study of “texts” as socially discursive formations (see for example Fairclough, 1992); drawing inspiration from literary themes that conceive the human experience as narrative pieces that tells stories with a major plot and countless subplots, or in terminologies popularly known as Grand and Subaltern narratives. In a similar vein, Said (1978) though not necessarily a semiotician wrote on the idea that perceptions can be shaped by one’s cultural and ideological backgrounds that consequently shape the production of knowledge, as in the case of the Western perception and conception of the “Orient.” Semiotics, nonetheless might arguably begin with the work of Saussure (1916/1983) and is developed further by, amongst major semioticians, Eco (1976) and Kristeva (1980).
My methodology is informed by such development of semiotics described in the preceding paragraphs. In this study, I take the perspective of methodological design from such a notion of “texts” and its inter-textuality as Kristeva (1980) would analyze, and how concepts such as power, language, and action inter-relates. Hence, the methodology employed (see Figure 3) includes the analyses of the political actor, corporate brochures, policy speech texts, and photographs of the physical landscape and inscriptions in the area of the MSC. These are the sources of triangulation I used in this study on the reading of the multi-textual signs and symbols and how they in turn, can and ought to be analyzed for example, as many a Critical Theorist might propose, through the methodological lens of ideologikritik (see Habermas, 1971).
[FIGURE 3 here]
I therefore weave in this study with analyses of these “texts”—from the political actor to the physical landscape and inscriptions”—so that we will not only “read” them, but in the process deconstruct and reconstruct them to answer the fundamental questions raised at the onset of the inquiry on the nature of hegemony and utopianism. In this essay, I will report in the paragraphs below, my analysis of photographs taken while I was studying the concept of spaces of knowledge/power.
<i> Photographs.</i>
While in Malaysia (in August 2001), I took more than a hundred photographs and even managed to get an aerial view of the Malaysian Multimedia University as I was arriving from the Southern part of Malaysia, en route to the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. I used a digital and a 35 mm camera interchangeably to take select pictures of the landscape of the MSC.
At the onset of the study, I already have an early perspective on what data to choose based on the inquiry theme of hegemony and utopianism. I wanted to look at the signs and symbols in the landscape of the site, how they create spaces of power/knowledge, and consequently discern the signifiers that can be derived. I focused on the signs and symbols that show me the pervasiveness of signs and symbols that are foreign to the culture of the peoples and how these have become architectural landscape and hence a “common sensical” manifestation of the transformation that the nation is undergoing. So, among the sets of photographs that I took were: icons/symbols of American business such as McDonald’s, Starbucks, and Hard Rock café, the area of the MSC Technology Park, the Petronas Twin Towers and its surrounding, business billboard on highways, and the campus of the Multimedia Super Corridor. The criteria used for taking the photographs are the ones I call “Stanfordization and McDonaldization of Malaysia” or “Cultural-Industrial Complexes” and “Cybernetics Trickle Down.”
Apart from taking photographs of signs and symbols that originate from American corporate interests in the nation, of the English language, and the language of corporate advertising that dominates the country, I also took photographs of the language of change that is being transformed in an educational setting such as the naming of streets on the campus of Malaysia’s Multimedia University.
I wrote notes to “read” the photographs as texts (see Figure 4 for an example). Photographs taken with a 35 mm camera were scanned onto diskettes or retaken using a digital camera, and then notes (Observer’s Comments—OC) were written beside the picture. The notes also include the date and place the photographs were taken.
The camera I used has a built-in date tracker function. So, the dates the photographs are taken were gleaned from the printed copy of the photographs. I took notes of where the photographs were taken after each site visit. And when the photographs were printed, (usually within 48 hours after they were taken,) I labeled the place the photographs were taken. In addition, identifying the place the photographs were taken was also aided by my familiarity with the places I visited.
<i> Notes and Fieldnotes. </i>
There are two categories of notes I took: notes and fieldnotes. Notes constitute all those taken before and after my field trip. These might not be related directly to the data but made useful to sensitize me to all the aspects of the study. The memoing process in these mini notebooks began even before the proposal of this study was finalized. These were drawn from my own musings on the topic of changes happening in Malaysia, as well as from the many hours of dissertation seminar I sat in Professor Herve Varenne’s classes in Anthropology.
[Figure 4]
I also wrote notes and memos in an online discussion board I was actively participating in between May to August of 2001 (see Appendix A for a sample note that was written on September 11, 2001 after I have just returned from my data collection trip from Malaysia). The forum was started by a company, now defunct, called iSMETA, based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in which middle-class Malay professionals that used to be my high school friends use the forum to stay in touch with each other as well as to exchange ideas. The communication channel is called “famili.tv” and anyone can create a free account to communicate with friends or family members. For me, the forum was a perfect opportunity to gather information on the Malaysian thinking of the day concerning the issue of technology and social change, especially on the topic of Malaysian MSC. Since then, I created a special account called “Thesis on Cyberjaya” of which I keyed in my daily thoughts into the electronic discussion board. In general, I took notes on the areas I designated as relevant to my study, namely the area of the MSC such as— Cyberjaya, Putrajaya, the Malaysian Multimedia University (henceforth, “MMU”), The Kuala Lumpur City Center (henceforth, KLCC), and the Petronas Twin Towers.
Fieldnotes are created specifically during fieldwork itself. They can be in the form of “Observers Comments” (OC) or notes to accompany the photographs taken (like the one in Figure 4 above). I took notes daily (see Figure 5 for an example). I would begin with mind maps designed on small notebooks then, within 24 hours expand them into scratch notes and next type them into full length notes to be used in the analysis or constant comparison stages. Figure 5 is an example of a mind map of a fieldwork on Kuala Lumpur’s “Bintang Walk” and its elaborated version. The title of the mind map is “KL (Kuala Lumpur) Nightlife.” This is a popular and busy nightlife street that has a bilingual name. It literally means “Star Walk.” It is a place with a wealth of signs that is beginning to signify the “cosmopolitan-ness” of Malaysia’s urban life on the one level, and on a deeper level, one that is signifying the varied spaces that are colonized by media power.
<i> Data Analysis Procedures</i>
<i> Photographs.</i>
I used the semiotic approach to analyze selected photographs that I took. My aim is to draw a composite picture of Malaysia’s transformation, bearing in mind the theme of inquiry on hegemony and utopianism and the signs, symbols, and signifiers as analytical tools.
Notes and Fieldnotes.
True to the “constant comparative” method of Grounded Theory, note-taking is an ongoing process. For example, I would look at the mind maps created a year before and reflect upon it in light of new notes created during or even after fieldwork. The point of this exercise is to find consistencies or contradictions in the analysis and to find recurring themes that would then be used to triangulate data gathered from various sources.
<i> Mixed Methodology Approach</i>
In general, I utilized a mixed method approach as reflected in the different chapters I called “analytical.” For example, as already mentioned, in looking at the study of authoritarianism in the person of Mahathir Mohamad, I used Gruber’s Evolving System’s Approach (Gruber, 1989; Gruber & Wallace, 1978) to study ‘creativity’ that inspired the political will to create the MSC and Cyberjaya. In studying the nation as a whole, I used the lens of political economy, namely Dependency Theory applied to the study of Malaysia’s political-economic structure. The theory, popular in the beginning of the 1970s, looks at the unequal relationship between and amongst nations. In looking at the documents and visual data, I used the method inspired by semioticians and Grounded Theorists (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Strauss & Corbin, 1998).
As Figure 11 below summarizes, data is analyzed in a constant comparison method to generate propositions. Primarily though, the bulk of the analysis utilizes Grounded Theory Method, in which the three levels of findings and analysis are used inductively from data to propositions, from specifics to generalizations, from the categorizing of emerging themes to the drawing of relationships —all these in the spirit of Strauss and Corbin’s (1998) “constant comparison” method.
Inscription #1: Analysis of select brochures
In this first analytical chapter, I begin by analyzing the first set of inscriptions i.e., brochures of the institutions installed onto the MSC. Select visuals from the brochure, “Malaysia in the new millennium” (MDC Corporate Affairs Department, n.d.) are analyzed. Another major analysis are a two-page visuals from a brochure on the new administrative capital of Putrajaya. To further strengthen this first exercise in the series of analysis of inscriptions, I also write about the sign, signifier, and signified from three supporting visuals. They are select pages of brochures relating to Malaysia’s Multimedia Super Corridor entitled: “Unlocking the potentials of the information age” (MDC, 1997), “Cyberjaya: The model intelligent city in the making” (MDC, n.d.), and “Putrajaya: The federal government administrative center” (Putrajaya Holdings, 1997).
<i> Framework of Analysis</i>
Rose (2001) described the method of semiotics in analyzing claims produced in advertisements. Rose discussed two forms of discourse analyses (I and II) which looks at texts (verbal and visual) and attempt to uncover the dimensions of power and ideology behind the production of these texts. In analyzing images from the brochures, I utilize the guiding questions provided by Rose to analyze the images of The Multimedia Super Corridor, Cyberjaya, and Putrajaya. I look at the general display of images, the placement of the texts, the signs and symbols, and the overt and covert displays, and the perceived message intended to be communicated.
Visual #1, Figure #20
In the first visual, I entitled “Machines in the Garden” (Figure 20 below), the logo of the MSC is placed on the upper left-hand side, lower left-hand side, and lower right-hand side of the brochure. The biggest of the logo is the first one mentioned above. The first paragraph of the text on the left reads “Our logo is based on the concept of a rising sun, signifying the dawning of a new era in Malaysia to be ushered in with the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC)” (MDC Corporate Affairs Department, n.d., p.1) The idea of a rising sun is reminiscent of the days of Japanese imperialism in Southeast Asia and in the time of the regime of Mahathir, the “Look East Policy,” promotes the spirit of borrowing from the East rather than bowing to the West. The Multimedia Super Corridor becomes the vehicle of structural changes.
I call the composite picture “Machines in the garden,” a title inspired by a piece of work eulogizing the transformation of pastoral America (Marx, 1964/2000). I find the positioning of the collection of composite images interesting. From the image of a Malay executive staring at a computer screen to a satellite disc in the foreground of a lush tropical landscape, one can interpret the signs, symbols, and signifiers from the levels of the grammar of design to the level of analysis of power and ideology.
By grammar of design, I mean the layout of the picture to render the images effective to the reader. A right-handed person would begin by focusing on the right hand side and be introduced to the image of hypermodernity. One’s gaze might even stop at the symbol of Apple Computer propped between the image of the thinking executive and the satellite disc. In the background is a lush tropical landscape. Among other images is the image of students working at a computer lab.
By the analysis of power and ideology, I mean the idea that in general, the images signify the power inherent in telecommunications and computer technology in particular, signify a promoter of radical and intensified social change as well as an agent of change in the relations of production. By ideology, I mean the idea of a vision of that social change carved and crafted out of cybernetics technology. At the level of the grammar of design, I see the motive of the producer of the text influencing the reader to believe in the changes that are happening as advertised. By power and ideology, I mean the inevitable march of progress via the philosophy of technological determinism.
In Table 2 below, I draw the semiotic elements of the MSC logo. The Rising Sun signified the dawning of a new era. The three rays for example, signify high capacity global telecommunications and logistic infrastructure whereas the heart of the logo signifies environmental considerations. The arch, on the other hand, represents unity of forces shaping the new era of change.
SIGN SIGNIFIER SIGNIFIED
Logo Rising sun Dawning of a new era
Three rays 1. High capacity global telecommunications and logistics infrastructure
2. New Policies and cyberlaws
3. Attractive environment to live in
Heart of the logo Environmental consideration
Arch Unification of diverse strengths; pre-requisite for success
In Table 3, I draw semiotic elements of the composite images. Among them are: the landscape/rolling hills in the picture signifies harmony and suggests that Nature is to be transformed and conquered by hyper-miniaturized or nano technology as a consequence of the demands of globalization and the dictates of corporate capitalism. The Malaysian economic landscape is also transformed by the movement of money or the globalization of finance, in addition to the globalization of ideas, people, and technology (see Appadurai, 1996). The Satellite dish is a signifier for communication which signifies globalization. The computer is the tool par excellence that facilitates progress. It is an advertisement that signifies corporate capitalism. The image of students in a computer lab, is one that signifies the computerization of human beings through the process of schooling as social reproduction; a process tied to the international economic system (see Ashton & Greene, 1996).
Table 3: Semiotic Analysis of Machines in the Garden
SIGN SIGNIFIER SIGNIFIED
Landscape/Rolling hills Harmonizing Nature
Huge Satellite dish Communicating Globalization
APPLE computer Advertising Corporate capitalism
Students at computer lab
One-dimensionalizing Computerization of humans
Laptop computer minimizing/transporting Nano-technology
ATM screen Storing and retrieving Finance
Computer headphones Individualizing One-dimensionalization
The essence of the idea of transformation lies in the notion of the implantation of ideology and the inscribing of real estate onto the landscape of Malaysia; that institutions were set up to give expression to changes that are based on a well-directed strategy of national development. As read from the visual, the impact of the social and cultural changes lies in the education as a vehicle of change; to create the “one-dimensionalization” of individuals through a process commonly called human engineering and manpower planning. Malaysia, in the new millennium signifies not only the idea of progress based on the supremacy of the philosophy of cybernetics as a deterministic force but also the molding of the polity and the populace into computer-literate beings that will act, think, feel, and speak using the jargons of “computerese.” Malaysia in the new millennium is a transformed Malaysia; from agricultural to manufacturing, to more sophisticated manufacturing. The stages of growth nonetheless is frameworked after Rostowian and Friedmannian economics or, ideology of capitalism with a tinge of nationalism.
Visual #5, Figure 24
In Figure 24, Visual #5 below, is a semiotic reading on the theme of national development. The page contains images of hypermodernism and religious foundation. The city of Putrajaya is installed with architectural landscape that signifies Islamizing, connecting, and colonizing. The three signs _ the mosque, the map of the territory and the bridge _ respectively signifies the connectedness of religion, (Islam in this case,) with the new territory mapped for a new style of developmentalism. The new area is represented to be one that synthesizes the elements of creativity and ethics; of the creation of a newer form of installation and a reminder of the supremacy of Islam as Malaysia’s official religion. The utopia represented is Islamic-based, although in Malaysia there are adherents to Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Taoism, Confucianism and religions of the natives. There is another interesting linguistic or semiotic aspect to this picture; that the areas segmented for the new territory is called “precincts” There are “Civic and Cultural Precinct”, “Commercial Precincts,” and “Sports and Recreational Precinct”. The word “precinct” is reminiscent of the one used to designate “police stations” such as those in New York City, New York, United States of America.
Exactly what the author of Malaysian Putrajaya has in mind when naming these areas is not exactly clear. The idea of “policing” however, might make sense -- that this major city of the MSC is to be policed or with be controlled and surveillenced by Informational Communications Technologies; ones better than those used in the past. Whilst the informational communicational infrastructure will help in police the physical aspects of the state, religion will help “police the souls” of the people in the new city. One can apply the idea of “disciplining” (Focault, 1978) and “punishing” to the analysis of the politics and psychology of the inhabitants of the new technopole. Indeed a Focaultian reading of the city might highlight the idea of how technology and systems of control hegemonizes over human consciousness. The “panopticonism” of Putrajaya lies in the notion that the consciousness of the people is already structured to accept the idea that a hyper-modernized developmentalist project that is systemized by a synthesis of controlling tehnologies and ethics historically accepted ethics is as natural as the progression of capitalism.
In Table 6, I provide a semiotic analysis of the signs, symbols, and signifier of the image of synthesis. The Malaysian utopia is presented as one that blends religious foundation and hypermodernity. In fact the philosophy pf development in Malaysia has always been the designing of systems that will put economic and religious development in balance.
SIGN SIGNIFIER SIGNIFIED
Aerial view of coastal area
Mapping Utopia
Mosque (Masjid)
Islamizing Religious-based
Bridge Connecting Synthesis
Inscription #3: Analysis of landscape
In this section, I look at how the idea of “cybernetics” trickle down” to the masses. I will discuss how popular images of the so-called “Cybernetic Age” gets inscribed onto the landscape. The idea of technological fantasy and “linguistic hybridity” particularly will be illustrate here as a further illustration of the concept of hegemony and technological determinism.
Images of production and reproduction/Cyberneticism Trickles Down
I assembled a composite select images of the character of Malaysia’s transformation; a collage of, in the broadest sense of the word, social production and reproduction through education. Beginning our analysis of signs and symbols of the picture on the left and on to the last one on the bottom right, I see a continuity of images that can be related in a complex manner. The banner reads “Persidangan dan Expo Internet Tamil Terbesar di Dunia.” Translated as “The World’s Biggest Tamil Internet Conference and Exposition”. Tamil is a vernacular language spoken by a majority of Malaysian Indians that are, up to the writing of this dissertation, politically represented by the Malaysian Indian Congress.
On the right-hand side of the picture we see an aerial view of the higher institution Malaysian Multimedia University, a private institution that focuses on granting undergraduate and graduate degrees in “multimedia sciences.” The name Multimedia University is unique in the sense that it does not immortalize or memorialize persons or place or event in history but rather a “product,” an “artifact,” or “an approach of looking at things.” “Multimedia”, consistent with the need to align with a center of production called the Multimedia Super Corridor, means more than one medium and the emphasis here is to highlight a university specialization that produces “multimedia products.” The product or artifact includes CD-ROMS, Websites, or any other products that integrates text, hypertext, audio, and video. Graduates of The Multimedia University pride themselves as the first to be awarded diplomas in the form of “digital diplomas.” The Chancellor of the university is the Prime Minister’s wife, Siti Hasmah Ali.
The picture on the middle left is that of the (formerly) tallest building in the world: The Petronas Twin Tower. “Petronas” means “Petroliam Nasional” or “National Petrolium” which means the national oil company. It is a said to be a symbol of Malaysian nationalism and economic power. On the right I present a picture of people looking at the twin towers. The towers seem to be a spectacle of a spectre that haunts the world of informational capitalism, and that attract spectators. I took this picture when I was doing my observation at the foot of the twin towers.
I do not know the significance of “twin towers” but there seems to be an obsession to imitate the style of architecture of the Western World; particularly of postmodernism as pioneered perhaps by those working in the International Style (Le Corboursier) . The naming of names in Malaysia is plagued with the desire to compete with world’s establishes signs and symbols and the desire to project the image of economic success through architectural feats. The Petronas Twin Towers is in fact used as a scene of a movie called The Entrapment (Connery, Hertzberg, & Tollefson, producers, 2000); one about conspiracy and robbery of a sophisticated nature, involving international robber barons. This is a form of Hollywood styled advertising for a nation such as Malaysia that wishes to attract foreign investment.
The picture in Figure 21, shows respectively images of children coming back/going home from school and an Internet café, or what is also known as “cybercafe.” Both are images of production and reproduction. One goes to school to learn about the world, the disciplines or the subject matter including “Computer Science” or in Malay “Sains Komputer” and one goes to Internet cafes to hone the skills of “surfing the Net” and “playing online games” as what the cafes are famous for. The cafes are also extremely popular with users who love to “chat.” If in France during the Renaissance period cafes intellectuals gather in cafes and salons to exchange revolutionary ideas, in Malaysian cafes, they are popular with people chatting without speaking.
<b> Images of Digital Proletarianism</b>
Figure 28 below shows an inscription in the form of a typical modern-day Malaysian school building. During my fieldwork in August, I stayed at my sister’s house in front of this school. This is a typical look of a new school building in Malaysia. The discourse on “Smart Schools”, or schools that uses technology-rich environment of learning, pervades the educational system, reminiscence of the development of American education in the 1980s with the emphasis on the production of computer literate workers (see Gross & Gross, Eds., 1985.) The inscription on the wall says “(Bangunan) Multimedia Utama” or “Main Multimedia (Building).” The secondary (or high) school is a natural passage for social reproduction for Malaysia’s “quantum leap” into the Information Age. Across the street is a highway and a popular strip for ‘drag racers’ consisting of youths who perhaps worked menial jobs/contract laborers. In this case I saw predominantly Malaysia of Indian origin (Malaysian Indians).
<b> Themes from Findings</b>
In the images above, I discover the idea of how cybernetics is systematically trickled down. In the section of literature review, I discuss the genealogy of the concept of cybernetics as an idea of feedback loop and the innerworkings of living systems. In the case of Malaysia’s transformation, the idea that cybernetic technology primarily the Internet will bring progress and liberation through the process of education is promoted by the government through policies and practice. In the following and last chapter on inscriptions, I illustrate the changing landscape of Malaysia as a consequence of the adoption of the capitalist mode of development. The nature of capitalism is one to the complexity of the world economy; a globalized world of the movement of people, trade, goods, services, and ideas that has characterized the world economy since perhaps, the collapse of the Soviet Empire.
………………………………………
In the proceeding paragraphs on the “signs and symbols” in the campus of the Multimedia University, I present a more detailed discussion on the mechanism of hegemonic formation by way of the marriage of words derived from Western idea of “cybernetics” with those derived from the host/recipient culture of the Malays.
<b> Signs and Symbols at the Malaysian Multimedia University Campus</b>
Inscribed onto the concrete block are names of streets buildings in the campus of Multimedia University. The first two pictures show a hybrid of Malays and Latin words. They are “Lorong Germanium” and “Persiaran Neuron” which respectively means “Germanium Avenue” and “Neuron Walk/Street”. In the next two pictures in the middle of the page is an inscription of the names of facilities that are available; from living quarters to sports fields. From top to bottom, we can see a hybrid of words namely, “Pangsapuri Zeta, Eta, Upsilon, and Iota” meaning Zeta, Eta, Upsilon, and Iota Apartments, Bangunan Theta meaning “Theta Building”, Kolej Sigma and Omega meaning Sigma and Omega Colleges (Faculties), Kompleks Sukan Omicron meaning Omicron Sports Complex, and The MSC Incubator. In the last two pictures the inscriptions on the huge concrete block reads “Bangunan Beta” or “Beta Building”, “Perpustakaan Delta” or “Delta Library” and finally “Cybercafe Tau” or “Tau Cybercafe”.
The last picture is a religious installation on the campus of the university: a “masjid” or a mosque. The composite picture of the inscriptions and installations reveal the nature of ideological formulation that is operating at the level of education as social and cultural reproduction. The institution called The Malaysian Multimedia University was created as a response to the needs of the ideology of technological determinism and as a reproductive environment to create individuals who will continue to institutionalize capitalism and to continue onwards to the march of cybernetics capitalism. But there is also the idea of Islam as an institution that mediates the excess of capitalist developmentalism. My reading of these images inform me that the institutions were created first to disseminate the ideology of cybernetic capitalism under the shibboleth of corporate capitalism that is hegemonizing the world systems.
<b> Data from Select Photos: From Stanfordization to McDonaldization</b>
In the above section, I discuss the hybridity of language in that are inscribed onto the landscape of the Malaysian Multimedia University. Synthesis of words are formed and inscribed onto the signs and symbols that are shows the direction of facilities in the building. These hybrids signify the localization of the idea that is dominant: technological determinism. They honor and celebrate the philosophy of cybernetics as a driving force of the developmentalist philosophy of this nation under transformation.
In the composite picture below (Figure 31), I gather another set of signs and symbols that are installed in the city of the old capital of Kuala Lumpur, in an area that is popular with tourists: The Bintang Walk at Jalan Bukit Bintang. The signs and symbols are, from left to right and top to bottom are that of McDonalds, Tower Records, Hard Rock Cafe, Planet Hollywood, Starbucks, and Marriott Hotel. They are distinctively American in symbolism and dominance. These are the icons of American capitalism. I call these American cultural-industrial complexes to give the idea that from these institutions, the values of consumerism are permeated to the consciousness of the people of the host and that the nations and through the process too the notion of “American democracy” is projected as an image of “freedom and the ethos of the free world of the West”. I call them “cultural-industrial complexes” because through these institutions, they give expression to the nature of consumerist values that are to be sold to the hoist nations. The values then create the culture of consumerism and in the long run, culture in the form of food, music, leisure, tourism, and ways of “doing things in one’s culture” becomes an industry. Hence, from institutions to expressions, to the production of values, the nation gets to feel what an American consumerist culture is like. The feeling becomes manufactured as an industry and in the long run, when culture of this nature hegemonizes, it becomes part of the one-dimensionalization of society that will help facilitate the erosion of traditional values that have its roots in local traditions primarily expressed generation after generation through language.
From the section on Inscription #1, I discover the themes of hypermodernity in Malaysia’s development projects. Using semiotic analysis, I discover that the images represented and significant to the analysis point explained the idea of progress as a political, social, cultural, and economic migration. The technological fantasy embedded in the images are characteristic of the a fantasy of a nation wanting to be like the nation of hypermodern colonists such as United States and Japan and believing that informational communication technologies will be bring peace, plenty, and prosperity to the nation.
From the section on Inscription #2, I discover the importance of the ideology of “technological progress and technological determinism” as a twin concept that fuel the engine of Malaysia’s economic growth. Technological determinism is the belief that technology is a life force in itself and national development policies must be authored based on this belief system. Through the detailed analyses of prime ministerial speech texts, I discerned other major themes such as hegemony and counter-hegemony, as well as globalization and nationalism that define the character of the study.
From the chapter on Inscription #3, I discover how ideas get inscribed onto the physical landscape and then becomes institutions of control the will then continue to hegemonize in newer forms. Through the analysis of picture I took of strategic areas in The MSC, I discover the pervasiveness of the signs and symbols of Western capitalist interests that continue to colonize the spaces. I discover the role of language as a powerful restructuring tool in the case of Malaysia’s Multimedia University. The street names reflect the interest in hegemonizing the philosophy of cyberneticism and to future celebrate the march of informational capitalism.
From the chapter on Inscription #4, I discover the idea of cultural and industrial complexes that have become installations in the area of the Super Corridor. American business interests populate the area. The idea of Stanford University as an inspiration for the MSC point to the idea of Stanfordization of Malaysia; that the base and superstructure of the nation is, albeit claims to economic nationalism, fundamentally an appropriation of Western corporate capitalism.
Figure 34 below summarizes the hegemonic relationship in that from the philosophy of cybernetics, the influence of technological determinism as ideology, and the tensions created in the global economy, hegemony is maintained by the advanced nations over developing nation such as Malaysia. In response to the hegemony that is prevailing, a nation such as Malaysia creates a utopia called The Multimedia Super Corridor based on the philosophy of cybernetics, taking into consideration the challenges of the global economy. The counter-hegemonic act creates a blend of utopian nationalism, at least at the time of its creation. It is not however clear what the outcome of the battle between the nation and the unseen forces of globalization that runs on a high-speed version of capitalism.
<b> Spaces of knowledge/power: Hegemony and social change</b>
In the section, I concluded with the idea that hegemony is structured into the consciousness of the nation through a strategy of disciplining and controlling that arise out of the establishing of institutions of control that are now inscribed onto the landscape using informational communicational technologies. The regime of the fourth prime minister Mahathir Mohamad established institutions that uses advanced technologies to enrich national strategies on the one hand, and to maintain control beyond better than the imposition of raw power. Hegemony permeates at various levels: philosophical to psychological; structured by the institutions built and the ideological state apparatuses employed.
In my analysis of the genealogy of cybernetics I discover the transcultural flow of idea of technological determinism that has branched out into various levels of structurations and appropriated by the author to be embedded, as suggested by a philosopher of technology, into an inert form of nationalistic developmental policy (McClintock, 2001) that is wired up to the most advanced capitalist centers of the world. In the following sections I will discuss the implications of my findings and how they generate propositions and tools of analysis. I will first discuss some general statements concerning language particularly on the notion of the “intertextualized nation”, and next discuss propositions concerning “cybernating nations” such as Malaysia, and finally discuss a set of tools I propose for the analysis of concepts that have genealogy and manifestations.
The “intertextualized” nation
The findings on Malaysia’s grand project of social transformation can be looked at not only from the point of view of the flow of idea from one realm to another i. e. from the realm of cybernetics to the physical-material realm of Cyberjaya but from a linguistic perspective as well. The digital text is inscribed onto a landscape; a process that fragments the soul of the nation and creates a hypermodern state that is authored and signatured by what is defined as “world-class companies”. The ”inter-textualized nation” is a consequence of Malaysia’s developmentalist project of hypermodernity. The state becomes a neatly written subtext to a larger and more established matrix of Grand Narrative called corporate capitalist developmentalism whose ideology and sophisticated tools of empire-ing is the forte of advanced industrial nations. Malaysia becomes a periphery wanting to be part of the Center, a subtext continually being written to tell the story of the text.
Kristeva (1980) writes about intertextuality as a linguistic situation in which one idea in a text is linked to another. The Self, in Kristeva’s analysis is influenced by “subtexts” outside of itself that defines its textuality and as a consequence, loses its authenticity. A similar argument about the loss of authenticity is made by many a philosopher who writes about the consequence of modernity (Taylor, 1991) In this dissertation, the Malaysian MSC is an example of a nation that is ideologically linked to other ideas outside of the nation itself. In this case Malaysia’s development is intertextualized with the idea of Western corporate interest by way of the advisory panelship, transfer of technology, and most importantly the colonization of corporate English Language onto the material and psychological development of the nation. The textuality of the nation is then characterized by the weaving of corporate and foreign discourses onto the developmentalist agenda of the nation, facilitating the withering of the nation-state and enhancing the role of the nation as a hypermodern Periphery of the Central capitalist nation of an equally hyper-modernized international capitalist system.
The “nation as text” becomes one that is continuously being co-authored by international inscribers interested in capitalizing on the cheap labor offered. The international inscribers were given the best of privileges such as generous ten-year tax-breaks, freedom from being harassed by worker unions since only “in-house unions” are allowed to exist, and state-of-the-art facilities to attract them to invest in the new Malaysian economy. The will to be “nationalistic” exists only in the form of signs and symbols that are touristic in nature, such as in the images and symbols of culture that are at the consumptive level and are merely showcases of tradition. The evidence gathered on the textuality of this nation lies in the signs and symbols in the cultural and industrial complexes; signs and symbols of predominantly American corporate business interests. Hence, not only the nation is inter-textualized by its linkages to other forces of influence, such as of the iconoclasms of Stanford University Area, United States of America, but also these signs and symbols are transmutating and hybridizing with the local hosts, as evident in the practice of street-naming on the campus of Malaysia’s Multimedia University. In this sense, the development of the state parallels the development of the United States with regard to the influence of industries and corporations and the installations of technologies to march capitalism to its triumph (Noble, 1977; Noble 1984; Nye, 1990).
In the area of social reproduction, the schooling system, from the primary to tertiary levels, is turning towards the re-using if English Language as the language of Science and Technology and inscribed into the policy-making documents of languages of instruction. The emphasis of on the use of computer technology in schools, embalmed in the policy of creating Smart Schools to produce computer-literate workforce (“wired schools”) parallels also the influence of computer giants in determining the nature of policy inscriptions on American public schools (National Commission on Excellence in Education, NCEEE, 1985) Such is an analysis of the intertextuality of Cyberjaya.
In the section below, I discuss propositions concerning the development of nations undergoing transformation such as Malaysia’s.
<b> Thirteen Propositions Concerning "Cybernating" Nations</b>
From the findings of this study, I was able to generate propositions concerning nations undergoing transformations as a result of the utilization of newest informational communications technologies. Malaysia is an example of such as nation. The MSC is specifically its test-bed and Cyberjaya is an embodiment of a city built out of the regime’s interpretation of the concept of cybernetics.
ON CENTER-PERIPHERY THESIS
1. In a globalized post-industrialist world, the development of a cybernating nation will continue to follow, to a degree or another the Center-Periphery pattern of development.
ON COMPLEXITY SYSTEMS
2. Pure historical materialist conception of change cannot fully explain why nations cybernate; the more a nation gets "wired" the more complex the interplay between nationalism and internationalism will be.
ON SEMANTIC/
STRUCTURALISM
3. The more a nation transforms itself cybernetically, the more extensive the enculturalization and transformation of the word "cybernetics" will be.
ON THE POLITICAL-ECONOMY OF LINGUISTIC TRANSFORMATION
4. The extent of the enculturalization of the concept of "cybernetics" will determine the speed by which a nation will be fully integrated into the global production-house of the telematics industry
ON
AUTHORITARIANISM
5. The stronger the authority of the regime the greater the control and magnitude of the cybernating process. In a cybernating nation, authority can reside in the political will of a single individual or in a strong political entity, consequently producing the author’s “regime of truth”.
ON THE WITHERING OF THE NATION-STATE
6. The advent of the Internet in a developing nation signifies the genesis of the erosion of the power of government-controlled print media. Universal access to the Internet will determine the total erosion of government-produced print media. Subaltern voices will replace Grand Narratives.
ON CENTER-PERIPHERY AND GLOBALIZATION THEORY
7. Creative consciousness of the peoples of the cybernating nation will be centralized in the area of business and the arts, modeled after successful global corporations.
ON RESISTENCE
8. Critical consciousness of the people of the cybernating nation will be centralized in the area of political mobilization and personal freedom of expression, modeled after successful Internet-based political mobilization groups.
ON HEGEMONY/CENTER-PERIPHERYTHESIS
9. At the macro-level of the development of a nation-state, the contestation of power is between the nation cybernating versus the nations fully cybernated, whereas at the micro level, power is contested between the contending political parties/groups.
ON RESISTENCE
10. The more the government suppresses voices of political dissent, the more the Internet is used to affect political transformations
ON MODERN IMPERIALISM
11.The fundamental character of a nation will be significantly altered with the institutionalization of the Internet as a tool of cybernating change. The source of change will however be ideologically governed by external influences, which will ultimately threaten the sovereignty of the nation-state
ON DEEP-STRUCTURING
12. Discourse of change, as evident in the phenomena of cybernation, is embedded in language. The more a foreign concept is introduced, adopted, assimilated, and enculturalized, the more the nation will lose its indigenous character built via schooling and other means of citizenship enculturalization process
ON PARADIGM OF RESEARCH
13. Postmodernist perspectives of social change (discourse theory, semiotics, Chaos/Complexity theory) rather than those of Structural-Functionalists, Marxist, or neo-Marxist, can best explain the structure and consequences of cybernetic changes.
These thirteen propositions most obviously need to be refined in order for us to look at the phenomena of transcultural consequence of computer-mediated communications from perspectives beyond ones that may be characterized by pure Structural -Functionalists or neo-Marxists.
Formulations concerning “Tool of Transcultural Analysis”
From data analyses on the various nature of “inscriptions” and from the propositions generated, we move on to our findings concerning the idea of “transcultural flow of ideas” I suggest we use as a method to analyze concepts that are enculturalized. There are 13 components to the idea and the discussions will be part of looking at the possibility of going beyond theory generating but to develop a set of tools for cultural analysis especially as it pertains to the problematique of cultural imperialism and hegemony of concepts.
Drawing from some of the findings in this analysis and in thinking of the term hegemony in the analysis of the transcultural and transmutational flow of the concept “cybernetics”, I'd like to propose how we look at ideas and conjure a paradigm of looking at how they become hegemonizing. I use the word “culture” in transcultural flow to refer to the idea of “a culture of cybernetic capitalism” that has come to color the developmentalist agenda of many a developing nation. I use to the word “transmutate” to refer to the process of synthesis an hybridization of, at the most macro of all levels, the cultures that come into contact with each other and, at the most micro of levels, the words that come into existence by an arranged marriage in the hypermodern developmentalist scheme of things. The words in Figure 39 below represent my own understanding of how we may arrive at a systematic analysis of foreign words by looking at the dimensions of the case:
Identifying spaces of power/knowledge: Transcultural Tools of Analysis as Process of Subjectivizing
The findings of this study has allowed me to present a table of explanation on how hegemonic formulations can be analyzed and how the Focoultian concept of spaces of power/knowledge can be applied . The idea of cybernetics as it progresses from its philological roots in the idea of the explanation into the behavior of living systems onward to its evolution as a systems theory to its appropriated and hybridized version in the case of Malaysia’ Cyberjaya and the MSC, is an example of an idea that can be analyzed as a transcultural process. I analyzed Cyberjaya and the MSC as a genealogy. In the table below (Table 30) I present the parts of the tool for analyzing hegemonic ideas that have history and consequences. I call the strategy “tool of analysis for trans-cultural flow of ideas ” to highlight the idea of ideological migration from one cultural system to another and to analyze it as a phenomena of social change that has its roots and consequences in the social relations of production.
1. CONCEPTUAL
FORMATION
How did the idea begin? (i.e. history, philology, genealogy).
What is its genesis?
What are its historical materialistic dimensions?
2. CONTEXT OF
TRANSFER
Was the concept imposed upon the people?
How did it get transplanted—through colonization? Neo-colonization?
Did it evolved naturally out of the cultural tradition of the people?
(One may look at the impact of the Iranian Revolution on the Islamic world.)
3. COLONIZING
PROPERTIES
How hegemonic is it?, due to it foreignness,
Do we need the people to possess a high level of technical knowledge to understand and apply the concept.
4. COMPLEXITY OF THE CONCEPT
Is the idea still difficult to be understood? Does the society need a restructuring in the architecture of knowledge
in order to understand the concept as its subdivisions?
5. CONDITION OF TRANSFER
What is the nature of the social history of the recipient nation/people?
How has the people tried itself to understand the new concept?
How has the ideological state apparatus played a historical role in developing the base-superstructural foundation of hegemony?
6. CIRCULARITY OF TRANSFER
How has the concept evolved from a point of origin and gets enculturalized). One may look at examples from the media and visual arts.
7. CRITICAL DIMENSION OF THE CONCEPT
What are the contradictions inherent in the concept?
8. CREATIVE DIMENSION
What is so appealing and novel about the concept.
What are the liberal and illiberal democratic dimensions of the concept?
9. CONSEQUENCE OF ADOPTION
What are the changes that happened when the concept was adopted and becomes a network of enterprise of policies? How were people, geography, places, and technology affected?
10. CULTURAL DIMENSION AND IMPLICATION
What is the nature of the relationship of the new concept to the social relations of production?
11.CULTURAL/COM
UNITARIANISTIC ASPECT
Is the concept democratic? If so, is it of the nature liberal or illiberal?
Is it of the nature is protectionist, participatory, or pastoral democracy?
12. CUI BONO or ‘WHO BENEFITS’?
Who/what institutions benefit from the institutionalization of the concept? What form of class structure did it create? What contradiction did it bring?
13. CONTROL of IDEOLOGICAL AND SUPER-STRUCTURAL ADVANCEMENT
How is the concept advanced/ideology of it pushed or marketed?
What institutional and political support is given to the idea (see for example the Islamization of management in Malaysia)
The above represent my ideas and analyses on what might be developed as tools of cultural analysis in looking at transcultural flow of ideas. These tools are indeed a series of questions to inquire into the kaleidoscopic nature of a concept, such as the inquiry into the transformation of “cybernetics” to “Cyberjaya” which illustrated a range of issues the tools of analysis as above can be utilized. In other words, tools here means to deconstruct and to get to the genealogy and the maturity of the concept itself. Because these series of questions attempt to provide foundations to the ‘dialecticness” of the concept in question an further inquire into the ‘materialistic’ foundation of the concept, these tools can be looked at as ‘counter-foundational’ it is a philosophical and dialogical enterprise.
Hegemony does not exist in a vacuum, nor transplanted onto the landscape of peoples. Concepts become hegemonic after a series of transformations aided by fertile ground of such growth. The fertility might be in the form of political stability, authoritarianism in the way the national leadership advances such formations, or simply via clever marketing of the concept itself. Herein lies the need to perform a surgical-cultural analysis of the genealogy of the conceptual transformations.
Implications for further inquiry
To elaborate, below are some of the illustrations of the applicability of this concept of transcultural flow of ideas as it further relates to the study of Malaysia:
∑ Constitutional monarchy
∑ Nationalism
∑ Parliamentary democracy
∑ Liberal Education
∑ Islamic Education
∑ Islamization
∑ Islamic Reformation
In answering the question of the process of "cybernation" and how cultures change and new social conditions emerge, and how we are to look at phenomena from a kaleidoscopic perspective, I propose thenceforth, any concept be analyzed from the above thirteen lenses of conceptual formulation.
I hope that through this study, we may then design more studies on states undergoing a conscious counter-hegemonizing process. Furthermore we can discern the creative dimensions of the strategies used by different nations and finally formulate models to further inquire into the structure of “cybernetic” revolutions (see Kuhn, 1996). In other words, we can embark upon in-depth and longitudinal studies of the ways in which nations control or are being controlled specifically by “digital communication technologies,” how social relations are reorganized, and how these states are integrated into the continuing complexities of the global capitalist system.
<b> Final thoughts on spaces of knowledge/power</b>
The production of this essay began with a conceptualization of an explanation of the process of how hegemony operates at the subtlest of all levels: language and the practice of everyday lives. It describes the creation of new spaces of power (Foucoult) constructed from the ideological archives of the old and those that domesticate the dominated, to borrow Bourdieu’s term (1984). Using semiotics as one of the triangulated tool of analyses, the process of hegemonic formation is explained. In other words, the means and methods of inscribing the ideology of cyberneticism is described. The newly created cities of Cyberjaya and Putrajaya in the hypermodernized developmentalism of Malaysia are examples of how the global telematics conglomerate of the advanced capitalist world, particularly of the United States of America and Japan are invited exclusively to inscribe their brand of practices and signature economies onto a willing state such as Malaysia. Such an inscriptural enterprise is made possible by the “coalition of the willing” of the political and economic decision-makers of this state. The English language in general and that of American corporatism in particular becomes the instrument by which the inscriptions onto the landscape of ideology and infrastructure are made.
On Hegemony, Technology and Authority
In the previous section I conclude my finding on the nature of hegemony and utopianism in the case of Malaysia’s MSC as further exemplified in the case of the creation of the city of Cyberjaya. The idea of installations creating ideology and expression is central to my early proposition. I began with the premise that signs and symbols determine the nature and character of hegemony. How hegemony is structured is a complex, yet recognizable process. Hegemony alone does not merely sustain ideology. This notion is perhaps applicable to the case of hegemonic formations in societies that is controlled by corporate-controlled media but not in authoritarian states in transitional societies elsewhere such as Malaysia. Authority defines the character and furtherance of hegemony as well as the facilitation of hegemonic transitions.
Cybernetic technology is such a technology, in this study, employed as a structuring tool by state authority that lies in one person who ruled for a considerable period of time. The authoritarianism in the Malay culture itself, appropriated by the authoritarianism of the modern Malay political leadership, aided by the authoritarianism inert in technology perceived as deterministic creates newer social systems, better systems of control, and more efficient systems of irrigation for global capitalism. The development of consciousness is dependent upon the development of literacy; in the case of Cyberjaya and the MSC, the language of cybernetics hegemonizes over the language of the agrarian society that is tied in to the peoples of the land and to to that of natives. In the 22 year- reign of Mahathir Mohamad , the state saw a transformation of such a language, of cybernetics, appropriated and translated into social action and transforming the social relations of production to create “non-reproductive” forces of society such as national institutions and communication systems, besides the creation of “productive” forces such the means of “multimedia” production whose ends justify their links to the global capitalist economy. Hence, hegemony works in harmony with authority to create a hegemonic condition to further advance, in this case the cause of the transnational capitalistic struggle to dominate the world economy.
Whilst many a philosopher and historian of technology such as McClintock (1992) see the potentials of the technology of the Internet in for example, in democratizing society and intellectualizing the individual through education, in many a society such as Malaysia the technologizing of the polity itself becomes a natural process of creating a culture that not only is forced to be structured into the mould of a consumerist and international capitalistic economy but one that will be disabled (McDermott & Varenne, 1995) by the very technology perceived to be democratizing.
I end this essay and a brief study on hegemony and utopianism in a Southeast Asian state; with a renewed affirmation of Marx’s thesis on technology, culture, and the development of consciousness, and an invitationfor social scientists to look at social change from the point of view of the analysis of spaces of power/knowledge.
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IN AN AGE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY :
THE ENGLISH TEACHER AS A “BRAIN SURGEON”</span></strong>
Azly Rahman
Universiti Utara Malaysia
<strong><em>Brief Paper for the Proceedings of Universiti Utara Malaysia Seminar in Research organized by the Center for Research and Consultancy 15 November, 1995, Convention Center, Universiti Utara Malaysia. </em></strong></div>
Future shock -- the disease of change -- can be prevented. But it will take drastic social, even
Alvin Toffler,
Future Shock (1970)
Already we have fallen under its dominion. The year 2000 is operating like a powerful magnet on humanity, reaching down into the 1990s and intensifying the decade. It is amplifying emotions, accelerating change, heightening awareness, and compelling us to reexamine ourselves, our values and our institutions. (2)
John Naisbitt,
Megatrends 2000 (1990)
A specture is haunting the world view of teaching and learning as we approach the next millennium. Within the last few decades, we have witnessed a major advance in the field of cognitive psychology in which there is rapidly growing body of literature which attempts to further conceptualize the working of the three pound human brain as more than a computer. Research in the field of neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and of late, in the field of classroom management are all pointing in the direction of synthesis with the rapid fission of “sociology of the future”; a novel field which attempts to describe the manner in which the human species will continue to survive in this age of “complexity and chaos” (see Appendix I).
The purpose of this paper is to invite future educational policymakers, curriculum strategists, in general, and administrators and educators specifically to begin thinking about the cognitive processes involved in educating the human mind. Specifically, this paper, (as the title metaphorically suggests) is an invitation for the teachers of English to become “brain surgeons” who will take into consideration the complex innerworkings of the human mind and consequently engineer a progressive change as we enter another paradigm shift in the teaching of English.
As this paper describes the “shape of things to come”, it rests upon the following well-researched assumptions that :
(i) The survival of English Language Teaching is contingent upon the multitude of features characteristic of what is currently hailed as “The Decade of the Brain”. “Survival” here means “the ability of the system to sustain cognitively” given a progressive diet of higher cognitive skills.
(ii) The nature of learning and teaching is inherently that of change. The way knowledge is viewed has always been constantly changing and as we approach the twenty-first century, change is all the more rapid and violent. Thus, the teaching of English must also be oriented towards change.
(iii) The maxim “Knowledge is Power” coined by the British philosopher Sir Francis Bacon is all the more true in this age of ultra sophistication in information technology. The approach towards acquiring, managing, and disseminating knowledge must be treated more systematically and effectively in order to treat knowledge as a resource of power.
(iv) The teaching of English albeit infused with political rhetorics of excellence as well as with an array of programmes for reform, may not effectively produce the greatest number of young intellectual elates who will be anable to cope with or bring about change in the next millennium. In other words, our school system is not yet a conductive breeding ground for future strategic and creative thinkers.
Based on the above assumptions which are by no means exhaustive, I shall first discuss them as they relate to teaching of English. The second part of this paper will outline several philosophical and pedagogical considerations which can be made in order to sustain the progressiveness of the means and methods of teaching English.
In short, this paper is titled “Educating the Whole Brain in an Age of Information Technology : The English Teacher as “A Brain Surgeon” for the prime reason that the thinking of this new age revolves around the notion that in order to progress one needs to understand the nature of brain-based learning in the teaching of English and consequently engineer a paradigm shift in our system so that we will be ready to face the challenges of the next century. The English Teacher hence needs not merely to be equipped with the art and science of teaching but also with knowledge of the current trends in our understanding of the brain (see Appendix IIa).
<strong>THE DECADE OF THE BRAIN</strong>
It is only within the last three decades that our understanding of the complexity of the human brain has got into its infancy with the earliest Nobel Prize-winning research of Roger Sperry of the California Institute of Technology and Robert Ornstein of the Institute for the Study of Human Knowledge.3 Tony Buzan, a proponent of brain-based research writes about the breakthrough :
In California laboratories in the late 1960s and early 1970s, research was begun which was to change the history of our appreciation of the human brain, ... In summary, what Sperry and Ornstein discovered was that the two sides of your brain, or your two cortices, which are linked by a fantastically complex network of nerve fibres called the Corpus Collosum deal dominantly with different types of mental activity. (4)
Buzan further writes of the discovery of the laterality of the human brain and how each side governs the functioning of the body :
In most people the left cortex deals with logic, words, reasoning, number, linearity, and analysis etc., the so-called “academic activities”. While the left cortex is engaged in these activities, the right cortex is more in the “alpha wave” or resting state. The right cortex deals with rhythm, images and imagination, colour, daydreaming, face recognition, and pattern or map recognition. (5)
Sperry and Ornsteinís research was further continued into the 1980s by Professor Eran Zaidel in which he found out that “each hemisphere also is capable of a more subtle range of mental activities.” (6) (see Appendix IIb on the dominant Processes of the two sides of the cortex.
In another work on the complexity of the human mind, Jeremy Campbell wrote in The Grammatical Man : Information, Entropy, Language and Life :
The basic inequalities of styles in the brain are well known. One hemisphere, usually the left, is good at handling things in sequence. It specializes in numbers and analytical thought and plays the dominant role in speech. The other hemisphere is better at dealing with space, shapes, pictures. It makes multiple and simultaneous connections among items of information, rather than treating them sequentially. The right side tends to use, a “top down” strategy, processing information as whole, perceiving its full meaning, rather than approaching it “bottom-up,” using the parts to construct the whole, which is often more than the sum of its parts. (7)
Since the earliest Sperry-Ornstein research, brain science research has continued to move forward. Volumes of research and popular publications continued to be generated to reflect the propensity and immanence of the subject matter.8 Tony Buzan, in his well-received book on brain-based study techniques, Use Your Head, put it well when he said that your mind is better than you think.
A recent editorial in a Singapore-based left brain/right brain newsletter went on further to state that “95% of all that has ever been known about the brain has only been discovered in the last ten years.”9 Futurists recommending policy changes in virtually all spheres of human endeavours outline the following “mega-brain” trends which will represent the features of this emerging paradigm of the new page. Specifically, they are:
1. Brain-based training
2. Brain-based education
3. Mental Literacy
4. Mind Mapping
5. Renaissance of the Arts
6. The Mega Brain
7. Global Intelligence/Brain
8. Space Exploration
9. Global Peace (10)
The scope of this paper does not permit an extended discussion of each and every scenario presented, which together signify the advent of The Decade of the Brain in summary, they represent the proliferation of the new attitude in thinking about the brain. (See Appendix III on the new mode of learning). This is the prevailing neuroscience ideology in most of the advanced and supra-advanced nations such as the United States, United Kingdom, the European countries, and Singapore, to name a few.
Those acquainted with the work of Tony Buzan and his Centurion Curriculum in the United Kingdom, The Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) in the United States, the astronaut Edgar Mitchellís Institute of Notice Sciences and Robert Ornstein’s Institute for the Study of Human knowledge and a multitude of others, will agree that brain-based training and education is a reality which is fast making itself felt in the spheres of modern living.
It is within this context and assumption that a revolution in thinking, a paradigm shift, is needed in the way we look at the many decades of the teaching of English.
<strong>A NEW WAY OF LOOKING AT “KNOWLEDGE”
</strong>
An abundance of literature predominantly that which has emerged from the field of the sociology of knowledge, hailed the advent and maturity of “The Age of Information”. The Father of Artificial intelligence, M. I. T. professor of computer science, Professor Herbert Simon envisioned decades ago the coming of the computer age. Futurist Alvin Toffler in his work Future Shock as well as in his other two works in the future-analysis trilogy, The Third Wave and Powershift reiterated that the nature of knowledge is that of constant change. Knowledge is commodity and subject to obsolescence.
Perhaps it is not premature to say that what is studied in the science and humanities curriculum in our system consists of knowledge which is forty to fifty years outdated! The knowledge “explosion” characteristic of The Information Age has rendered it so and any learning system’s failure to deal; with knowledge dissemination at a faster and effective rate will have dire intellectual consequences. Teachers of English in this case, cannot hope to produce first-rate intellectuals resilient to the changing nature of knowledge and constantly aware of the changing trends in society.
To illustrate the point above, the scenario in our schools is such that, what is taught is generally from the viewpoint of something which is near obsolescence. In the study of Mathematics for example, whilst the dominant orientation is that of the Euclidean Geometry (the study of circles, squares, triangles, etc.) advance research and development in this field has rendered the possibility of a paradigm shift. Factual geometry (i.e. superimposition of geometric shapes based on a single mathematical concept) is now in fashion. Mathematics is no longer that of plane-geometry but pattern-like computer-generated design used widely for example, in measuring the Earth’s topography.
Another case in point is in the study of Geography where, instead of looking at single nation states for analyses of their geographic activities, global political economic and historical factors are taken into consideration when studying a nation-stateís economic activities.
Various other forms of integrated learning global in nature, in other fields of study, should take into consideration the exponential rate by which knowledge “explodes” so that the curriculum as well as those we attempt to educate can always be in tune with the issue of knowledge becoming obsolete.
The maxim “ideas move nation” commonly used by many a political scientist will be all the more valid if those in control of managing knowledge or ideas are aware of the latest developments in the changing nature of knowledge. Harvard philosopher of science, Professor Thomas Kuhn, in his classic work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, analyzed this phenomena as a shift in world-view when the one proceeding can no longer provide a logical consistency in rationalizing its existence.11
In short, the Kuhnian analysis asserts that when too many questions are asked, the mode of viewing that particular world view loses its foundation and hence, that world-view is forced to collapse to make way for a new one. The latest example is in the field of world politics whence orthodox Communism collapsed out of its own internal contradictions and hence gave added advantage to the onward march of modern-day “Reaganomics” brand of capitalism. This in turn saw the preponderance of the “global market place of the free world” and signified for example what a Washington-based strategic analyst, Francis Fukuyama, coined as the “end of history”.
The force which propelled the scientific way of thinking such as The Copernican Revolution (astronomy), The Discovery of the Double Heliz (bio-chemistry), The Computer Revolution and Cybernetics (information technology), and The Special Theory of Relativity and The Principle of Singularities (theoretical physics) is the one responsible in changing the nature of looking at knowledge.
Recent work in the ìsociology of futureî characteristic of futurists such as Arthur C. Clarke, Alvin Toffler, John Naisbitt, Jacques Ellul, Lewis Mumford, Marshall McLuhan, and Edward Cornish (of the World Future Society) to name a few, has amplified the need for us to understand the complexity of knowledge as well as its development as truth and commodity. Especially relevant to this assumption that knowledge is constantly changing is the mentioning of the nature of the term “knowledge”.
It has, since the last century, been subjected to various etymological and epistemological debates. On the one hand, many a philosopher would look at it as phenomena whilst on the other hand many would view it as commodity subject to the control of those who own knowledge to the control of those who own knowledge.
In conclusion, it is within this context and assumption that I am suggesting another approach of looking at the process of managing and utilizing knowledge so that, “to be knowledgeable” can no longer mean “in possession of age-old facts and obsolete half-truths” but rather to mean “to be able to systematically and creatively acquire and synthesize new information for a more lasting advantage.”
<strong>KNOWLEDGE IS POWER</strong>
One of the worldís best-known futurists and social thinkers, Alvin Toffler, states in his latest work Powershift that “ (t)he metabolism of knowledge is moving faster” and that knowledge is constantly being reorganized by those in possession of it. Toffler attributes this phenomena to the computer revolution. He notes :
The wildfire spread of the computer in recent decades has been called the single most important change in the knowledge system since the invention of writing. Paralleling this extraordinary change has come the equally astonishing spread of new networks and media for moving knowledge and its precursors, data and information. ... Had nothing else changed, these twin developments alone warrant the term knowledge revolution. (12)
Our system of educating must come to terms with Toffler’s notion that “whosoever controls knowledge, controls.” The new mode of thinking should be characteristized by the deliberate and systematic effort to globalize and not to compartmentalize the curriculum and the way of transmitting knowledge.
Transdisciplinary approaches to teaching should be the feature of the English Language classrooms of the future. Integrated learning,î which cuts across the curriculum should no longer be buzz-words superficially attempted but rather be the dominant, classroom practices of the next few years and beyond.
Our aim should be to produce global thinkers who will be able to see “wholes” rather than ìpartsî and it will be such an aim which can help us orchestrate the teaching of the skills to control knowledge. As American educator Steven Benjamin wrote in his article “An Ideascape for Education: What Futurists Recommend,”:
In the future, learning will be centered around ideas and problems, not fragmented into discrete subject areas controlled by a seven-period day. The educational futurists call for a curriculum that is activity and idea-based, a transdisciplinary one. (13)
Benjamin supported such a view by attributing to the idea that ìthe complexity of todayís problem requires us to draw solutions from knowledge in a variety of fields. 14
If we juxtapose Toffler’s analysis of the impact of the Computer Revolution with Benjaminís call for the globalization of knowledge, one thing is clear : our education system needs to be introduced to be introduced to the use of data base for transdisciplinary research work. Our system may well be equipped to impart the knowledge of utilizing data bases.
Thus, it is within such a context above, (that knowledge is power and those who can get wide access to computer-based knowledge, rules), that our system can produce individuals capable of managing vast storehouses of information.
<strong>THE NEED TO CREATE STRATEGIC THINKERS</strong>
The field of English Language teaching has been exposed to Edward de Bonoí s lateral thinking for the last few years. Thousands of dollars have been spent in such a pursuit to educate the brain to think systematically and creatively. The question is : have the efforts yielded positive results? Perhaps many of us would prefer to believe that as long as lateral thinking is taught in a vacuum and deliberate effort is not made to permeate such thinking into all the subject matters, the thinking programme in our system can malfunction.
The future calls for an urgent need to create more ìphilosophersî and creative thinkers among our children. By this I mean those who can argue, criticize and rationalize logically when given any propositions, those who will be able to hold all facts tentative, challenge assumptions and synthesize arguments, facts and opinions into an eclectic mould. By this I also mean those who can create, transform, imagine, and invent.
Again, according to this analysis this grave concern of the rising tide of mediocrity in thinking amongst our future leaders can be attributed to the fact that knowledge and how it is viewed is compartmentalized via a fragmented curriculum. Those entrusted to manage knowledge and transmit it may perhaps need to be trained in the advanced principles of teaching and introduced to the field of Cognitive Psychology. In other words, teachers need to be trained in this new philosophy as urgently as Socrates’ insistence for “Kings to be Philosophers.”
Survival in the rapidly changing world of uncertainties -- due largely to the constant bombardment upon our senses, of the electronic and printed media -- is contingent upon the ability to think logically and creatively. To think critically is a valuable skill which needs to become second nature to our system of education. Perhaps philosophy as a subject needs to be urgently introduced in our curriculum. I believe our children can benefit enormously from the introduction of the work of great philosophers like Socrates, Plato, Confucius, Wittgenstein, Russell as well as the philosophies embedded in the great religions and their respective world views.
The assumptions I have briefly discussed in the proceeding paragraphs as well as the need to understand them in the context of our education system, have one theme in common. It is that we need to get to the root of the matter in order to equip ourselves in facing the challenges of the 21st century. The root of learning and knowledge acquisition may not, in sum, lie predominantly in the means and methods of our instruction but rather in our ability to understand the wholistic nature of thinking, as well as in the role “knowledge” interplay’s with the brain.
When our philosophical outlook is fragmented, the way we design our curriculum and the manner we instruct our children will also be fragmented. Hence, we will create, in the American philosopher Herbert Marcuse’s term, “one-dimensional” beings who will only be capable of constructing his/her own world views which are contrived and construed.
No amount of rhetoric of excellence and no amount of programme to infuse thinking skills into the system can bring the brains we are educating towards the next century without in depth understanding of the “wholeness” of the brain.
<strong>TOWARDS A PARADIGM SHIFT : PHILOSOPHY AND PEDAGOGY OF BRAIN-BASED LEARNING AND TEACHING</strong>
The new learning calls for the understanding of the brain. The brain-based approach as widely written by those who have done extensive research on it, can offer educators a new way of looking at the world. Such a way is characterized by features such as “complexity”, “interrelatedness”, “unity”, “emergence”, “wholism”, “generativity” and a multitude of terms which rise from neuroscience.
American educationist Sam Crowell in his article “A New Way of Thinking : The Challenge of the Future” outlines the principles of brain-based learning among which are :
i) the brain processes information simultaneously
ii) learning is a physiological experience; not merely a mental exercise
iii) the brain organizes knowledge actively and retroactively
iv) experience helps determine content of new knowledge
v) the brain processes parts and whole simultaneously
vii) the brain responds to the challenges but is less effective when threatened (15)
A great deal of the psychological and physiological aspects of the brain need to be studied in order to understand the complexity of whole-brain learning. A theoretical understanding of this development will lead to pedagogical enrichment in that the English classrooms of the future, and in fact the entire organization of subject matter, can be structured with the knowledge and understanding of the left/right hemispheres of the brain.
The mode of learning will move from traditional rote-learning to learning with the five senses which is orchestrated by the brain. Diagnostic tests to determined the laterality of the brain hemisphere should be conducted at the entry level. Teacher training and staff development should be tuned to this new development. The mode of teaching would be guided by the principles of neuroscience.
Based on the above principles of neuroscience, here are some of the features of the English language teaching system which could emerge as 21st century approaches :
1. Diagnostic tests based on intelligence, attitude and laterality of the brain.
2. Brain-based method of teaching such as memory-training, concept-attainment, synectics, sense-awareness training, suggestopedia, jurisprudentially and social inquiry methods, biological science inquiry, and a plethora of other principles of teaching based on the art and science of brain-based teaching. An excellent introduction to the principles of advanced classroom management and instruction is the work of Bruce Joyce and Marsha Weils, Models of Teaching. 16
3. Study techniques based on the understanding of the functioning of the brain will be transmitted not as intervention plans but as part of the early training at the beginning of the semester of a childís entry into the system. A dominant feature of this training programme will be the teaching of mind-mapping as a note-taking skill (see Appendix Iv a, b and c for example).
4. Progressive classroom management based on creating the most highly-interactive aspect of communication. An excellent required reading for brain-based classroom management is an article by Bernice Mc Carthy “Using the 4MAT System to Bring Learning Style to Schools”. This appeared in the September 1989 issue of Educational Leadership. 17 (See Appendix V for the 4MAT system.)
5. Classroom management which reduces teacher authoritarianism and moving towards a power shift in human relations.
6. Teaching of philosophy and the increase of deliberate teaching of the types of thinking skills, such as synectics, (creativity), principles of inventing, problem solving, etc.
7. Establishment of institutes of advanced studies which will give rise to transdisciplinary teacher and student research. A trans-disciplinary research paper will be a requirement for graduation. During my three years of coordinating the MRSM Perlis’s Programme for the Academically Superior/Gifted and Talented, students were required to do a one-year transdisciplinary research paper as a requirement for graduation. 18
8. The widespread use of data base as a powerful tool for transdisciplinary research, reducing the classroom to a meeting room for ‘student researchers’.
9. An intensive programme of reading of Great Works in the Arts and Sciences so that those who graduate from this system will have been introduced to the history of ideas and especially that of scientific revolutions.
10. The widespread interest in high-cognitive games such as “Olympics of the Mind” and computer-aided mental literacy games.
11. The widespread use of outdoor techniques as a major vehicle for field work type research. (19)
12. Increasing awareness of the importance of the arts -- music, art, literature, etc., -- in the school system in order to create a full realization of the potentials of the right brain.
13. The creation of art galleries, workshops for invention, and a fine arts studio to display and perform work of students and teachers.
14. At the national level, corporations will play a more active role in their internship programmes for teachers and students. (20)
15. Departments will function as consulting groups in their respective fields of expertise. Via the school cooperative movement, they will be able to practise consulting skills and hence interact better with the outside world. This exercise will foster the growth of teacher professionalism. Teachers will be given opportunity to conduct research into brain-based teaching. Grants will be awarded for minisabbatical programmes, provided that they would not greatly interrupt the routines in school.
16. Schools will be internationalized that is there will be high schools which will be corporate members of several international groups among which those which will deal especially with studies of future trends in education.
17. English classes will be networks of this new “futuristic” movement in learning (as mentioned above) and will play a more important role in the advancement of mental literacy.
18. Students will correspond with their counterparts in other countries and “international exchange programmes with progressive schools” in the ASEAN region will be widely experienced. In the distant future this experience will be extended globally. This will increase our sensitivity towards the concept of ‘global interdependence’. This will also develop the need for the introduction of other major world languages into the system, thus opening doors to other peopleís point of view. At the national level, the system will play a more active role in promoting “multicultural understanding”.
19. The English department will have its own “effective outreach programme” so that the advanced principles of teaching and learning will be “shared with society at large”.
20. There will be an increased awareness of the issue affecting ‘the environment’ as well as those on “human rights” and “global peace”. Each school will celebrate important consciousness raising events which are celebrated globally such as Earth Day, Human Rights Day, World Literacy Year, etc. Student activists (in the progressive sense of the word) will emerge.
21. Transdisciplinary curriculum will be the major force of the system’s attempt to globalize knowledge and information.
22. A strong and effective leadership programme for students and teachers will be established in order to create leaders able to generate progressive change. Classrooms will be transformed into think tanks and will be training grounds for corporate leadership.
23. Grants and other forms of financial aid will be awarded by the government schools intending to carry out out brain-based programmes for reform such as the creation of whole brain classrooms and the staging of international-level seminars on global learning.
24. “Mental gymnasium”, “biofeedback tools”, “peak learning”, “photo reading”, “subliminal tapes”, “cybernetics”, “noetic science”, and “altered states of consciousness” will be among the plethora of buzz words which will be the jargon of the English classroom of the future.
25. High in protein - low carbohydrate diet and supplementaries will be the feature of nutrition in the system. This will increase the capability of the brain to produce more and more complex neural connections. (21)
26. Vestibular exercise will dominate the playgrounds, setting pace for the progressive move towards educating the brain through physical activity. Optimal Learning type of audio stimulus will dominate the corridors of the living and learning quarters of the system. Theta-wave type of music (the type which stabilizes the brain waves to a state conducive for learning) will be widely used in teaching all subject matter. (22)
27. A Democratic school environment based on deep respect for the individual will emerge. As corollary to this, the concept of disciplining with dignity will be fully realized.
28. A deliberate attempt to merge the study of modern science with the study of the “stations” of the human soul will be made and proliferated in preparation for a more conscious living in the Age of Information. (23)
29. Schools may become a ìMalaysian-flavoredî high-tech Summerhill and Bronx High combined in which the features of a high school of the future and an environment of real democracy will be present.
30. The age-old maxim Know Thyself imbued in Islam as well as other major philosophies “to better mankind” will be all the more realized. This maxim should be the guiding light of the next generation of strategic level creative thinkers.
The list of future scenarios discussed is not exhaustive and not treated as any sort of classification. Nonetheless it represents some of the major trends we will see shifting the English language teaching system from its current pseudeo-progressive paradigm to a brain-based analytical-humanistic philosophical and pedagogical orientation.
This may be the dawn of a new era in the survival of it will depend on our ability to create strategies thinkers, and creative young philosophers out of those we attempt to educate.
The task is certainly large. For, anything which deals with ideals and a shift in a system and habit of thinking as well as attitude, is bound to be reactionary. Nonetheless, if we study closely the work of great social thinkers both ancient and modern -- from Socrates to Shariati -- we are bound to come to a conclusion that ideas indeed move nations and that we learn things from the past so as not to repeat historical accidents but rather, to learn from them and move to a new world view.
As Stephen Hawking the foremost British physicist of this century put it in his opening chapters of A Brief History of Time, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants (Lucan, Newton, and Einstein) that this new revolution in theoretical physics is finally realized. From a careful reading of Paul Kennedy’s. The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, John Naisbittís Megatrends 2000 and Alvin Toffler’s trilogy Future Shock, The Third Wave, and Powershift we will realize that change -- be it technological, political, scientific, etc. -- is imminent and can be violent. Those who anticipate change and deal with it strategically will survive the upheavals which come about from change.
We shall therefore anticipate the coming trends and design oucal action. No matter how individuals try to pace their lives, no matter what psychic crutches we offer them, no matter how we alter education, the society as a whole will still be caught on a runaway treadmill until we capture control of the accelerated thrust itself. (1)
I thus conclude this “invitation to think” paper with the following passage which I oftentimes reflect upon. The great Iranian social thinker Ali ‘Shariati said in one of major speeches concerning the ideal man :
He is a man whom philosphical thought does not make inattentive to the fate of mankind, and whose involvement in politics does not lead to demagoguery and fame-seeking. Science has not deprived him of the taste of faith, and faith has not paralyzed his power of thought and logical deduction. Piety has not made of him a harmless ascetic, and activism and commitment have not stained his hands with immorality. He is a man of jihad and ijtihad, of poetry and the sword, of solitude and commitment, of emotions and genius, of strength and love, of faith and knowledge. He is a man uniting all dimensions of humanity. He is a man whom life has not made a one-dimensional fractured and defeated creature, alienated from his own self. Through servitude to God, he has delivered himself from servitude to things and people, and his submission to the absolute will of God has summoned him to rebellion against all forms of compulsion. He is a man who has dissolved his transient individuality of the human race, who through the negation of self becomes everlasting. (24)
I end my modest proposal with this perennial question : What then must we do?
And we English teachers do not have anything to lose, except our Ignorance!
<strong>REFERENCES
</strong>
Benjamin, Steve. “An Ideascape for Education : What Futurists Recommend.” Educational Leadership, September 1989, p. 10.
Buzan, Tony. Use Your Head. London : BBC Books 1990.
Campbell, Jeremy. Grammatical Man : Information Entropy, Language, and Life. New York : Simon and Schuster, 1982.
Crowell, Sam. “A New Way of Thinking : The Challenge of the Future” Educational Leadership, September 1989, p.62.
“Future View : Mega Brain Trends to Watch”.
Hamilton, Stephen F. and Mary Agnes. “A Progress Report on Apprenticeships.” Educational Leadership, March 1992, pp. 44-47.
Hammerman, Donald R., et. al. Teaching in the Outdoors. Danville, Ill : IIP, 1985.
Joyce, Bruce and Weils, Marsha. Models of Teaching. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey : Prentice Hall. 1980.
“Keep Your Brains in the Driver’s Seat - Feed it Right.î Left Brain/Right Brain Newsletter. July/August 1992, p.5.
Kuhn, Thomas, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1970.
(London : Pan Books, 1992)p.1
Tony Buzan, Use Your Head (London : BBC Books, 1990) p. 17.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Jeremy Campbell, Grammatical Man : Information, Entropy, Language and life (New York : Simon and Schuster, 1982) p.239.
Robert Sylwester, ìAn Educatorís Guide to Books on the Brain,î in Educational Leadership, September 1989, pp. 79-80.
“Future View Megabrain Trends to Watch,” in Left Brain/Right Brain Newsletter, March 1992.
Ibid.
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1970).
Alvin Toffler, Powershift (New York : Bantam Books, 1990) p. 419.
Steve Benjamin, “An Ideascape for Education : What Futurists Recommend,” in Education Leadership. September 1989, p.10.
Ibid.
Sam Crowell, ìA New Way of Thinking : The Challenge of the Future,î in Educational a Leadership, September 1989. p. 62.
Bruce Joyce and Marsha Weils, Models of Teaching (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey : Prentice Hall, 1980).
Bernice Mc Carthy, “Using the 4MAT System to Bring Learning Styles to Schools,” is Education Leadership, September 1989, pp. 31-37.
Simathurai, “Where Students Write Mini Thesis,” The New Straits Times, 22 October 1991.
See, for examples, Donald Hammerman, et. al., Teaching in the Outdoors (Danville, Ill : IPP, 1985).
NOTES
1 Alvin Toffler, Future Shock (New York : Random House, 1970) p. 428.
2 John Naisbitt and Patricia Aberdeen, Megatrend 2000 (London: Pan Books, 1990) p. 1
3 Tony Buzan, Use Your Head (London : BBC Books, 1990) p. 17.
4 Ibid
5 Ibid
6 Ibid
7 Jeremy Campbell, Grammatical Man: Information, Entropy, Language, and Life (New York : Simon and Schuster, 1982) p. 239.
8 Robert Sylwester, “An Educator’s Guide to Books on the Brain”. in Educational Leadership, September 1989, pp.79-80.
9 “Future View : Megabrain Trends to Watch,” in Left Brain/Right Brain Newsletter, March 1992.
10 Ibid
11 Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1970).
12 Alvin Toffler, Powershift (New York : Bantam Books, 1990) p.419.
13 Steve Benjamin, “An Ideascape for Education : What Futurists Recommend, “ in Educational Leadership, September 1989, p. 10.
14 Ibid
15 Sam Crowell, “A New Way of Thinking : The Challenge of the Future,” in Educational Leadership, September 1989, p.62. , in Educational a Leadership, September 1989
16 Bruce Joyce and Marsha Weils, Models of Teaching (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey : Prentice Hall, 1980).
17 Bernice Mc Carthy, “Using the 4MAT System to Bring Learning Styles to Schools,” is Educational Leadership, September 1989, pp. 31-37.
18 S. Simathurai, “Where Students Write Mini Thesis,” The New Straits Times, 22 October 1991.
19 See, for example, Donald Hammerman et. al., Teaching in the Outdoors (Danville, Ill : IPP, 1985).
20 See, for example, Stephen F. Hamilton and Mary Agnes Hamilton, “A Progress Report on Apprenticeships,” in Educational Leaderships, March 1992, pp.44 - 47.
21 “Keep Your Brains in The Drivers’ Seat - Feed It Right !” Left Brain/Right Brain Newsletter, July/August 1992, p.5.
22 Tom Kenyon, “How Sound and Music Affects the Nervous System and Behaviour” in Ibid, p. 4.
23 See, for example, the classic study on human consciousness in Robert Ornstein, The Psychology of Consciousness (Middlesex, England : Penguin Books, 1986).
24 Ali Shariati, On The Sociology of Islam, trans. Hamid Algar, (Berkeley : Mizan Press, 1970), p.122.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Benjamin, Steve. “An Ideascape for Education : What Futurists Recommend.” Educational Leadership, September 1989, p.10.
Buzan, Tony. Use Your Head. London : BBC Books 1990.
Campbell, Jeremy. Grammatical Man : Information Entropy, Language, and life. New York : Simon and Schuster, 1982.
Crowell, Sam. “A New Way of Thinking : The Challenge of the Future” Educational Leadership, September 1989, p. 62.
“Future View : Mega Brain Trends to Watch.” Left Brain/Right Brain Newsletter. March 1992, p.2.
Hamilton, Stephen F. and Mary Agnes. “A Progress Report on Apprenticeships.” Educational Leadership, March 1992, pp. 44 - 47.
Hammerman, Donald R., et. al. Teaching in the Outdoors. Danville, Ill: IIP, 1985.
Joyce, Bruce and Weils, Marsha. Models of Teaching. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey : Prentice Hall, 1980.
“Keep your Brains in the Driver’s Seat - Feed it right.” Left Brain/Right Brain Newsletter. July/August 1992, p. 5.
Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1970.
Mc Carthy, Bernice. “Using the 4MAT system to Bring Learning Styles to Schools.” Educational Leadership September, 1989. pp. 31 - 37.
Naisbitt, John and Aberdeen Patricia. Megatrends 2000, London : Pan Books, 1990.
Ornstein, Robert. The Psychology of Consciousness. Middlesex, England : Penguin Books, 1986.
Simathurai, S. “Where Students Write Mini Thesis,” The New Straits Times. 22 October 1991.
Sylwester, Robert. “An Educator’s guide to Books on the Brain.” Educational Leadership, September 1989. p. 62.
Toffler, Alvin. Powershift. New York : Bantam Books, 1990.
___________. Future Shock. New York : Random House, 1970.
[a:edwbrain/d.azly3/snj]Dr. AZLY RAHMANhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07437908281114330911noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11166677.post-1133553028392687102005-12-02T11:45:00.000-08:002006-02-05T20:08:47.366-08:0039] Notes on Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape<span style="color:#3366ff;"><strong>Notes on Eugene O'Neill's <em>A Hairy Ape</em></strong></span>
<span style="color:#000000;">by Azly Rahman</span>
<em></em>
And much it grieved my heart to think
What Man has made of Man.
- WORDSWORTH, Lines written in early Spring.
<em>“Say! What’s dem slobs in de foist cabin got
to de wit us? We’re better men dan dey
are, ain’t we? Dey’re just baggage. Who
makes dis old tub run? Ain’t it us guys?
Well den, we belong, don’t we? We belong
and dey don’t. Dat’s all ...”
(p. 1245)</em>
Those are the words of Yank, the protaganist, the “hairy ape,” who thinks that he is the integral part of progress in Industrial Age and looks to power and steel for his sense of belonging. this is the myth that the character “Yank,” in O’Neill’s expressionistic play, hovering upon the concept of naturalism, lives in; believing that he is a vital part of the social order. Yank’s view, of course, is pure illusion.
The play uses its point of departure the shattering of a myth, and it is the purpose of this paper to analyze the character of Yank, expressionistic and symbolic in nature, as he moves from delusion to self-realization; from believing that he is the force behind the steel to being the victim of steel himself.
Each of the eight short scenes in Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape seeks to depict a stage in the psychic development of Yank, the hero of the play, and attempt to present in an expressionistic and symbolic manner his bitter struggle against a hostile universe.
The play opens with the drinking and singing scene at the fireman’s forecastle of an ocean liner. Yank, described as the most powerful animal there, “more sure of himself than the rest” (p. 1242), asserts and accepts his position, as stoker on the ship, of being great importance. Neither the nostalgic sentimentalism of Paddy nor the socialistic harangues of Long can shake his adament convictions.
He emphasizes that the present relies upon power and force and brute strength. the modern ship, which works on steel and coal, needs a new type of man who can cope with new force, and Yank sees himself as this ideal type. He seees himself as the force that makes the engine moves; the basic force behind the industrial society. He boasted:
<em>I’m stream and oil for de engines. I’m de ting in
noise dat makes juh hear it; I’m smoke and express
trains and steamers and factory whistles; I’m de ting
in gold dat makes money! And I’m what makes iron
into steel! Steel, dat stands for the whole ting! I’m
steel-steel-steel! I’m de muscles in steel, de punch
behind it!
(p. 1248)
</em>
It is in the third scene Yank’s myth, that he is an integral part of progress; the all important “bottom” of society is foreever destroyed, when he is given his first glimpse of his actual, objective position in the social order. Yank encounters Mildred Douglas, the blueblood, who comes “slumming” into the stokehole.
Horrified at his bellowing and the coldust-caked body of Yank, she cried, “Oh, the filthy beast!” and fainted. It is this chance, violent encounter with the somewhat neurotic and unsympathetic daughter of the rich, capitalistic class that opens Yank’s eyes to his true position; to the realization that he does not “belong” as he imagined he did. At first, Yank tried to seek a personal justification of his position, trying to reinforce his selfhood. He wondered:
<em>I scared her? Why de hell should I scare her?
Who the hell is she? Ain’t she de same as me?
Hairy ape, huh? I’ll show her I’m better’n her, if
she on’y knew it, I belong and she don’t, see?
(p. 1249)
</em>
Yank then began to see that the earth does not belong to him and those who “make it run”, but to a group that see in him and his kind a “filthy beast”, a “hairy ape”. It is at this point we are presented with Yank’s psychological crisis - his disharmony within his own self.
Thus, in the following scene, Yank is seen assuming the posture of Rodin’s statue, “The Thinker”, trying to re-evaluate himself after hearing the words of Mildred. In this scene too Yank, in that posture, symbolizes the Neanderthal man trying to move into the position of the civilized man; by “trying to think”, and thus, suggesting the inhuman quality and monotony of the kind of life as such as Yank’s.
Long, interrupting Yank, tries to interpret the previous scene as indicative of the struggle between social classes. Still, Yank sees the whole issue as a personal attack on him. Thus, at the ned of the scene, he tries to re-establish his own sense of belonging by condemning Mildred. Yank compares the muscles in his arms with the disgusting skinniness of the girl.
He then threatens to leave immediately and “bust de face offen her”. Here, Yank believes that with the use of brute force alone can he regain his sense of security in the world. Nevertheless, his dangerous intention was stopped by the men around him; in the same manner a captured ape would be held.
Scene five takes Yank and his desire for vindicationto Fifth Avenue, symbolic of the core of Mildred’s world. Long has brought him there in order to help him develop some type of social consciousness: “I want yer to awaken yer bloody class consciousness.” Here, Long wants Yank to get even with “her kind”, that is, Mildred’s kind; the rich upper class.
Nevertheless, Yank could not think the way Long wanted him to - in terms of interclass conflict. Yank’s self-justification is only aimed at the individual (Mildred); hence, the materialistic emblems of the upper class found at fifth Avenue do not have any effect upon him. He sees the heweeries there attractive; while Long pointed out to him their prices and thinks that one piece will buy food for a starving family for a year.
But when Yank discovers the price for a piece of fur made from monkey fur, he becomes enraged. He feels that this is a personal insult to him. He interprets this in terms of himself: “Trowing it up in my face! Christ! I’ll fix her!” (p. 1262)
At the end of this scene, Yank, attempting to show his worth and might, and proving his identity (built on brute force), began to insult the passer-bys who came out of the nearby church. He asserts that he belongs amid all this steel, but that these people do not belong. In the process, he tries to attack one man and naturally, this leads him to the prison cell.
Scene six seems to present a crucial point in the development of Yank’s self-realization. He began to understand the nature of his own delusion. He now sees himself as, instead of being the force behind the steel, he is now the victim of the substance. Now, reduced to literally, the status of a domesticated ape, having been robbed of his humanity, and his pride in his work, Yank reacts bitterly against the very steel with which he he has previously declared his kinship:
<em>“He made dis-dis cage! Steel! It don’t belong, dat’s what! Cages, ceels, locks, bolts, bars - dats what it means! - holding me down” (p. 1268).</em>
In the prison Yank learns about the IWW, an organization with which he can identify and belong. He now sees his role as a destroyer, tearing down the industrial pillars of the society which has dehumanize him. But, when he presents his objectives to the IWW, he is thrown out as a spy, and discovers that he does not belong there.
In the last scene, the next day after been thrown out of IWW, Yank, in his last attempt to find a place to belong to, goes to the monkey house at the zoo. He stops to talk to a large gorilla “squatting on his haunches on a bench much the same attitude as Rodin’s “Thinker”. At this point, Yank is finally convinced of his social dispossession.
He then decides to free the animal and join him in brotherhood. But even the gorilla rejects Yank and kills him. Before he dies, the “hairy ape” mourns: “He got me, aw right. I’m trou. Even him didn’t tink I belonged. Christ, where do I get off at? Where do I fit in?” (p.1274). Yank did come to a realization just as he is dying - that he belongs to the cage that the gorilla has thrown him in. He is where he really belongs, here is the identifiable structure where he sought.
Thus ends the life of Yank, symbol of the modern man, caught in the mechanical development of society, his individuality lost. Yank, deluded by his belief that he is the force behind the steel, at the final scene of the play, came to a point of realization that he is indeed a victim of steel and can no longer find his place in nature.
Through the eight short scenes, O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape presents Yank’s psychic development. Expressionistic and symbolid in form, it has succeded in depicting Yank, the protagonist, as an outcase of his society, and, whose rootless, bitter struggle against a hostile society is symbolic of the tragedy of the modern man; lost in the indifferent world of industrialization.Dr. AZLY RAHMANhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07437908281114330911noreply@blogger.com205tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11166677.post-1133552589968745582005-12-02T11:42:00.000-08:002006-02-05T20:07:58.483-08:0038] Futuristics and Nation-building<p><strong><span style="color:#3366ff;">FUTURISTICS AND NATION BUILDING FOR MALAYSIA 2020
by Azly Rahman </span></strong></p><p><em>We cannot humanize the future until we draw it into our consciousness and probe it with all the intelligence and imagination at our command. This is what we are now beginning to do.
</em>
Alvin Toffler
The Futurists
We have shifted paradigms. No longer at a historical juncture nor standing at the banks watching the rapids of technological progress run its course, we have been systematically plunged into an epoch of changing times - for better or for worse. </p><p>
The information Age-much heralded by those who hold on strong to faith in technological progress - is here. Prewarned of its advent by futurists such as Alvin Toffler, John Naisbitt, Arthur C. Clark, Herman Kahn and Peter Drucker, the age of “change, chaos and complexity”, of “future shock”, of “power shift”, of “managing in turbulent times” and of “becoming an electronically-wired society” signify the highest stage of post-industrial, post-capitalist and post modern society. </p><p>
Malaysia moved gracefully into first into the industrial stage, then into the post industrial era and culminating into a new rhetoric of nation-building sloganized by the word “Vision 2020”. Across the board, the dimensions of change to be taken are systematically engineered by the political economic elites to steer the nation through the tides of turbulent times. </p><p>Radical changes are demanded. Education is to be democratized, intellectualism mobilized, infrastructure corporatized, politics electronically centralized-those nuances are laced with the strengthening of our country’s super structure : information technology. Another phase of Malaysia’s “creative synthesis” has begun. In the most advanced sector of society, Vision 2020 is already a reality. </p><p>
Whilst, all those megatransformations are taking place in the periphery nation called Malaysia, in United States two important events campaigning for excellence in thinking were concluded, sometime in the middle of 1994. </p><p>
One is an international conference on critical thinking in Sonoma, California, the other is a gathering of intellectual giants of the World Future Society in Washington D.C. Whilst the former calls upon Amreica to urgently cultivate the skills of thinking critically in order to survive in the sea of intellectual mediocrity, the later envisions a millennium of a positive and sustainable future. </p><p>
And meanwhile, the Malaysia news media continue to monitor the turbulent changes in society, politics, education, economics, military, international relations and in virtually all aspects of the national questions in its effort to invent and reinvent reality which is sometimes difficult to grasp.</p><p>
If there is a term to describe the development stated above, it is that of “change, complexity, competition, and chaos”: the 4C’s. Like the 4C’s of the framework for a story-crisis, conflict, climax and conclusion-they permeate the consciousness of the mind of the Malaysian. </p><p>At times, the promises of technological progress rings true and at times we are like spirits lost in the gamut of technological jargons and ideological confusion. At times we seem to understand what vision 2020 means but at times we seem to be like deranged minds bombared by unending Pepsi and Diet-Coke commercials. </p><p>
How do we make sense of all these changes and consciously be part of the national agenda having moving gracefully towards a collective agreement of what Vision 2020 is? What brand of thinking should we adopt to be intellectually prepared against the constant bombardment of ideologies sacred and profance and ultimately to choose the ones closer to our heart’s desire? What dimension of thinking should we adopt in order to select amongst the many currently marketed? Which one would synchronize best with our desire to build a sustainable future?
<strong>WORLD OF THINKING</strong> </p><p>
Choices abound in the field of thinking. Our psyche is asked to perform the tedious process of selecting the range of diverse styles of thinking and to pay allegiance to an equally diverse range of thinkers. We are told of packaged thinking skills such as Edward de Bono’s “lateral thinking”, Tony Buzan’s “radiant thinking”, or those inspired by readings of Sun Tzu’s Art of War, Steven Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and other brands such as “synectics”, “divergent thinking”, “critical thinking”, and the list goes on and on. </p><p>
Whilst those are the ones, which are of nature technologically transferred, there are those which, has been with us since the time we are taught the lessons on Universal truth, be it Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity or Islam. </p><p>
Futurists take historical fact and scientific knowl edge and adds human values and imagination to create images of what may happen in the future .... it is science standing on tiptoes; it is history seeking to look forward instead of back.
It is the blend of systematic and creative thinkin and human value which makes this new discipline of social analysis worthy of serious consideration.</p><p>
The writings of futurist have, for the last few decades becomes valuable source for one to analyze the multitude of changes brought about by the Computer Revolution. Among those prominent one come names such as Alvin Toffler, John Naisbitt, Arthur C. Clark, Peter Drucker, Margaret Mead, Marshall McLuhan, Kenneth Boulding and Joel Arthur Barker.
Futuristics consist of thinking and social analysis tools such as time-lines, scenario buildings, Delphi methods, cross impact matrices, tree diagrams and future problem solving skills which proposes to create alternative futures. </p><p>
Futuristics-natured writings have been used by governments and corporations as sources of reference for high level decision makings. They analyze issue of change in a multi-disciplinary manner and proposes integrative channels of alternative solutions. Amongst the topics analyzed at a supersession of the World Future Society Conference include : </p><p>
· Meeting Basic Human and Organizational Needs in the 21st Century.
· Governance and Participation in the 21st Century.
· Cultural and Spiritual Values in the 21st Century.
· Health and Environment in the 21st Century.
These topics are characteristic of the futurists’concern for the possible action to be taken to manage change in the 21st century.
<strong>FUTURISTICS AND MALAYSIA CIRCA 2020</strong> </p><p>
If there is a dimension of creative thinking that can be experimented with, consistent with our “Vision 2020” slogan, it is the dimension of futuristics. </p><p>
If we are to create a citizenry equipped with critical and creative thinking skills and strengthened with a strong moral foundation and a concern for a peaceful and a sustainable future, we must introduce “the study of the future”. </p><p>
An intelligent society is one which has the skills of anticipateing and designing the future, not one which is forever drowning in the sea of “false consciousness” and not one which is “one dimensional” in its thinking. </p><p>
Can we create such a society which can visualize and strategicaly plan itself in areas such as personal visioning, education, politics, and social engineering? </p><p>
How can we train the minds of today to build scenarios twenty-five, fifty, and one hundred years from now so that the “end in mind” can be visuallized and the necessary course of action to be taken will be clear, although countless problems may that cloud that vision? </p><p>
In my two years of teaching an introductory course in thinking at the Universiti Utara Malaysia, I have experimented with some of the major components of the futuristics such as “scenario building”, “time-lines” and “Delphi methods” which I juxtaposed with techniques in teaching Creative, Critical Thinking and Philosphy. </p><p>
One of the products of this experiment is the project called “Malaysia 31 August 2020 : A Scenario” in which students work in groups (think-tanks) and envision changes which has happened come 2020. Their writings are grounded in existing realities and the imaginative aspects of it comes in their description of a nation fully developed according to the guidelines sloganized in Vission 2020. </p><p>
<strong>CONCLUSION</strong> </p><p>
The art of visioning needs the proper tools and techniques for analyzing the future. It demands a dimension of creative thinking and an intellectual desire to be in the future full of with hope. The past, present and the future are a state of mind. It would ever seem fair to say that “there is no past, there is no future... all that exist is an ever changing present.” </p><p>
Futuristics is a discipline which can become an attractive intellectual exercise in creativity. It is a dimension of creativity suitde for an edge of “change, complexity, and chaos.”
Ultimately, we are reminded that “Man proposes, God disposes.”
FIGURE 1
Key Evolutionary Markers
Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 4
hunter
gathering groups
500,000 years
speech
wandering tribes
magico-mythic
paradigm
survival technology
subsistence
normadic subsistence
oldest member
words
agricultural
societies
100,000 years
writing
communities
city-states
logico- philosophical paradigm
fabricating technology
barter
cottage industry
best farmer
graphics
industrial
society
500 years
print
nation-states
deterministic
scientific paradigm
machine technology
money
factory
capitalist
analogue
post-industrial
society
50 years
cybernetic
potential of a global society
systemic change paradigm
intellectual technology
credit/debit
electronic village
information source
digital data
Adapted from Systems Design of Education : A Journey to Create the Future, Bela H. Benathy, 1991, Educational Technology Publications, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. Used with permission of the publisher.
</p>Dr. AZLY RAHMANhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07437908281114330911noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11166677.post-1133552358575942692005-12-02T11:37:00.000-08:002006-02-05T20:07:07.363-08:0037] Brain Hemispheric Study<strong>RESEARCH PROPOSAL
<span style="color:#3366ff;">PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION INTO THE BRAIN
HEMISPHERIC DOMINANCE OF UNIVERSITI UTARA MALAYSIA
STUDENTS ENROLLED IN AN INTRODUCTORY THINKING
SKILLS COURSE AS MEASURED BY MC CARTHY’S
HEMISPHERIC MODE INDICATOR</span></strong><span style="color:#3366ff;">
</span>
by
AZLY RAHMAN
<strong>OBJECTIVE</strong>
The objective of this study is to ascertain the brain hemispheric dominance of 218 Universiti Utara Malaysia students enrolled in the course Introduction to Thinking (BD1013) and to offer causal explanations into the subjects’ brain dominance within the context of curricular acculturation prior to entry into the subjects’ degree program.
<strong>RESEARCH QUESTIONS</strong>
The following are the main research questions to be explored in this case study:
(i) In which hemispheric mode do the respondents fall into as analyzed through statistical mean scores from Bernice McCarthy’s Hemispheric Mode Indicator?
(ii) What are the possible explanations for the hemispheric dominance when analyzed in the context of current research in cerebral brain laterality, neuroscientific principles of education, and education as a socializing agent?
(iii) What recommendations can be made within the context of the national and international agenda of calling for a wholistic and whole-brain learning especially with regard to the graduates of a management university as such as Universiti Utara Malaysia?
<strong>BACKGROUND OF STUDY
</strong>
Predominantly beginning from the 1950s, research into brain syncronicity (left and right hemispheric dominance) has contributed its role in changing the perspective of how learn we view the process of cognitive development.
Cognitive science, a hybrid of neuroscience, physics, psychology and education has become a dominant paradigm of looking at ways to harness the 3lb. universe: the human brain.
Colin Rose (1985), theoretician and practitioner in the field of cybernetic approach towards learning, wrote in Accelerated Learning:
<em>It is only in the last two dozen years ... that the true implication of the left/right split has gradually become apparent, through the work of a number of researchers. The most famous are probably Dr. Roger Sperry and Dr. Robert Ornstein of the California Institute of Technology. Their work has won them a Nobel Price (p. 10).
</em>
As in many a Nobel Prize winning research, in this Sperry-Ornstein research was build upon the foundation laid, in fact as early as 450 B.C. in the time of Hippocrates, the father of medicine. Hippocrates proclaimed that the human brain has a mental duality (Herrmann, 1990).
Milestones in the brain duality conception, from the time of Hippocrates to management theorist Henry Mintzberg pointed out to the idea of laterality of the brain (see Appendix).
Ned Herrmann, who chroniched the research findings above concluded about those who contributed to our understanding of this left-right dominance, particularly highlighting Mintzebrg’s Work:
<em>Most of those men were scientists, doctors, and neuro-psychologists of some note. But it was a medical layman who in 1976 made the most profound impact on my appreciation of the brain and its role in business creativity. Henry Mintzberg, professor of management at McGill University, asked the key question: “Why are some people so smart and so dull at the same time?” This immediately brought into practical focus my thoughts about individual variations in brain dominance (pgs. 28-29).</em>
A plethora of research and writings related to the concept of brain-based learning, teaching and training have been documented especially after the Sperry-Ornstein’s seminal work. The idea that the left hemisphere controls the right side of the body and the right hemisphere controls the left become axiomatic in neuroscientific principles of understanding processes dominant and inherent in the respective hemispheres.
Michael Hutchison (1991) in Mega Brain: Tools and Techniques for Brain Growth and Mind Expansion wrote about this ‘syncronization’:
<em>The revelation of brain lateralization studies - that the left and right hemispheres of our cortext operates in different modes and different rhythms - led scientists to conclude that humans generally emphasize half their brains at a time, dominance flickering back and forth depending on the task at hand (pg. 5</em>)
And as brain lateralization theories drawn upon education - teaching and learning - , a range of seminal work in this field can be found in those such as Robert Ornstein (1986) Psychology of Consciousness, Peter Kline (1988) The Everyday Genius, Colin Rose (1985) Accelerated Learning, Bobbi dePorter and Mike Hernacki (1992) Quantum Learning, Tony Buzan (1988) Make the Most of Your Mind and an earlier pioneering work of Georgi Lozanov of the Institute of Suggestopedia in Bulgaria.
The above brief mentioning fo some major points in the literature review on brain lateralization suggests that research in this field is ripe for a cross-cultural study.
It is thus, the purpose of this preliminary investigation is to ascertain the brain hemispheric dominance of a group of students and interpret these findings in the light of cognitive science and sociology of education in the Malaysian context.
<strong>METHODOLOGY</strong>
This is one-group post-test quasi-experimental design of which the investigator will rely heavily on some presumed background knowledge on the nature of the respondent’s brain dominance in relation to cultural and curricular setting.
Bernice McCarthy’s Hemispheric Mode Indicator will be the instrument for testing the left/right brain dominance. Statistical mean will be computed and this will form a basis of a substantial qualitative interpretation of the data.
<strong>SUBJECTS
</strong>
Subjects, studied will be from a quota sampling (whole population) of students enrolled in an introductory course in thinking at Universiti Utara Malaysia. A phenomenological dimension of this research is that this investigator did not have prior knowledge of the nature of degree program these respondents are enrolled in.
<strong>SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY
</strong>
(i) This preliminary investigation will bridge across-cultural research gap in brain lateralization research in Malaysia.
(ii) The study will augment efforts in creating graduates who will be wholistic in thinking; data will provide some preliminary insight into potential redesigning of curricular enriching of content and rethinking instructional practices especially at this management university, so that a more balanced educational approach can be achieved.
(iii) This study will contribute to the research gap in linking findings in the sociology of Malaysian education with the demands arising from neuroscientific principles of learning. In other words, the research question which could be explored here is that: What have the subjects inherited from years of being schooled via a curriculum which allegedly focused essentially an educating the left hemisphere?
(iv) This study will pave way for suggestions for further research into brain-based learning in the Malaysian context.
<strong>LOCATION AND SCOPE
</strong>
This study will primarily be conducted at the Universiti Utara Malaysia with additional literature-gathering done in Kuala Lumpur.
<strong>DURATION OF STUDY</strong>
From the approval date to the completion of the report, this study will take 2 months to be completed.
<strong>References
</strong>
Rose, Colin, 1985). Accelerated Learning. New York: Dell Publishing Co.
Herrmann, Ned. (1988). The Creative Brain. Lake Lura, N.C.: Brain Books.
Hutchinson, Michael. (1991). Mega Brain: Tools and Techniques for Brain Growth and Mind Expansion. New York: Ballantine Books.
Kline, Peter. (1988). The Everyday Genius Arlington, Va.L Great Ocean Publisher.
De Porter, Bobbi and Mike Hernachi. (1992). Quantum Learning: Unleashing the Genius in You. New York: Dell Publishing.
Buzan, Tony. (1988). Make the Most of Your Mind. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Ornstein, Robert. (1972). The Psychology of Consciousness. San Francisco: Freeman.Dr. AZLY RAHMANhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07437908281114330911noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11166677.post-1133551932961992032005-12-02T11:30:00.000-08:002006-02-05T20:06:20.956-08:0036] A Research Proposal on Lewis Terman's Study<span style="color:#3366ff;"><strong>THINKING STYLES AND PERSONALITY TRAITS OF THE ACADEMICALLY GIFTED: A CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDY OF MARA JUNIOR SCIENCE COLLEGE (MJSC) KUANTAN STUDENTS IN THEIR MID-LIFE USING AN ADAPTED TERMAN STUDY OF GIFTED CHILDREN</strong></span>
<strong>OBJECTIVE</strong>
The objective of this study is to explore the thinking styles and personality traits of 100 individuals designated as “academically gifted” through a nation-wide test conducted in 1974. The study will replicate adaptatively the classic and landmark study done by Prof. Lewis M. Terman on gifted children. Specifically this cross-sectional study will attempt to investigate:
(i) the brain dominance and thinking styles of the “academically gifted” who are in their early 30s.
(ii) their personality traits
(iii) what intellectually superior children were like as children
(iv) how well they turn out in their mid-life
(v) some of the factors influencing their later achievement
(vi) Some case studies of the academically gifted based on the life history method.
<strong>BACKGROUND OF PROBLEM </strong>
<strong>
</strong>A nation’s greatest asset is its intellectual resource cultivated through the process of education. From the times of Plato to the post-modernist revolution in cognitive psychology, the emphasis burdened onto the enterprise of education is to create individuals able to function intellectually and productively in society. Key to this ongoing cultural and social struggle is the development of thinking skills and personality traits “desirable” and socially apt in the process of educating or “drawing out the best out of the child” so that he/she will be able to be wholistic in thinking. This enterprise has been approached in many ways depending on the times and the socio-economic and political climate prevalent.
</strong>
One of the most remarkable and landmark studies which has emerged in the field of assertaining human potential is that done by Prof. Lewis Terman of Stanford University. For 34 years and one which continued after his death, Terman spent his life, beginning as a graduate student, closely following the intellectual development of over 1500 children he defined as gifted and talented through the Stanford-Binet test (Sisk, 1987:7). Terman and Oden (1959:2) described the purpose of the study entitled Genetic Studies of Genius:
<em>In 1921 a generous grant from the Commonwealth Fund of New York City made possible the realization of this ambition. The project as outlined called for the shifting of a school population of a quarter-million in order to locate a thousand or more of highest IQ. The subjects selected were to be given a variety of psychological, physical and scholastic tests and were then to be followed as far as possible into adult life.</em>
Terman was working within the paradigm of intelligent testing based upon the Stanford-Binet IQ concept; a time wherein the structural-functionalist and empirical approach to ascertaining intelligence was flowering. Seventy years hence has passed and countless criticisms were levelled against IQ testing-based selection and determining of the concept of giftedness. Numerous instruments have since been developed to give a “fairer” approach to defining intellectual ability.
Albeit the above-mentioned summary of the controversies which has plagued intelligence testing up to this day, Terman’s classic study remained much revered as an attempt to comprehensively and longitudinally analyze the life events which has shaped and sustained the “giftedness and talentedness of his subjects”. Terman (1959:) was specifically attempting to find out the following:
(1) what intellectually superior children are like as children;
(2) how well they turn out; and
(3) what are some of the factors that influence their later achievement. (page 2)
The history of gifted and talented education has not recorded any attempts by others into follow-up studies of such magnitude. Sisk (1987) in analyzing early education efforts on behalf of gifted children concluded that “[i]n reviewing the early educational efforts on behalf of the gifted, the genius of Terman cannot be ignored. He was a major catalyst for education for the gifted and devoted his life to bright and quick students”. (page 7)
It is within this backdrop of literature on the history of giftedness and talentedness that the foregoing discussions leading to the stating of problem statement and hypothesis need to be set.
Whilst the American experimentation on the selection and identification of children designated be academically gifted began with the Terman study in 1921, more than 50 years after that, Malaysia as a developing country emerging out of the shockles of colonialism and undergoing a process of nation-building through education, began a similar experiment.
A study into the process of systematic filtration of children designated as academically gifted and placing them in special schools for the academically superior was documented in a doctoral dissertation by (Sulaiman, 1975). A nationwide search was made for the “best and the brightest” to be screened and admitted in a newly established group of three schools named MARA Junior Science Colleges (in Seremban, Kota Baru and Kuantan). Sulaiman’s study focused on the 1974-75 selection process and stated that:
<em>... a total of 2,070 candidates were eligible to participate in the selection process. Out of these, only 818 managed to qualify for the interviewing stage. And out 880 interviewed candidates, only 330 were finally selected based on the cumulative results of the MJSC tests, which formed 60% of the total, the socio-economic considerations which formed 20% and the interview criteria which form another 20%. (page 144)
</em>
If there are similarities in the manner Terman selected his subject, it is in the manner IQ testing is used which focused primarily on the logical-mathematics and linquistic abilities of those tested and selected. Sulaiman (1975) stated that “[t]he MARA test comprised an IQ test, an English test, a Science test, and a math test, each having a total of 60 points making a total score of 240 points for all four subjects.” (page 145)
Having been tested and succeeded, thus began MJSCs’ experiment’ in “enriching the lives of the children through a differentiated curriculum modelled after The Bronx School for the Gifted in Science.
A historical survey into the development of Terman’s study as well as MJSC’s experimentation and its mission and vision will certainly be dealt with in the section of literature review. The above discussions, albeit at length for a section on problem statement and hypothesis, nonetheless is necessary to arrive at a jucture to understand a parallel experiment which was done at two different times.
Although Terman’s study began in 1921 and Sulaiman’s analysis of the selection process was described critically and analytically in 1975, one must content with the chronological difference in the transplantation of ideas from a developed country to that of a developing one. Sections in the review of literature will deal with the Center-Periphery Concept of transplantation of educational ideas looked at within the context of Dependency theory.
Pertinent to this study nonetheless is the replication of Terman’s study (with minor adaptations) to the products (in the vulgar sense of education/terminology) of the MJSC experiement out of which is based upon the intelligence testing championed by Terman himself.
<strong>PROBLEM STATEMENT</strong>
Thus, specifically this cross-sectional study of academically gifted invidiuals will attempt to answer the following questions:
(i) What are the brain dominance profiles of the designated academically gifted individuals now in their 30s as measured by Ned Hermann Brain Dominance Profile? What are their thinking styles as measured by McCarty’s Hemispheric Mode Indicator?
(ii) What intellectually superior children are like as children (Termans’ instrument)
(iii) how well do they turn out in their mid-life?
(iv) what are some of the factors influencing their later achievement?
(v) what are some of the case studies of the high achieves (using the “life history” method ?
It must be noted that the “adapted Ternan Study of Gifted Children” refer to the inclusion of two other instruments in addition to the ones originally used by the Terman. They are:
(i) Ned Hermann’s Brain Dominance profile
(ii) McCarthy’s Hemispheric Mode Indicator ; in addition to :
(iii) Minor adaptation to items and figures in Terman’s questionnaire; and
(iv) Case studies through the life history method.
<strong>REVIEW OF SELECTED LITERATURE
ON THE HISTORY OF GIFTED AND TALENTED EDUCATION </strong>
<strong>
</strong>The history of defining the concept of “giftedness” is one characterized by shifting paradigms of what constitutes intelligence and creativity in the context of a particular society’s ideological, political economic, socio-economic, cultural structure and history. It is also that of a constant flux and controversies in one’s definition of concepts such as “egalitarianism”, “equality” and “equal opportunity” as an art and science of “drawing out the best in every human being” (Kline, 1988)”.
</strong>
As soceity, in the context of historical materialism, moves towards progressing complexity, the need to delineate the “junior members of the society” borrowing educational philosopher John Dewey’s term (Dewey, 1938) becomes more pressing; the “best and the brightest” need to be systematically groomed particularly into “intellectual elites”. These elites should then be socially engineered, through the human capital revolution process called “schooling”, to become cadres’ of capitalism able to sustain, evolutionize or even revolutionize the make up of the nation’s ideological structure.
As such, the process of creating intellectual elites is not without precedence. Education for the gifted and talented is one such enterprise spawning historically from the days of Plato’s insistence that “philosophers” should be kings (Plato ).
Modern-day history of gifted and talented education most be seen within the historical perspective of education in the United States Tannenbaum (1988) chronicled the American effort in educating the gifted; describing the historical evolution of gifted and talented education. From the days of Stanford-Binet Intelligence Quotience (IQ) testing in the early 1960s up till the move towards holistic definition and perspectives on the selection process in the 1980s, it is argued that the paradigms of perceiving giftedness have continually shifted, signalling the “maturity” of the concept (Tannenbaum, 1988).
The 1990s is characterized by the definition of giftedness based on brain-laterality and hemispheric models, signalling another paradigm shift which moves into the arena of educational belief that giftedness is a “concept for all” and that “equlitarianism” in defining whether one is gifted or not is essentially a moral-educational obligation, and that what should be looked at and into is the concept of “the genius in each and every human being” (Kline, 1988; Deporter; 1992 Gardner; 1985 Levine, 1991).
The discussions and brief mentioning supra of the historical trends in gifted educational conceptual perspective suggests, as stated in the first paragraph of this section, the “shifting paradigms of what constitutes intelligence and its means of “perceiving it”. The following paragraphs briefly outline the review of literature pertaining to the history of gifted and talented education:
<em>Philosophers par excellence of the Hellenistic tradition, notably Socrates and Plato were the first to contribute to the idea that intelligence need to be nurtured in order for society to sustain its cutting edge and competitive advantage in civilization (Nettheship, 1966). Whilst Socrates called for the early identification of individuals’ talent so that more of the gifted can be nurtured, Plato believed that a society can maintain its prominance and intellectual sustainance through the election of gifted and talented individuals to the ruling class. Plato, in essence and in the leit motif of his age, insisted that “philosophers should be king” believed that the giftedness can be defined as the ability to grasp knowledge at the various levels classified and be able to also be highly competent at those various levels.
</em>
The Hellenistic tradition, with its primary of classical philosophy as its force majeur, gave birth to the enterprise of scientific inquiry; familiar the maxim that “philosophy is the mother of knowledge.” Scientific inquiry, the soul of rationalistic throught of that philosophical genre transfered the concept of giftedness and intelligence, from a somewhat vague, fuzzy and non-scientific conception based on Platonic idea of the human mental innerworkings, to a more “constructed” one; that intelligence is a fixed human characteristic.
One such attempt to search into the fixatedness of this concept of intelligence which later gave rise to the genetic investigations into giftedness is the work of Sir Charles Darwin, an English botanist. Darwin’s (1868) investigation into the origin of species a “blasphemic and controversial” study on natural selection set the impetus for another researcher to look into the concept of the inheritability of human intelligence.
Such was undertaken by the English biologist, Sir Francis Galton, who constructed the first intelligence test based on the data of his research findings. Galton (1869) developed the instrument based on his theory that the general intelligence of infants are related to their sensory acquity (Howley et. al., 1986).
The quest for identification of human intelligence saw further development in the work of the Frenchman, Alfred Binet who developed a test to identify slow children. Binet’s work (1905) was focused on searching for measures to help these slow children to develop to their fullest potential. Contrary to previous ideas put forth that intelligence is a fixated and inherited, Binet believed that human beings can develop their intelligence and that it can be done so through education.
The history of gifted and talented education especially at this juncture saw the birth of the “nature-versus-nurture” controversy of intelligence which has up to this day kept emerging and reemerging, gaining prominence in the current “Murray” research published in 1995 (Murray, 1995).
Following Binet’s work on the developmental and educable nature of intelligence and giftedness, the thesis was further developed into a revision of the original test by Lewis Terman, one of the most momental figures in the history of gifted and talented education. Terman was then teaching at Stanford University and in 1916 developed the classic Stanford-Binet test (Binet, 1916). thus, the Stanford-Binet IQ test was born which gave, up to this day the popularity of the term IQ testing; an enterprise claimed by its proponents to be a holistic and scientific measurement of the fixatedness of human intelligence.
Subsequent developments followed which saw the further refinement of the measurement of intelligence. Intelligence was then looked at from the perspective of one’s ability to perform certain tasks, depending on one’s general aptitude and unique factors. Spearman (1904) was the first to delineate “s” (specific) factors” in human intelligence. These “s” factors were then further delineated by research done by Thurstone (1938) who specifically named seven mental abilities as primary to the definition of intelligence. They are namely, “numbers, verbal, space relations, memory, reasoning, word fluency and perceptual speed.” (Sisk, 1987: page 5)
Whilst the historical development of intelligence testing is, at this point of discussion, centered around the belief that giftedness is a fixed construct, the work of Guilford (1959) who developed the model structure of intellect (SOI) marked a turning point in conceptualizing what intelligence is. Guilford’s factor-analytical model intelligence, the SOI, was based upon the idea that intelligence need to be looked at from three dimensions: operations, contents, and products. (Sisk (1987) stated:
<em>According to Guilford’s definition, the operations are intellectual activities which involves the processing of information. Contents are the types of information on which operations are performed, and products are the outcomes of the different kinds of mental ability (pg. 5).
</em>
Jean Piaget’s monumental contribution to this historical review comes next in significance. Piaget (1952) theorized the stages of growth of human cognition; from the sensory-motor to pre-operational to concrete operational and lastly to formal operational. The human being progresses through these stages through his/her interaction with the environment a life process which is undergone with intensity.
Accommodation and assimilation are the key features of the innerworkings of this interaction. Linguistic and thought development enriched or impoverished determines the level of cognition characteristic of the individual. Piaget looks at this development within the context of input-output of information in the process of developing the intellectual structure of the human being. Alexander and Muia (1982) diagrammatized Piaget’s concept of the acquisition of information throughout the life of a human being as:
Life experiences
Inputs
The intellectual structure
Outputs
Since the times of Socrates and Plato to that of Jean Piaget, the history of defining intelligence and giftedness has undergone monumental paradigmatic shifts bringing forth newer perspectives in attempts to educate the human intellect. This brief historical survey would not be complete without the inclusion of contemporary findings in research on brain/mind which has begun to revolutionize the field of gifted education and one which has spawned new and unprecedented directions in this field.
Sisk (1988) outlined the developments in cognitive psychology, an interdisciplinary field of the study of human potential and how this “new science” has brought promises in realizing “egalitariarism” in education. Sisk (1988) wrote:
<em>Within the last generation, a new empirical discipline, cognitive science (a hybrid of psychology, computer scinece, psycholinguistics and several other fields) has developed. Cognitive science explores the interior universe - the mind and the processing of thought. This exploration bears examination by educators interested in building quality education. (page 289).
</em>
And thus, the history of gifted and talented education saw a watershed with a burgeoning literature to support the idea that giftedness and intelligence is not only concepts which are fixed and to be measured but can be developed multi-facetly, through multi-disciplinary means in order to create multi-dimensional human beings able to cognitively sustain their intellectualism in, a world of multitude complexities.
Among those pioneering such a radical humanistic concept of human potential development are those such as Ivan Barzakov, Geogi Lozanov and Howard Gardner. Important works in the literature of brain/mind science of this genre abound and currently transforming education for the gifted and talented : (Lozanov, 1979; Gardner, 1985) a concept no longer to be tested on and discovered for the reserved few, but one to be developed and nurtured for the masses!
<strong>II. ON LEWIS TERMAN’S LONGITUDINAL STUDY</strong>
Significant to the intent of this research proposal is a brief discussion on Terman’s longitudinal study of which will be adaptatively replicated as a cross-sectional panel study of Malaysian gifted individuals identified in 1974.
In Genetic Studies of Genius which remain up to this day, an unsurpassed and monumental research into giftedness, Terman documented research findings from 1925 to 1959, the year of his death. Sisk (1988) wrote of his work:
Terman’s project to study gifted students was founded in 1921 for $20,000. For 34 years, more than a quarter of a million dollars was raised to fund the study. As students were added, the size of the group studied grew to 1528 children. After Terman’s death in 1956, the study was continued by his associated Melita Oden, who conducted follow-up testing every five years. It is scheduled to continue until the death of the last Terman project participant in 21st Century and is financed primarily from Stamford-Binet test royalties. (page 7).
Sisk (1988) in her discussion of the emerging concept of giftedness summarized Terman’s findings as:
· The gifted differ among themselves in many ways and are not homogenous.
· The stereotypes of the gifted child as puny, asocial, or prepsychotic, and of high intelligence as akin to insanity, are discounted.
· To identify the most intelligent child in a class, one should consult the record book for the youngest.
· Superiority in intelligence is maintained through adulthood.
· Instructional acceleration at all levels is beneficial
· Gifted students who did not attend college had the same intellectual level as PhD candidates.
· Research on differences between the most and the least successful men in the gifted group indicate socio economic status and college education of the father as influencing factors, as well as force of character.
· Mental age continues to increase into middle age.
· There were many more high IQ persons than predicted by the normal curve of probability (Terman and Oden, 1947; Goven, 1977).
It is not the intention here to discuss the criticisms and contestations related to the findings made by Terman in the heydays of Stanford-Binet Intelligence testing. Rather, the purpose is to highlight the significance of Terman’s longitudinal study within the context of this proposal. What is to be studied in this Malaysian context has its parallelism with Terman’s work. The following review of the MARA Junior Science College experiment will throw some light to this parallelism.
<strong>III. ON THE MJSC EXPERIMENT</strong>
The relationship between education and nation-building has extensively emerged in the literature of education particularly since nations in Latin america, Africa and Asia were released by their colonial masters from the shackles of domination (Bock,1971). Analyses of the role education play in these newly-independent nations have ranged from particularly two contending paradigms; structural functionalist and dependency or conflict (Paulston, 1977).
Education, as part and parcel of superstructure inherited from colonialism has been seen as an enterprise which has its ideological base in the former colonial countries.(Walters, 1981).
In Malaysia, British colonialism has had a major impact in the development of English schools which were instrumental in grooming political elites, predominantly, who would administer the country using ideological and political tools British in character. Bock (1971) particularly analyses this relationship in his study of education and nation-building emphasizing on the uniqueness of multi-racialism of post independence. Bock stated the educational imperative as such:
<em>... the range of problems which confront Malaysia are precisely those which require a direct attack on the attitudinal predispositions of its ethnically diverse citizenny. Recognition by the national elites that true unity between the ethnic communities in any cultural sense will take years, perhaps several generations to develop, has resulted in the short-run on attempting to attain some kind of accomodation between the communities so that they can live in peace while pursuing modernization. (page )
</em>(1971)
Bock further stated that nation-building in post-colonial Malaysia has focused on the need to provide “crutches” to aid the Malays in their quest for economic and educational equality whilst at the same time to encourage “greater political participation by the non-Malays, particularly the Chinese population” (page 33).
Out of this political economic obligation then efforts were made to systematically engineer special educational provisions for the Malays to enter “priviledged” schools which attempt to groom bright and fast rural children to advance the ladder of social stratification. At the time the government was already embarking for several years in these special residential schools project, at the same MARA (Council for the Indigenous People’s Trust), a quasi-government body “ventured in a major educational programme - The MARA Junior Science College (MJSC)”. (Sulaiman, 1975).
These special residential schools were to encourage the development and interest of students especially in Science and Mathematics. Particularly relevant is the mention of the issue which surrounded the establishment of these school vis-a-vis the Government’s effort in attempting to do similarly. Sulaiman (1975) wrote:
<em>The steps taken ... in setting up MJSC were received with mixed feelings. Some negated the necessity and justification set forth by the proponents of the project by claiming that if would ‘duplicate’ the government’s efforts aimed at basically the same objectives. That is, to help the poorer but bright intelligent students to excel in academic studies in science and mathematics. The counter claims by the MJSC proponents were that they were not interested in just producing academic ‘geniuses’ (robot-like and insensitive) who are unable to adjust to society’s needs. They claim that MJSC is also an attempt to inculcate ‘enterprising’, ‘creative’, ‘independent’ and ‘all-rounded’ attributes in all their students. (page 109 : underscore mine)
Students were selected based on criterias such as good results in the Standard Five assessment exam, a series of tests and an interview. The tests, conducted by MARA “comprised an IQ test, an English test, a Science test, and a Math test each having a total of 60 points, making a total score of 240 points for all four subjects (pg. 146).</em>
The purpose of creating MARA Junior Science Colleges was clear, to screen the “best and brightest” among Malay children to undergo priviledged training in science and mathematics based education. The vision was to create intellectual elites able to build the nation which was then in the process of modernizing.
The foregoing brief review of literature relating the MJSC experiment as it relate to post-colonial Malaysian education attempt to provide the context of this research proposal. It would be impossible to measure the contributions made by the individuals selected into MJSC in the early 1970s, to the development of the country.
The primary focus of this panel cross-sectional study is to model after Terman’s effort in looking at the thinking styles and personality traits of those who underwent such a rigorous IQ-based selection process and hope that the findings can at least shade some light in ascertaining the progress these academically gifted individuals have made in their respective fields. Viewing it from a non-scientific perspective the choice for this perspective is also to honor Lewis Terman’s life long dedication to the study of giftedness and intelligence.
<strong>CONCLUDING REMARKS </strong><strong>
</strong><strong>
</strong>The objective of this the foregoing brief literature review is its provide some background into the links between the study of gifted and talentedness to one of the earliest Malaysian experimentation into institutiondizing children considered academically gifted. This link is seen within the context of the following discussions on the relevance of carrying out a similar research in the Terman tradition onto the academically gifted children selected in 1974 through a nationwide filtration based on IQ testing and other evaluation on competencies.
<strong>METHODOLOGY</strong>
</strong>
This multi-dimensional approached, cross-sectional panel study will utilize the following as instruments in studying the thinking styles and personality traits of the academically gifted (through a 1974 MJSC selection) :
(i) Ned Hermann’s Brain Dominance Profile (Whole-brain thinking)
(ii) Bernice Mc Carthy’s Hemispheric Mode Indicator (left brain - right brain dominance)
(iii) Adapted and Selected Terman General Information Survey (4 forms) (for developmental status of academically gifted at mid - 30s)
(iv) Life History method (for case studies of selected individuals considered high achievers)
<strong>SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY</strong>
This study is proposed to be undertaken for the following reasons :
(i) There is thus far no follow-up study undertaken by MARA on the developmental status of those pioneering group selected for the academically gifted programme.
(ii) Occupational status and achievements made by the subjects in their mid-30s can provide vital information to educationists on the successes or failures of the MARA Junior Science
College experiment in human engineering.
(iii) Test results on whole-brain thinking and hemispheric mode indicator will ascertain the impact of the MJSC curriculum and subjects’ life experiences on the question of “enriching the curriculum”. It can also help MARA review to what extent the objective of “educating the whole child” and “educating for critical and creative consciousness” has been achieved.
(iv) Information gathered on the development of the MJSC Kuantan academically gifted can provide valuable insight on the impact of transplanting cross-culturally a gifted and talented curriculum.
(v) Life history study on selected individuals who have achieved a high degree of success in their vocation can contribute to the understanding of Piaget’s model of intellectual development.
(vi) Data from interview with subject can yield information which in term provide suggestions for curriculum planners in MARA specifically and the government in general to look for instructional strategies and adaptations to enrich “whole-brain Learning”.
Those are amongst the rationale for the undertaking of this study of such nature. Whilst the significance can be looked at primarily from the six aspects mentioned above, this research, partly quantitative, partly qualitative and exploratory esentially, will hopefully enlighten this researcher on the multi-faceted concept of giftedness and talentedness through studying subjects who has undergone an experimental Gifted and Talented curriculum.
<strong>SCHEDULE OF WORK
</strong>Program structure for the Doctor of Education program at Columbia University will constitute a 90 credit hour graduation requirement plus a dissertation. Upon first consultation with the Dissertation sponsor, area of specialization and dissertation topic will be decided. (see attached program requirements information).
References/SLAB Proposal
<strong>REFERENCES</strong>
Alexander, P. & Maria, J. (1982). Gifted education, Rockville, MD: Aspen Publications.
Binet, A. (1916). The development of intelligence in children. Baltimore, MD: Williams and Wilkins.
Bock, J.C. (1971). Education and Nation-building in Malaysia: A Study of institutional effect in Thirty Four Secondary Schools (dissertation), Ann Arbor, Michigan: Xerox University Microfilms.
Darwin, C. (1868). On the Origin of Species. New York: Appleton & Co.
DePorter, B. & Hernacki, M. (1992) Quantum Learning: Intenshing the Genius in You. New York: Dell Publishing.
Dewey, J. (1938) Experience and Education. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.
Galton, F. (1925). Heriditary Genius, an inquiry into its Laws and Consequences. London: Macmillan and Company.
Gardner, H. (1985). Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic Books.
Guilford, J. P. (1959). Three Faces of Intellect. American Psychology, 14, 469-179.
Howley, A. et al. (1986) Teaching Gifted Children: Principles and Strategies. Boston: Little, Brown.
Kline, P. (1988) The Everyday Genius. Arlington: Great Ocean.
Levine, H. (1991). What are accelerated schools? Accelerated schools. Accelerated Schools Project: Stanford University.
Lozanov, G. (1979) Suggestology and Outlines of Suggestopedy. New York: Gordon and Breach.
Paulston, R. G. (1977). Social and educational change: conceptual frameworks. Comparative Education review June/October.
Piaget, J. (1952). The Origins of intelligence of children. New York: International University Press.
Sisk, D. (1987). Creative Teaching of the Gifted. New York: Mc Graw Hill.
Spearman, C. (1904) General intelligence - Objectively determined and measured. American Journal of Psychology, 15. 201-293
Sulaiman, S. 2 (1975). MARA Junios Science College: Student Selkection and Its Implication for Educational System Development in Malaysia. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Xerox University Microfilms.
Tannenbaum, A. (1988). The Gifted Movement - Forward or on a Treadwill. Leadership Assessing Monograph: Education of Gifted and Talented Youth (opinion paper) West Lafayette, IN: Gifted Education Resource Institute.
Terman, L. M. & Oden, M. (1959). Genetic Studies of Genius (volume 5): the Gifted Group at Mid Life. Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press.
Thurstone, E.L. (1938). Primary mental abilities. Psychometric Monographs, 1
Walters, P.B. (1981). Educational change and National Economic Development. Harvard Educational review vol. 31, No. 1 February 1981.Dr. AZLY RAHMANhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07437908281114330911noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11166677.post-1133551638088933362005-12-02T11:26:00.000-08:002006-02-05T20:04:59.306-08:0035] A Nation at Risk: A Political-Economic Analysis<span style="color:#3366ff;"><strong>POLITICAL ECONOMY OF EDUCATION REFORM:
BETWEEN RHETORIC AND REALITY OF THE
“INFORMATION AGE” IN “A NATION AT RISK”</strong></span>
<strong>by Azly Rahman </strong>
What is the central message of the National Commission on Excellence in Education’s (NCEE’s) 1983 report, “A Nation At Risk?” Beatrice and Ronald Gross, in The Great School Debate call it by “far the most influential” of all the reports which characterize the “current concern over reform in the school”1.
Gross and Gross added that “ the months following the issuance of ‘A Nation at Risk’. have seen a plethora of reports by commissions, committees, and task forces set up by virtually every party-at-interest including a number that has not been evincing much interest in the schools before”,2 and the report was even used as a platform by a political candidate.3
The Reagan Administration’s NCEE report has an emotional tone in its assertion for reform in the American education system currently “threat by a ‘rising tide of mediocrity’”4 The problem with the eudcation system, according to T.H. Bell, the Secretary of Education, who commissioned the report, is that it is in a grip of a crisis caused by low standards, lack of purpose, ineffective use of resources, and the failure to challenge students to push performance to the boundaries of invidividual ability”.5
“Amply documented”, testimony received by the Commission, according to the report, suggested that among failing standards of achievement at the high school and college level, as revealed by the results of The College Board Scholastic Aptitude Tests, “business and military leaders complain that they are required to spend millions of dollars on costly remedial education and training programs in such basic skills as reading, writing, and computation”.6
Echoing the post-Depressions era’s call for educational reform, the message of the NCEE report suggest a similar solution. While recommendations in the earlier period are for schools to produce “good workers” for the industrial sector, the current prescription for schools, as embodied in “A Nation At Risk”, is to prepare individuals for jobs in the high technology sector and to equip them for participation in the “Information Age” the “nation is entering”.7
In a latter, the rationale to reform the education system, according to those who commissioned the report, is justifiable because, “the deficiencies come at a time when the demand for highly skilled workers in new fields is accelerating rapidly”, with the coming of the computer revolution.8 Hence, the recommendation in meeting the needs of the “Information Age” is that:
<em>All students seeking a diploma be required to lay the foundations in the Five New Basics by taking the following curriculum during the 4 years of high school: (a) 4 years of English; (b) 3 years of mathematics; (c) 3 years of science; (d) 3 years of social studies; and (e) one-half years of computer science. For the college bound, 2 years of foreign language in high school are strongly recommended in addition to those taken earlier.9</em>
Reflected by the above set of recommendations, such a view on the purpose of education is, according to Manfred Stanley, in The Technological Conscience, “technicist”, in nature; the process of educational socialization is geared towards maintaining the status quo of a technologically-oriented culture. Manley described the culture as “the mass displacement of a population’s freedom and responsibility for action from a personal level to the technical level as represented by a society’s technicians”.10
The need to reform the education system by maintaining the “status quo”, “technicist” in its orientation, arises from a dominant theory of social change in the United States; according to Rolland G. Paulston, in “Social and Educational Change: Conceptual Frameworks”, “structural-functionalist”.11
The issue in “A Nation At Risk”, is the urgent need to produce “workers” in the high-technology sectors and through reforming the present education system, the problem of “raising a new generation of Americans that is scientifically and technologically illiterate” can be avoided.12 The authors of “A Nation At Risk” are concerned that those “those who do not possess the levels of skill, literacy, and training” that would prepare them for the “Information Age”, “will be effectively disenfranchised, not simply from the material rewards that accompany conpetant performance, but also from the chance to participate fully in our national life”.13
There are issues behind the “patriotic” claim in the report that need to be investigated. This essay will take a Marxist perspective in analyzing some of the issues in the NCEE report - predominantly those concerning the issues of “technology”, the “Information Age”, and the “Computer Revolution”, in general, or, to put it in Paulston’s words, “to study the political economy of education and educational reform efforts, to ask the key question of cui bono, or “who benefits?” behind those claims.14
Loaded with ambiguous terms that presumed the neutrality of the “Information Age”, claim, “A Nation At Risk”, serve to further the interest of the corporate and the military sectors, in the process, “scapegoating” the American education system. Hence the focus of the discussions which follow will be, the examination of the rhetoric and the reality of the “Information Age”, and some of the political economic issues related to the call for educational reform.
The first issue to be investigated in “A Nation At Risk”, concerns the use of language related to science and technology. The language employed in “A Nation At Risk”, in reference to the American society’s “demand” for highly skilled high-tech workers, is similar to that used by “futurists” such as Alvin Toffler, John Naisbitt, and Arthur C. Clarke, to name a few.15 In the report, the claims are, for example, “computers and computer-controlled equipment are penetrating every aspect of our lives - homes, factoris, and offices”, and in general it is taken that,
<em>Technology is radically transforming a host of other occupations. They include health care, medical science, energy production, food processing, construction, and the building, repair, and maintenance of sophisticated scientific, educational, military, and industrial equipment.16
</em>What seems to be absent in those sentences or claims are the “actors” behind them. “Technology” becomes the subject of the discussion, “animate” in form, and demands society to conform to it. This kind of claim which suggest that technology is “neutral” is what Norman Balabanian, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Syracuse University, call a “litany of the happy technologists”, and constitutes an “ideology that is a collection of errors, illusions, and mystification presenting an inverted, truncated, distorted reflection of reality”.17
Assigning human characteristics to technology and assuming that it has a “life” fo its own constitute a mystification of the issue itself, masking the “actors” or human interests behind the propagation of the use of a particular form of technology. As Balabanian asserts, “the litany of the happy technologist”,
<em>is also a set of values characteristic of a group; the integrated assertion, theories and aims that constitute a sociopolitical program ... It fails to take political power and economic interests into account and thus masks their predominatn role. It promotes a model which ascribes to technology an objectivity, a value-neutrality, which technology does not in fact possess.18</em>
Thus, it is not the question of the procedures of computers’, like IBM, Apple, AT&T, etc., “push” for more of their technology into “homes, factories, and offices”; rather, the claim suggested by the authors of “A Nation At Risk” is that computers, as “autonomous beings”, are demanding changes in society.
What can be concluded in this first consideration of the NCEE report is that the employmetn of language that presumes the neutrality of technology should not be left uninvestigated. In fact, the issue of the advancement of science, in general, that claims have “benefited mankind throughout history”, should similarly be put into question. Science and technology - its development - as suggested by Wilber and Jameson, “are more complex than the simple march of value-free knowledge which progresses by its own persuasiveness”19
Karen Knorr-Cetina, in her study of scientific works - what goes on in the scientific laboratories, found out that a particular scientific experiment often is made without the absence of economic interests; scientists working in laboratories owned by corporate industrial sectors generally perceive that their discoveries and inventions should, most importantly, reward them with fortune and fame, while at the same time benefitting their patrons: the corporate industrial sectors.20
David Noble, in <em>American by Design: Science, Technology, and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism</em>, gave a historical account of coprorate sponsorships and monopolies of scientific and technological researches in the United States, from the period of 1880s to the middle of the twentieth century. Noble pointed out too that school curriculums, especially at the college level, are tailored according to the needs of the corporate industrial sectors.21
It is hence, not surprising that Bell Laboratories sent its representative, William O. Baker, to authors the NCEE report which asserts schools to produce a “technologically literate” society.22
The second issue is that of the “Information Age” or the “Computer Revolution”, its “coming” so eloquently hailed by the authors of the NCEE report. Daniel Bell termed it as the “Post Industrial Age”23 and John Naisbitt renamed it the “Information Age” which, “had its beginnings in 1956 and 1957, two years in the decade that embodied American industrial power”.24
Describing the characteristic of the age, Naisbitt wrote:
<em>The real increase has been in information occupations. In 1950, only about 17 percent of us work in information jobs. Now more than 65 percent of us worked with information as programmers, teacher, clerks, secretaries, accountants, stock brokers, managers, insurance people, bureaucrats, lawyers, bankers, and technicians. And many more workers hold information jobs within manufacturing companies. Most Americans spend their time creating, processing, or distributing information... As of May 1983, only 12 percent of our labor force is engaged in manufacturing operations today.25
</em>
What Naisbitt tried to point out is that the American society is moving from an industrial society to an information society and that computer technology is fast becoming a convergent force in this information era.
More interestingly, Naisbitt, in the first chapter of Megatrends26 in fact reiterated the same claims made in the 1980 and 1983 NCEE reports; high schools and colleges in the United States are producing computer illiterate graduates. Without computer skills, Naisbitt warned that the nation would be moving towards mass displacement of those graduates unable to cope with the fast changing trends of the high technological age. Education, in his opinion, should train individuals to prepare them for jobs in the information section.27
The significance of Megatrends, especially in the first chapter, is in the author’s “forecasting” of the future of the American society; its movement towards the age of computers and how important it is for schools to produce computer literate citizens. Schools can be blamed for not being able to produce individuals needed by the information sector.
In Naisbitt’s words, “a powerful anamoly is developing”, in that, “as we move into a more and more literacy-intensive society, our schools are giving us an increasingly inferior product”, as evident in declining SATs.28 The rationale behind the author’s promotion for extensive computer education is eloquently stated, in the language of “corporate wisdom”:
<em>Whether you work with computers or not, it is important to become friends with the computer and become computer literate, because the computer will permeate the whole world of work. The rapid change ahead also mean that you cannot expect to remain in the same job or profession for life, even if it is an information occupation. the coming changes will force us to seek retraining again and again. Business will have to playthe key role, similar to the way IBM now spends approximately $500 million annually on employee training and education</em>.29
Perhaps, as in the case of Bell Laboratories representation in authoring the NCEE report “A Nation At Risk”, one could also conclude that Naisbitt is also playing the same role - that of a representative of the corporate sector. Interestingly, Naisbitt’s vitae suggested his close association as counselor and advisor to major corporations such as United Technologies, Atlantic Richfield, General Electric, AT&T, Control Data, and IBM.
Currently the “chairman of the Naisbitt Group, a research and consulting firm”, Naisbitt had “work with IBM, Eastman Kodak, and the While House”.30 the publishers of Megatrends also hailed Naisbitt as “the country’s top authority on our deeply rooted social, economic, and technological movements”.31
Herein lies the question of cui bono again. In the case of Naisbitt and other proponents of the “Computer Revolution”, who “foresee” the inevitability of computers “prevading” the American homes, factories, and workplace, this “technological deterministic” view - that technology is inherently neutral and its movement and advancement is devoid of human interests - held cannot be left unquestioned, especially from the Marxist point of analysis. There are certain parties that are benefitting from this “ideological push” of the “Computer Revolution” or the “Information Age”. Major computer corporations are among the beneficiaries of those claims.
Specifically, for example, the world sales figures and net incomes of the corporations Naisbitt was associated with, are impressive. Among them, in 1982, the sales of IBM, General Electric, and Atlantic Richfield are US$34.4, US$26.5, and US$26.5 billion respectively, and their net earnings in the similar order for the same year are US$4.4, US$1.8, and US$1.7 billion.32 Among the three companies, IBM, a major computer-related industry, for that year, netted the largest profit of all, compared to the earnings of all other US-based transnational corporations.33
It is not the intentionhere to conclude that there is a casual relationship between Naisbitt’s “ideological promotion” of the “Computer Revolution” and the massive profits made, especially by IBM; rather, what is intended here is to suggest that there are political economic motives present in the claims made by the proponents of the “Computer Revolution” who herald it forcibly as the coming of an “age”.
Much assertions have been made about the coming of the “Computer Revolution” or, as hailed in the NCEE report, the “Information Age”. The value of the computer as an “indispensable” device to create a more “leisure” society, and as a technological tool that can benefit mankind, has been predominantly closed to much debate. the issue in the discussions about computer technology seem to revolve around the question, “what can computers do to promote greater efficiency, cost-reduction, productivity, higher profits, etc.”34 rather than “what the impact of computers will be in a particular arrangement of societal function”.
In other words, “question which define the controversy between unrestrained computer enthusiasists and their critics revolve about concern over the scope of science and scientific rationality”.35 In Weizenbaum’s words, “it is in my view unfortunate that there is no more debate on such important points in the computer community’s professional literature”. 36
Central to the major thesis of this essay, in relation to the claim that education need to meet the demands of the “Information Age” is not questions such as “how can society cope with the ‘Computer Revolution’?” or “how can schools help equip individuals for the ‘Information Age’?” instead, to ask the question: “Is there a ‘Computer Revolution’ which is pervading every aspect of our lives?”37
Again, MIT computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum offers an explanation to the debate. While agreeing that computers have had some benefit to certainsectors of the economy, Weizenbaum criticizes the media for its exaggeration of the impact of computers on society. He states,
The computer has had very considerably less societal impact than the mass media woule lead us to believe. Certainly, there are enterprises like space travel that could not have been undertaken without computers.
Certainly the computer industry, and with it the computer education industry has grown to enormous proportions. But much of the industry is self-serving. It is rather like an islan economy in which the natives make a living by taking in each other’s laundry. The part that is not self-serving is largely supported by government agencies and other gigantic enterprises that know the value of everything but the price of nothing, that is, that know the short-range utility of computer systems but have no idea of the ultimate social cost.38
In the same article, he also critize computer scientists who glofiry computer technology without considering its impact on society.
He cautions:
<em>The computer scientist must be aware constantly that his instruments are capable of having gigantic direct and indirect amplifying effects. An error in the program, for example, could have grievous direct results, including most certainly the loss of much human life. On 11 September 1971, to cite just one example, a computer programming error caused the simultaneous destruction of 117 high-altitude weather balloons whose instruments were being monitored by an earth satellite(9). A similar error in a military command and control system could launch a fleet of nuclear tipped missiles. Only censorship prevents us from knowing how many such events involving non-nuclear weapons have already occured.39</em>
Discussed thusfar is predominantly the issue of the “Computer Revolution”/ ”Information Age” benefitting only certain sectors of the American economy, particularly the computer-related industries, and how the ideology of the “Computer Revolution”/”Information Age” has been successfully implanted in the minds of the American public by those in control of the means of disseminating the ideology.
In other words, those who have access to and the monopoly of the media; i.e. the corporate industrial sectors through complex webs of interlocking directorates and other forms of media monopoly, are the ones pervasively influencing the public to accept the claims of the neutrality of computer technology.40
Earlier in this essay, the authors of the NCEE report claim that only business sectors demand schools to produce computer-literate citizens, but also “military leaders complain that they are required to spend millions of dollars on costly remedial education”, in the basics including computation.41 Within the conceptual framework of political economy, it can be suggested that there is a link between the “Computer Revolution”/”Information age” claim and the business and military sector.
Specifically, with the military, what kind of relationship is there between the claim that “comptuer-literate” society will be a reality in their near future, and the military sector? In other words, the question asked, though hencefar in this essay alludingly discussed, is: “What is the ‘Computer Revolution’/’Information Age’? In an attempt to “answer” this most fundamental question, one can turn to the views of, among others, Joseph Weizenbaum who has written rather extensively, not only on the impact of computers on society, but also on the role played by the military in shaping the ideological promotion of computers in “every aspect of American life”.
Throughout the history of modern technology, cirticis such as the “Luddites”42 poets of the Victorian era during the Industrial Revolution, and in the twentieth century, individuals like Herbert Marcuse,43 Lewis Mumford,44 and Jacques Ellul,45 to name a few, have been concerned about the “dehumanizing” aspects of technology and its potential to create social lienation.
Throughout the end of this century, with the advancement of computer technology, much of the critical analysis subsume emphases on the link between computers, corporate sectors, and the military. Especially in the eighties, with the escalation of the nuclear arms race, the link ismore apparent. While computer technology and its advancement has, to a degree, create job displacements in the corporate sectors, and in turn, unemployment create a multitude of other social problems - family breakups, suicides, frustration, alienation, etc., - much of the directions in which researches and developments in automation, on the other hand are to further the interests of, predominantly two groups: the corporate and the military sectors.
Weizenbaum, in his research on the link between Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the military, proposed:
<em>I think it is safe to say that the majority of research and development in computers - and, to a large extent, in computer science - is being funded and in many ways directed by the military. An example of this that is close to home here at MIT, and is, in a certain sense, prototypical, is the research and development of Aritificial Intelligence (AI).46
</em>
Weizenbaum further stated that “the computer was born - in a number of places but more or less simultaneously - as an instrument to help in warfare. For example, in the U.S. the UNIVAC was the first computer to compute ballistic tables, in other words, to improve the accuracy of artillery”.47
On the similar issue of computer use in military, Jonathan B. Tucker described clearly the link:
Now the Department of Defense (DOD) is seeking to apply aritificial intelligence technology to warfare. On October 28, 1983, the DOD announced the Strategic Computing Initiative (SCI), a ten year coordinated effort by industry, academic, and government laboratories to develop a new generation of superintelligent computers with the ability to see, reason, plan, and supervise the actions of military systems in the field.
Although many computer scientists remained unconvinced of the program’s feasibility and military justifications. The SCI is proceeding at a rapid rate. Already, SCI contracts have been let to Texas Instruments, Martin Marietta Aerospace, Rockwell International, and other firms.48
Other likes Jack Manno49 and Walter McDougall50 have suggested that much of what is all about in computer technology, especially in the preparation for the Reagan Administration’s “Star Wars” program, arise most importantly from the womb of the military.
Holistically, one can see the link between “A Nation At Risk” - its proposal for computer education, - the corporate sector, and the “Information Age” claim in relation to the United States military.
Herbert Schiller, summing up his discussion on the link between the business and the military sectors stated that “a great amount of the activity, a good share of the content, and the general thrust of what is now defined as the Information Age, represent military and intelligence transactions”.51 Earlier in the same article, Schiller stated that:
<em>The communications technology now widely in general use has been conceived, designed, built, and installed with the primary objective being the maintenance of (the United States’) economic priviledge and advantage, and the prevention of the kind of social change that would overturn and eliminate this advantage. The military machine acts, with the assistance of this technology as the global enforcer of the status quo.52
</em>
The economic advantage alluded to in Schiller’s statement above, is those of corporations like “IBM, Hughes Aricraft (satellite construction) and a half dozen other giant U.S. corporations (which) dominated the international information technology market”,53 and “with an assured annual multi-billion dollar government (military and bureaucratic) market for computers, programming and satellites, the success of the U.S. information industry - especially the computer microchip and satellite manufacturing sectors - up to recently, at least has been guaranteed”.54
In conclusion, the second issue which analyzes the most fundamental claim of the authors in “A Nation At Risk”. - that the “Computer Revolution”/ ”Information Age” is a reality and that the American education system can be blammed for not being able to produce citizens prepared for this “new” era - suggests that there are forces in the society which are powerfully influencing schools,and in that relation, education is not a neutral process.
Most importantly is the issue of the presumed neutrality of the “Comptuer Revolution”/”Information Age” in the NCEE report, presented in such neutral terms, with such sure and mysification, suggesting that the nation is entering an age that all, “old and young alike, affluent and poor, a mjority and minority”,55 “will equally benefit, including also, the claim by the authors of the report that their concern “goes well beyond matters such as industry and commerce.
It also includes the intellectual, moral and spiritual strengths of our people which knit together the very fabric of our society”.56 Indeed, such is a “patriotic” claim! the emphasis of the report, nevertheless, fall short of suggesting the paramount role the military plays within the political economic framework of the call for educational reform.
As suggested by authors such as Schiller, Weizenbaum, and others, strenghthening the U.S. military with sophisticated computer technology serves to enforce and maintain the status quo of the United States economy’s global dominance - through the powerful and most profitable operations of the few transnational corporations. Such political economic arrangement seems logical in response to the claim made by the Reagan Administration’s educational reform proposal, that “our once unchallenged preeminance in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world!”.57.
The next issue that should be analyzed is specifically the role of computers in education, seen by the NCEE proposal as one of the “new” basics crucial to the education process. Computers in education is proposed as a requirement, because it is seen as an important tool for information and communication, without with, employment in the information sector will be an insecurity for those graduating from high schools and colleges.
Proponents of computers in education see the value of computers not only as a “new” skill to prepare individuals for the job market, but also believe that computers are machines that could help students to “think” analythically, through programs such as drill and practice, tutorial, instruction, etc, in almost all subject matter taught in schools. The “invaluability” of computers in education is, as Gross and Gross pu it, “being embraced with almost religious fervor by some school reformers”.58
From the political economic standpoint, who will benefit in theeducational process, from a widespread introduction of computers in the classroom? Similarly, as in the issues of science and technology, and the “Computer Revolution”/”Information Age”, the neutrality of computers in education and their value in teaching “thinking skills” cannot be left unchallenged. There will be certain sectors of the society who will benefit more than others in the educational process that “strives” for computer literacy.
It would be foreseeable that those students who have access to computers will benefit more than others without that advantage. Ira Schor believes that, in relation to computer education, until each and every student is provided with equal access to computers, both at home and in schools, the educational process will favour the success of the affluent section of the school population.59 In his critical analysis of the issue of computers in education, Schor succintly states:
<em>Its easy to see that wealthier students are already ahead in the race for the 21st century. They have home computers to practice on no matter what hardware their better schools manage to buy. Students from poorer districts not only get less spent on them in everyway at school, but also have less spent on them at home. Their less funded schools will have fewer computers for them to learn on. Their lower paid parents will not be able to supply them with microprocessors.60
</em>
Similar conclusion on the issue of inequality of access to computers in education is reported by Michaels, Cazden,and Bruce in a study they did on the impact of computers in education; in which they state that “many children are effectively denied access to new technologies because they live in the wrong school district. Others are able to use computers but only in the most limited ways.”61
Marcia Boruta and Hugh Mehan, in their observation of the use of computers in “21 classrooms in 5 Southern California school districts”, believed that computers in education not only can further contribute to the stratification of skill acquisition levels on the basis of students’ socio-economic backgrouund, but also potential stratifiers on the bais of sex.62
They concluded that:
<em>The use of computers makes a difference in a way that well intentioned educators have not considered. By even tracking students from different socio-economic backgrounds through different computer-based curricula, and by encouraging curricular division between boys and girls, the computer can be used as a tool to contribute further to the stratification of our society.63
</em>
Ian Reinecke, writing about the overall impact of high technology on society, in Electronic Illusions, too believe that the introduction of computers in education will only widen the disparities between the “haves” and the “have-nots”.64 Specifically analyzing the issue within the British education system, Reinecke states:
<em>An intensive campaign to put microcomputers in British schools aimed at a target that would have given each student access to a computer for an average of one hour each year. That average includes, of course, some schools where students have almost unlimited access and those where they have none at all. The use of microelectronic technology is likely, as in so many other areas of its use, to entrench social disparities.65</em>
Thus, echoing Schor, Michaels, Cazden, and others discussed and quoted earlier, Reinecke also concluded that “if micro-computers can be adapted to create educational programs that assist learning, it is the children of the wealthy who will benefit”.66
In conclusion and response, respectively, to the potential impact of computers in education, and to the question “who will benefit?” in the process of teaching computer literacy, one can imply that those who are already in the advantageous position of having access to computers (at home or in schools,) - the “haves” - will benefit more than those without the advantage: the “have’nots”.
In short, specifically in the case of computers in education, there can never be equal opportunity in the process of computer education, when the existing socio-economic arrangement of the society permits the “natural” process of stratification to prevail.
As evident in the growing number of debates in the field of American education, especially the debates centering around the 1983 NCEE report, “A Nation At Risk” - the Reagan Administration’s proposal to reform schools currently “degenerating towards mediocrity”, - there is a great concern by those in control of the apparatus of governance that because schools are producing “inferior products”, changes and recommendations in dealing with the “problem” are, conceivably, the immediate solutions.
Thus, in preventing society from its unpreparedness in entering the “Information Age”, reforms need to be made, most importantly, at the school level because, these institutions of learning are the ones that “can be held accountable” if, in future, society continues to degenerate. At the curricular level, therefore, it is proposed that education should be geared predominantly towards the production of “technologically-literate” graduates.
Central to the proposal’s call for reform in schools is the issue of the “Computer Revolution”/”Information Age” and students, ill-prepared with, besides other basics such as science and mathematics, computer skills, will be potential “losers” in the “rapidly changing” technological age.
It is precisely this claim that education should prepare individuals for the “Information Age” that the investigations in this essay take focus. Starting with the assumption that education itself is not a neutral process - for, it seeks to further the interests of the dominant groups in power, - the political economic framework by which this critique of “A Nation At Risk”, is based upon, seek to answer the question who benefits? behind the “Information Age” in relation to the report’s call for reform in schools.
The Marxist perspective of analyzing the issues in this essay is adopted, not only because of its unpopularity, - or, according to Paulston, because it has “been largely rejected and/or ignored,”67 in the United States - but also largely due to its applicability as a mode of analysis in examining thepower structure that determines the direction education takes.
In the case of “A Nation At Risk”, the “dictators” of the education system are predominantly the corporate and military sectors. Both, especially at the international level, in turn, work in symbiosis with one another; the strength and dominance of American business enterprises overseas are largely sustained and reinforced by the United States military.68
Specifically, the beneficiaries in the “Information Age” claim are computer-related corporations. Thus, the claim that there is a “Computer Revolution”/”information Age” has the undertones of “high technology” propaganda; and “ideology” disseminated by the corporate industrial sectors. And, because of the nature of the claim - ideological, - thus, this essay question not only the “Computer Revolution”/”Information Age” but also, in general, the “semantics” of science and technology; the presumed neutrality of scientific and technological “progress”.
The claim that computer education, an issue considered in the last part of the essay, is crucial to the education process too, upon critical examination, cannot stand the test of equal opportunity in education; those who are from the upper strata of the socio-economic level will have greater advantage in computer education than those from the lower socio-economic class.
Thus, the call for “reform” in the schools can indeed be suggested that those in power and control of the means of production - the corporate sectors, - intend to maintain their interests. In Paulston’s words, “national ‘reforms’ will only take place when they are viewed by dominant political and economic elites as defending or advancing their interests vis-a-vis less priviledged groups in society”.69
Indeed, from the political economic perspective, the 1983 NCEE report and proposal for education reform seeks to precisely do that; defend and advance the interests of two major “elites” in the American society: the corporate and the military sectors!
<strong>Notes:
</strong>
1Beatrice Gross and Ronald Gross, eds., The Great School Debate (New York:Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1985), p. 21.
2Ibid., p. 17
3Ibid., p. 16
4Ibid.
5T.H. Bell quoted by Ira Singer, in Ira Singer, “What’s the Point in ‘A Nation At Risk,’?” in The Great School Debate, eds. Beatrice Gross and Ronald Gross (New York: Simon and Schuster, In., 1985), p. 356.
6National Commission on Excellence in Education, “A Nation At Risk,” in The Great School Debate, Beatrice Gross and Ronald Gross eds. (New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc., 9185), p. 26.
7Ibid., p. 25
8Ibid., p. 27
9Ibid., p. 38
10Manfred Stanley, The Technological Conscience (New York: The Free Press, 1978), p. 220.
11Rolland G. Paulston, “Social and Educational Change: Conceptual Frameworks,” Comparative Education Review (june/October 1977): 385.
12National Commission on Excellence in Education, “A Nation At Risk,” p. 27.
13Ibid., p. 25.
14Rolland G. Paulston, “Social and Educational Change: Conceptual Frameworks,” p. 391.
15see, for examples: Alvin Toffler, Future Shock, (New York: Bantam Books, 1970)., John Naisbitt, Megatrends, (New York: Warner Books, Inc., 1984)., and Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future, (New York: Warner Books, Inc., 1984).
16National Commission on Excellence in Education, “A Nation At Risk,” p. 27.
17Norman Balabanian, “Presumed Neutrality of Technology,” Society (March/April 1980): 10.
18Ibid.
19Charles K. Wilber and Kenneth P. Jameson, “Paradigms of Economic Development and Beyond.” in The Political Economy of Development and Underdevelopment, 3d. eds. Charles K. Wilber and Kenneth P. Jameson (New York: Random House, Inc., 1984), p. 5. see also Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolution, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).
20see Karen D. Knorr-Cetina, “The Ethnographic Study of Scientific Work: Towards a Constructivist Interpretation of Science,” in Science Observed, eds. K. D. Knorr-Cetina and M. Mulkay (London: Sage Publications, 1983).
21see David F. Noble, America by Design: Science, Technology, and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982).
22National Commission on Excellence in Education, “A Nation At Risk,” p. 48.
23see Daniel Bell, The Coming of the Post-Industrial Society, (New York: Basic Books, 1973).
24John Naisbitt, Megatrends, (New York: Warner Books, Inc., 1984), p. 1.
25Ibid., p.4.
26as advertised inthe front cover, Megatrends is also “the nation’s #1 bestseller” and “60 weeks on the New York Times best seller list.” This raises the question how a particular book becomes a bestseller and who decides how, why, when, etc., it becomes a bestseller.
27John Naisbitt, Megatrends, pp. 25-30.
28Ibid., p. 22.
29Ibid., pp. 31-32.
30Ibid., p. 1.
31Ibid.
32Fortune (August 22, 1983): 170-171., quoted in Walter S. Jones, The Logic of International Relations, 5th ed. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1985), p. 613.
33Ibid.
34see for example, Herbert Simon, “The Social Impact of Computers: What Computer Mean to Man and Society,” Science, 195 (18 March 1977).
35Joseph Weizenbaum, “Where Are We Going?: Questions for Simon,” Datamation (15 November 1978); 436.
36Ibid
37see Ian Reinecke, Electronic Illusions (Harrisonburg, V.: R.R. Donnelley & Sons company, 1984). on a “skeptic’s” view of the Information Age.
38Joseph Weizenbaum, “On the Impact of Computers on Society,” Science 176 ( ): 609.
39Ibid.,: 613.
40see for example H.H. Bagdikian, Media Monopoly (Boston: Beacon Press, 1983)., on the control, ownership, and inter-locking directorates of media by major Fortune 500 companies.
41National Commission on Excellence in Education; “A Nation At Risk,” p. 26.
42Ian Reinecke, Electronic Illusions (Harrisonburg, V.: R.R. Donneley & Sons Company, 1984), p. 12.
43see for example, Herbert Marcuse, “Some Social Implications of Modern Technology,” in The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, eds. Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhart (New York: Continuum, 1985)
44see for example Lewis Mumford, The Pentagon of Power: The Myth of the Machine (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1980).
45see for example Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, trans. John Wilkinson (New York: Vintage Books, 1984).
46Joseph Weizenbaum, “Computers in Uniform: A Good Fit?”, Science for the People ( ); 26.
47Ibid.
Jonathan B. Tucker, “Strategic Computer Initiative: A Double-Edged Sword.” Science for the People ( ): 21.
48see Jack Manno, “The Military History of the Space Shuttle”, Science for the People (September/October 1983).
49see Walter A. McDougall, ... And the Haven and the Earth: A Political History of the Science Space Age (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1985).
50Herbert I. Schiller, “Informatics and Information Flows: The Underpinnings of Transnational Capitalism”. in
51Ibid., p. 6
52Ibid. Schiller pointed out too, that “te electronics industry is an outgrowth of military and encouragement. The early computers and their successors have been developed with the closest consultation between private companies, IBM, in particular, and the Pentagon. Government funds financed the outputs. The first communications satellite was a military effort.”
53Ibid.
54Ibid., p. 7
55National Commission on Excellence in Education, “A Nation At Risk”, p. 25.
56Ibid.
57Ibid., p.23.
58Beatrice Gross and Ronald Gross, eds. The Great School Debate (New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1985) p. 306.
59Ira Schor, “Will Microchips Tip the Scales Against Equality”,” in The Great School Debate eds. Beatrice Gross and Ronald Gross (New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1985), p. 356.
60Ibid.
61Sarah Michaels, Courtney Cazden, and Bertram Bruce, “Whose Computer Is It Anyway?” Science for the People ( ); 44.
62Marcia Boruta and Hugh Mehan, “Computers in the Classroom: Stratifier or Equalizer?”, Science for the People ( ); 41.
63Ibid., 42.
64Ian Reinecke, Electronic Illusions (Harrisonburg, Va.: R.R. Donneley & Sons Company, 1984).
65Ibid., p.176.
66Ibid.
67Rolland G. Paulston, “Social and Educational Change: Conceptual Frameworks”, Comparative Education Review (June/October 1977); 385.
68see Controlling Interest: The World of the Multinational Corporations, sound filmstrip, prod. California Newsreels, 1978. see also Richard J. Barnet and Ronald E. Muller, Global Reach: The Power of the Multinational Corporations (New York: Touchstone, 1974).
69Rolland G. Paulston, “Social and Educational Change: Conceptual Frameworks”, Comparative Education Review (June/October 1977); 387.Dr. AZLY RAHMANhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07437908281114330911noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11166677.post-1133551506791230312005-12-02T11:24:00.000-08:002006-02-05T20:03:57.503-08:0034] Notes on the Greater Romantic Lyric<span style="color:#3366ff;"><strong>Notes on M.H. Abram's The Greater Romantic Lyric</strong></span>
<span style="color:#000000;"><strong>by Azly Rahman</strong></span>
Indeed it would be most appropriate, preliminarily to comment on M.H. Abrams’s paradigm of the greater Romantic lyric, as an ingenious attempt to draw the structure and style of the Romantic poetry upon a general pattern and trend. Abrams’s thesis on the nature of the greater Romantic lyric discusses, in a rather lengthy manner, the prevailing characteristics of the poems written in that period; these characteristics manifested in the form, language used, narration, and in the theme, in and of the poems.
Just how is it then that Abrams’s model for these poems presents itself, and how accurate does this model lends itself in explaining the general structure and style of these works? Let us hence look at these issues and major purpose of this essay to offer an explanatory comment on Abrams’s concept and to judge upon the applicability of it to the structure and style of thepoems of this era.
The pieces I have selected for the analysis of this matter are: Wordsworth’s “It is a Beauteous Evening”, Shelley’s “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty”, and Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale”. The technique of my study will be such that the poems will be discussed and analyzed individually, with comparisons be made agains the model of the greater Romantic lyric proposed by Abrams.
I believe it would be proper to begin the analysis by first discussing and presenting an interpretive restatement of the model itself. Abrams characterizes the Romantic poems as having the qualities of a definite rhyme scheme of one form or another; odes and lyrics for instance and the subjects dealt with are of unfrivolous matters; contenplative in nature. The poet, speaking in the first person, talks about his subject matter using a language that moves from vernacular to formal speech.
The spekaer of the lyric interweaves his feelings with the outside surroundings; using the dynamics or the statics of the aspects of nature, such as sunrise, the clouds, living and non living things, etc., as a basis of describing his emotions. The aspects of change in the “outer scene,” as Abrams termed it, may be parallel or contrary to the poets’ feelings but nevertheless essential to the wholeness of the meditative experience.
The audience is generally non-existent; or to put in another way, frequently, the speaker engages himself in a soliloquy.
Throughout the meditative process, the poet comes to some form of realization or another; resolution, understanding, denial, intuition of matters erotic or thanatopic in nature. The end of the poem signify these forms of realization and appropriate to their contemplative nature, these poems too ends at where it begins i.e. at the outer scene, the natural surroundings.
Wordsworth’s “It is a Beauteous Evening,” the poem is a sonnet, or, as Abrams defined in his model, having “lyric magnitude”. The speaker, in his first four lines, is talking about the natural surrounding, about time, heaven, and the sea.
<em>It is a beauteous evening, calm and free
The holy time is quiet as a Nun
Breathless with adoration, the broad Sun
Is sinking down in its tranquility,
The gentleness of heaven broods o’er the Sea
(lines 1-5)</em>
In the second half of this short sonnet, we apparently see the speaker engaging in a “conversation” with a girl who is walking beside him. the poet then proceeds to remind his audience of a “Being” who is awake, and by his motion, an everlasting thunder is created.
The sonnet deals with a subject of utmost reverie, religious in undertone; the speaker consoling the girl that she need not worry about her unawareness of her “solemn thoughts”, as by God’s mercy, she will be granted heaven.
Wordsworth appear to be talking to the girl who might be listening to him, but as the sonnet proceeds, one may get the feel that the sonnet is undeniably an interior monologue in nature. The central theme of this sonnet is about the speaker’s acknowledgement of the superiority of God that he believe would bless the girl everlastingly. Wordsworth wrote:
<em>If thou appear untouched by solemn thought
Thy nature is not therefore less divine:
Thou liest in Abraham’s bosom all the year,
And worship’st at the Temple’s inner shrine,
God being with thee when we know it not.
(lines 10-14)
</em>
Clearly, the language does move from vernacular of poetic form to conversation-like formality.
Perhaps Abrams’s model could be applied to the matters so far discussed; the type, theme, audience, and language of the lyric poem. However, it might be appropriate to say too that the way the sonnet starts with the description of the outer scene, fits the model. But, it is not accurate to say that the way the outer scene and the poet’s speech interweave with each other is applicable to the paradigm proposed.
In the second half of the sonnet, a great deal of the discussion is that of the speaker’s hope that the girl be blessed by God. He does not, like the proposed model mention, describe his feelings, or meditative in accordance to the aspects of change in the outer scene. The poem ends not with the description of the outer scene; the beauteous evening, the broad sun or other form of nature imagery used; rather, emphasis is clearly made on the lyric speaker’s “dialogue” with the child - the girl that walked with him.
Thus, in this matter, Abrams’s model proved inadequate in describing the technique in Wordworth’s “It is a Beauteous Evening”. Perhaps, the inadequacy lies in the fact that this sonnet is one of the shortest of Wordsworth’s greater Romantic lyric. Though one might definately agree, the contrary, that the first five lines does mention the changes of the position of the sun, I still maintain that the poem did not end with the description of the natural surrounding.
Percy Bysshe Shelly’s “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” is another lyric poem that, like Wordsworth’s “It is a Beauteous Evening” deals with the subject of a “mighty Being”. While Wordsworth, in that sonnet acknowledges and announces that the mighty being is God in the christian sense of it, Shelley presents his mighty being, or the spiritual power in a different way. Paradoxically the word “hymn”, used as the title for this seven stanza lyric poem, though by the semantic nature of applicable to describing religious poems, Shelley used it to record his meditations that is atheistic in nature.
Shelley is worshipping beauty, or as he mentioned in the first stanza, theunknown power, spiritual in nature; its shadow visits with in constant glance, and this Intellectual beauty is the deity he pleats not to depart from the world:
<em>Thou - that to humen thought art nourishment,
Like darkness to a dying flame!
Depart not as thy shadow came,
Depart not - lest the grave should be,
Like life and fear, a dark reality.
(lines 44-48)
</em>
The poem does start with the depiction of nature - “summer wind that creep from flower to flower -/ like moonbeams ... behind some piny mountain shower”, (lines 4-5) and gracefully ends with an alteration of the mood of the outer scene, when the poet wrote: “the day become more solemn and serene/ when the moon is past there is a harmony”.
Along the course of the meditation, Shelley recalled the time when he, as a boy seeks spiritual reality through reading Gothic literature. He then resolve his conflict, dissolving his search for this kind of power when finally discovers the being he calls “Intellectual Beauty” and then vows that he would dedicate his life to it.
If we analyze Shelley’s “Intellectual Beauty” in terms of its theme, we find that Shelley’s meditative-descriptive methods of presenting his emotions; joyous in his discovery, fits that model proposed by Abrams. The poem does start with the imagery of nature and ends at the outer scene, with the poet’s moods altered due to the experience.
The audience is non-existent; Shelley is talking to, pleading and worshipping the “unseen power”. On the other hand, these “conversations” if at all present, should only be possible in the poet’s mind and imagination.
Like the Abrams model suggests, the outer scene closely itnerweave with the poet’s overall experience. The language used typify the model proposed too, moving from a rather vernacular type to a more conversational language with a higher degree of formality.
Thus, Shelley’s “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” does follow closely the Romantic lyric paradigm proposed by Abrams.
While the poems of Wordsworth and Shelley in this paper deal with the respective poets’ contemplation upon the powers that govern life and the poets’ emotions - Wordsworth’s acknowledgement of God (in the Christian tradition), and Shelley’s idolizings of his “Intellectual Beauty” as his spiritual master - Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” presents us with the lyric speaker’s yearn, among other things, for a more powerful ability to use his imagination as an escape “agent” that could lead him out of the life that he is in.
In the analysis of the poem against the model discussed, Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” does fit Abrams’s idea of the greater Romantic lyric. The poem has the qualities of a regular ode; uniform rhyme scheme with ten pentameter lines in all the eight stanzas. Like Wordswroth’s and Shelley’s lyrical pieces so far discussed, the speaker of the ode, Keats himself, engages in a deep meditation, allowing his thoughts and expressions to wander free, Keats started his poem speaking in a rather casual manner about his woes. In the first two stanzas, he laments upon this state of mind:
<em>My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pain
My heart sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
(lines 1-3)
</em>
He continued expressing his woes in his vernacular language longing for a depressant; a draught of vintage (!) that hath been cooled a long age in the deep - delved earth. The poem ends with the language used in a rather formal manner, bringing Keats back to “consciousness” after his unsuccessful retreat into the imaginative realm.
Though the techniques as discussed so far, of the poem agree with the model we are basing our analysis upon, I could not agree that the location by which the poet is speaking is such that proposed by the model; “in a particularized, usually a localized, outdoor setting”. It is aparently unclear as to where Keats is talking from nor it seems sure that the setting is outdoor.
It is not likewise with the poems previously analyzed in this paper, Wordsworth describes a calm and beauteous evening as he strolls outdoor in where might appear to be a garden, and Shelley admires the beauty of the mountains and the landscape around him. In “Ode to a Nightingale”, Keats, though talking about the darkness of the night, does not seem to indicate the locality he is in; aspects of the nature imagery seem to exist only in his imagination, not in the waking conciousness.
In addition to the inaccuracy above, Keats’ experience in the poem does not seem to relate to the outer scene (if at all present, ambiguous in its description). the poet mainly talks about his feelings not interwoven with the outside scene, if analyzing from Abrams’s paradigm. This experience, not entirely coherent anyhow, is a description of what is happening in the poet’s mind while he is listening to the Nightingale’s singing, if one may define that as basis of Keats’s “outer scene”, capable of changing from one aspect to another, however does not seem to alter Keats’s emotion significantly throughout the poem.
In other words Keats is not affected by the Nightingle’s happiness by being joyful himself, rather, envious of the joy in the singing when what he feels is sorrow and pain. Thus, it would not be accurate to say that the lyric speaker’s feeling is closely interwoven with the outer scene.
An analysis of the thematic aspect of Keats’s poem reveal as a definite accuracy of Abrams’s model of the greater Romantic lyric to that of “Ode to the Nightingale”.
The poem deals with a highly meditative subject matter: frusterations in life that leads to the longing for death. This theme is contrary to what Wordswroth’s and Shelley’s poems in this paper touches upon. Keats wants to be able to escape from life which he considers painful and intolerable, full of sorrow and frustration. He yearns for death but one that is easy and painless. In stanza six he wrote:
<em>I have been half in love with easeful Death
Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme
To take into the air my quiet breath;
No more than ever seems rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain (lines 52-55)
</em>
As to why the poet longs for death as such is not a matter that is intended to be further discussed in our analysis, though.
The poet, in the seventh stanza, voices his envy, joyous in its ecstatic singing, for not having to face the human fate of having to die, Keats wrote:
<em>The voice I heard this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperors and clowns:
Perhaps the self same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth ... (lines 61-64)
</em>
Besides the two main thoughts that Keats dwell upon: his evaluation that life is full of pains and sorrows, and his longing for a painless death, the poet believes that the power of imagination or fancy could serve as a vehicle by which he could escape life.
Thus, these thoughts of Keats that makes up the theme of the poem, in relation to Abrams’s paradigm does present that the speaker “achieves an insight”; his acknowledgement of the powers of imagination that could temporarily retreat him to happiness, “faces up to a trafic loss”; though the nature of Keats’s loss is not discussed in the poem, his lamentations indicate some form of tragedy or another that has befallen him.
Through the analysis of the three poems, in the tradition of the greater Romantic lyric, there are several instances where Abrams’s model could not adequately represent. Primarily, the case is of the last poem discussed, Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” where there seem to be an ambiguity as to the presence of an “outer scene” that intertwines with the poet’s meditative experience.
Apparently Keats does not, I feel, base his feelings upon the change in the aspect of theouter scene; what is more is that it is arguable whether Keats’s feelings itself changes. The same instance holds valid in my argument of Wordswroth’s poem, where, in a lesser degree of the “nature-feeling” interweaving characteristic, the opening lines of the short poems, describing the bountiful day doesn’t seem to follow throughout the poem does not end with the outer scene, deeming Abrams’s model inaccurate.
Except for the instances above, generally, the three poems fall into the category of either regular ode, as in Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale”, or having lyric magnitude as in Wordsworth’s and Shelley’s poems. The speakers of these poems does use a language that mvoes from vernacular to formal and they deal with serious and emotionally contemplative matter:
Wordsworth and his awareness of God, in the biblical sense; Shelley and his diety whom he calls “Intellectual Beauty” and in the last poem we hear Keats moans upon the sorrows and frustrations of life that leads him to long for death, as easy and painless as sleep. As Abrams has proposed, the speakers of these lyrical poems achieve either an understanding acknowledge, or simply complains of the situations they meditate upon.
Hence, what then do we conclude about the adequacy of Abrams’s model of the greater Romantic lyric in explaining the three poems discussed? I would say that the model is generally applicable except for the instances in Wordsworth’s and Keats’s poems.
Nevertheless, as I have stated in the first sentence of my essay, Abrams’s attempt is an ingenious one and undeniably, the paradigm he proposed does serve a valuable purpose in categorizing an understanding the Romantic poems as in a class as distinct, imaginative, exciting in itself and nontheless vibrant; with its new forms and approach, apart from other genres in the English poetry.Dr. AZLY RAHMANhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07437908281114330911noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11166677.post-1133551361377473152005-12-02T11:21:00.000-08:002006-02-05T19:54:22.040-08:0033] Enculturalization of the Ramayana and Mahabraratta<span style="color:#3366ff;"><strong>“The Ramayana and the Hikayat Seri Rama :
A Brief Analysis of Some Comparative Aspects”
</strong></span>
<div align="left"><strong><span style="color:#000000;">by Azly Rahman
</span></strong>
Abstract
<em>The purpose of this paper is to present a brief comparative study of two versions of Ramayana; the Indian and that adopted by the Malay; Hikayat Seri Rama. Some of the aspects of the discussion deal with the Hindu and Islamic values/ideas transmitted in the epics, the styles they were written with, and lastly, the few instances and the extent by which the Indian version of the Ramayana has been Malaynized. In general, Malay sources are used in this study, and I have personally translated the various referential instances. These translations may not be excellent in quality, nevertheless, the purpose; that of referential nature, I believe, and hope, would be well served.</em>
Valmiki’s Ramayana, to say the least, has had its tremendous impact, to some extent or another, in shaping and inspiring the classical literary tradition of the respective cultures that it has come in contact with. The widespreading of this epic, pure Hindu in its undertone, it not only throughout multi-cultural India, its birthplace, but also, parallel to the spreading of Hinduism and Buddhism, to a major part of South East Asia. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">Nevertheless, Ramayana spread not without undergoing to some degree or another, the process of acculturation and assimilation, to suit the believes of the people and cultures that had come to accept the epic as part of their literary classic. Some has given a new name to the epic, some has totally altered and modified the storyline, breathe a new life to it so as to render the epic approvable to their value system and cultural characteristics. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">In Thailand, this epic in its written form, dating from the 18th century, is called “Ramakian” or “Ramakrti” and Rama is presented very Siamese. The Burmese and Kherian version of Ramayana is called “Rama-ya-kan” and “Reamker”, respectively, and to a great extent, both have been largely influenced by Buddhism. (Abadi, et.al..1979, pp. 30). </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">The Malay world did have its share of this ancient tradition too since the first century A.D.. The Malay people, as Dr. William Fredericks of Ohio University puts it “tends to adopt the philosophy in vogue” namely, Hinduism and Buddhism, to replace, or rather improve the code of moral ethics that they were hollding on to at the time; animism. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">Probably at around this period too the epics of India, namely Ramayana and Mahabharatta was slowly being incorporated into the Malay literary tradition. Though the version of Ramayana translated at this time was not of Valmiki’s (considered the standard version) rather of the South Indian version, this epic inevitably did undergo the process of acculturation too. </div><div align="left">
In fact, classical Malay literature, or the “hikayat Melayu tua” has been, to a considerably large degree, been influenced and inspired by, besides Vyasa’s Mahabharatta, Valmiki’s Ramayana (Abadi, et.al.,1979. pp.23). At around this Hindu period, the Malaynization of Indian epics happened, especially to those two major literary works mentioned. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">Mahabharatta was adopted and modified to be known as “Hikayat Pandawa Lima”. (The Epic of the Five Pandavas) or “Hikayat Pandawa Jaya”. Ramayana was changed to be called “Hikayat Seri Rama” (The Epic of Sri Rama). It is the central focus of this article of discussion, in the general sense, the Malaynization of Ramayana; its differences with the Indian version and in particular, the “Islamization” of the epic after the religion came to change the Malay people’s value system after the Hindu period. </div><div align="left">
As mentioned earlier, the Malay Ramayana is known as the “Hikayat Seri Rama” and there are various differences with the Indian version that the hikayat has taken to model from. It is vital to this comparative discussion of the epic that the history of the “Hikayat Seri Rama” be discussed. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">This hikayat contained elements of Hinduism of various parts of India, to start with; from the south, north, and also east. In Java, traces of this epic was found in the temple of Lara Jonggrang in Prambanan. About the year 925 A.D, Yogiswara translated the epic into classical Javanese. This version was not popular though, when the language itself was not widely used anymore. Than came different versions of the hikayat, for example the “Serat Rama” and “Rama Kling”. From these versions too came the dramatic treatment. The Malay versions, that written in 1843 by Roorda Van Eysinga and that by Shellabear and Maxwell, are related to the dramatic versions mentioned (Abadi, et.al., pp. 61). </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">
For the purpose of a focused discussion, the article will resort to some of the many versions of the Malay Ramayana, namely the Shellabear and Maxwell versions, as referential and comparative points of the Hikayat Seri Rama. W.E. Maxwell’s version, written at the end of the 19th. century was derived from the narration of a reknown folk romance storyteller, MirHasssn. This version, though unmistakably revealed that the hikayat is Hindu in origin, is very much Malay in treatment in terms of its structure and inspiration. In fact, this version has beeome part of the tradition of the Malay folk romance. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">The Shellabear version, on the other hand, is different from the derivative of the narrative version mentioned above, it is closer in treatment and plot to the original Indian epic (Ahmad, 1981, pp. 113). For the Indian version, on the other hand, references will be made from William S. Buck’s retelling of Valmiki’s Ramayana for the reason that, as quoted by B.A. Van Nooten in his “Introduction” section, the author has succeeded in capturing the most important characteristic of Rama’s story with many variations of detail particularly “the most important characteristic of the Ramayana; the simple religious tone that prevades the Indian original.” (Buck, 1976, p.XXII). </div><div align="left">
Hence let us now look at the focus point of our discussion; the Malaynization/Islamization of the great Indian epic, referring to some of the major elements in both of the Malay versopms mentioned.</div><div align="left">
Why did the Malaynization of the epic happened, we may ask ourselves. In answering this question, a major point to be noted is that: by “Malaynization”, the whole discussion will also mean Islamization of the Malay people to a large extent, larger than that done by other religion that has come into contact with the Malays before the coming of Islam. A point in history need to be dealt with here - the coming of Islam and its impact on the Malay civilization.</div><div align="left">
Around the circa of 13th. to 14th. century, Islam came to this region and succeeded in changing, to a major extent, the value system of the Malay people. Brought by Indian and Persian traders, this ‘new order of morality’ has not only introduced itself as a ‘new religion’, but succeeded in introducing the Islamic cultural values of Persia and India to the Malays. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">The Malays, very receptive and adaptative in nature, towards foreign ideas and values, in due time assimilated these values into their lives. The Islamic values, could not however, easily scrape completely the cultural values the Malay people inherited from the pre-Islamis period. Thus, Hindu values, among other pre-Islamic values, is incorporated together with the ‘new order’; Islam. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">This is evident, for instance, in the Malay language itself, the use of Sanskrit words like “puasa” (fasting), “neraka” (hell), “syurga” (heavan), and “agama” (religion) maintained for explanatory purpose of the idea of Islamic reverance and religious practices of the Malay people. Perhaps, the most important contribution of the Islamic civilization to the Malay people is the Arabic writing system, popularly known as the “jawi script”. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">Almost without exception, the products of the classical Malay literature in general, including those that originated from the Hindu tradition, were written, originally in this form of writing. It is in this “jawi script” that the Malay version of Ramayana, the Hikayat Seri Rama was written. Hence, too, it could be said that the product of the Malay classical literature that reached us in the form of manuscripts, a major portion of it, came from the Islamic period. (Ahmad, 1981, pp. 110). </div><div align="left">
The popularity of Ramayana and other Hindu epics at the time of the arrival of Islam, without suspect, brought major concerns to Islamic preachers at that time. In fact, a religious writing by an Islamic scholar from Gujerat, India who served in the court of the Sultan of Acheh in the early part of 17th. century condemned the Hikayat Seri Rama as “unfit for Muslim readers”. Sir Richard Winstedt, a critic of the classical Malay literature was not far from being right when he mentioned that the first task of the Islamic preachers was to replace the heroes in Indian epics with Islamic warriors. (Ahmad, 1981, pp.110).</div><div align="left">
The spread of Islam was so very intense that Hinduism held by the people of this region was reduced to their social customs only; marriage, birth and funeral ceremonies. From time to time the Hindu beliefs were replaced by customs characteristic of Islam. As told in another classical Malay epic, Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa, the Hindu idols were from time to time destroyed. Hinduism became very weak, hence. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">This condition manifested itself in the development of the Malay literature, Hindu elements that originated from the Hindu holy scriptures, for instance, the Ramayana and Mahabharatta that glorified Vishnu, Siva, Brahma and other gods and godesses were replaced with Islamic concept of the Supreme being (Hamid, 1974, pp. 77-78). </div><div align="left">
To illustrate the point above, let me compare two passages of the epic in its Indian version (as told by William S. Buck) and to the one in Shellabear’s version of the Hikayat Seri Rama. These passages concern with the Rakshasha King Ravana’s coming into power:
Ravana held the knife to his throat, when Brahma appeared and said, ‘Stop! Ask me a boon at once!’ </div><div align="left">
‘<em>I am glad that I please you,’ said Ravana.
‘Please me!’ said Brahma. ‘Your will is dreadful, too strong to be neglected; like a bad disease I must treat it. Your pains make me hurt. Ask!’
‘May I be unslayable and never defeated by the gods or any one from any heaven, by Hell’s devils or Asuras or demon spirits, by underworld serpents or Yakshas or Rakshasas’.
‘Grated!’ said Brahma quickly. He gave Ravana back his burnt heads better looking than before. They rose living and smoothed down his black moustaches.
Brahma told Vibhishana, ‘Ask’.
‘May I never forget Dharma in peril or in pleasure, in comfort or in distraction’.
Brahma said, ‘Yes; and you will be immortal on Earth and exempt from death or oblivion; and my truth knows no turning’. (Buck, 1976, pp. 23). </em>
Here in the Indian version, Lord Brahma, the creator is presented as the one approaching King Ravana. In the Malay version, there was a middle man who dealt with what Ravana’s wishing for, the prophet Adam, first man on Earth.</div><div align="left">
With the blessing and power of Allah (SWT) the prophet Adam was hence descended from heaven for come period of time on earth. Once upon a time, at dawn, the prophet was walking apon the Earth when he met Ravana, meditating, hanging upside down.
The prophet asked </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"><em>‘O Ravana, why art thou doing as such to thyself? How long has thou been this way?’ </em></div><div align="left">
<em>Ravana replied, ‘O Gracious prophet of Allah. I have been as such for twelve years’
Adam then said, ‘O Ravana, what is it that thou hath begged from Allah (SWT) that thou hath acted as such?
Ravana answered, ‘O My Lord Propheth of Allah, if it would be at all possible that thou would asketh Lord Allah’s granting of my wish. I would hence proclaim the nature of it’
The prophet Adam then said, ‘O Ravana tell me the nature of the wish of thou’. (Shellabear, 1964, p.3)
</em>
Thus Ravana told the prophet of his wish, that Allah grant him four kingdoms: on earth, heavan, underworld and the seas. The prophet then told Ravana: </div><div align="left">
<em>Hence, at this moment, thou hath to promise me, that whenth thou doth commit wrongdoings or thou subjects doth doings as such and thou blesseth thee therein and not judge other wise, thou hath to accept the wrath of thy Lord Allah. Whereas thou agreeth upon this promise. I would hereby asketh upon Lord Allah thou’s humble wishes. (Shellabear, 1964, p.2)
</em>
From the three passages quoted above, there are several differences that could be accounted: </div><div align="left">
(i) The concept of the creator in Valmiki’s Ramayana, Brahma is replaced by that of Prophet Adam as the one who approached Ravana. </div><div align="left">
(ii) Brahma, as the god who creates, seem to be portrayed as weak, threathened by Ravana’s meditative acts. </div><div align="left">
‘Please me!’ said Brahma, ‘Your will is dreaful too strong to be neglected; like a bad disease I must treat it.
Your pains make me hurt. Ask!’ (Buck, 1976, p.23). </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">In Hikayat Seri Rama, Ravana in the beginning of his coming to power, had to ask the utmost consent of the Supreme Being Allah, to grant him the four kingdoms. His wish could not possibly be shanneled directly to Allah, rather, the prophet Adam was asked to present his wish. Here the concept of Brahma as the Supreme Creator and Allah is very different in a way, that Brahma’s supremity is shaken by Ravana’s meditative act and hence, Brahma had to grant whatever the Rakshasha was asking for to save himself. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">On the other hand, Islam does not see the power and might of the Supreme Being, Allah as nowhere in the position of that portrayed by Brahma. This leads to another discussion of the conception of God; The Hindus divided God into three dieties: (1) Brahma, the Creator, (2) Vishnu, the Freserver and (3) Shiva, the Destroyer. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">This led to idolatory and images being made out of these dieties and cults formed to worship one or the other of these gods (Akhbar, 1983, pp. 52). The concept of god in Islam is such that, Allah is “Unit and Indivisible”. He is born of none and has given birth to none, there is no sharer in His authority and that He is the Creator, Nourisher, and Sustainer of all universe, and has full sovereignty over them and everything in them for destroying and recreating. (Akhbar, 1983, p.71). </div><div align="left">
Therefore, the passages and commentaries presented above showed the difference in the conception of Good in the treatment of both epics; the original being very Hindu and the derivative of the Ramayana, the Hikayat Seri Rama given an Islamic treatment.
The next major differences between the two epics is in the way they were written. The original Ramayana was written in Sanskrit poetry whereas the Malay version is written in prose-form. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">In Java, the version is different than the Ramayana, the Mahabharatta is written in poetry-form called “kakawin”, a Javanese adaptation of the Sanskrit poetry. The difference in form between the Malay and the Javanese version might be due to the fact that the Hindu influence on the Malays was not that great compared to that on the Javanese. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">Hence, the Malays did not adapt the epic in the Sanskrit-like poetry-form. Besides, the existing Malay poetry, the “pantun” could not be used for story telling and thus, the poetry nature of the Indian epic couldn’t possibly be adapted to the Malay “pantun”. The “syair”, musical-poetry was not yet known until the coming of Islam from Persia. (Hamid, 1974, pp. 58-59). Both the hikayat mentioned in this article, the Maxwell and Shellabear versions were written in prose-form. </div><div align="left">
It has been illustrated, in the preceeding paragraphs the differences that exist between the Indian version of Ramayana and that of the Hikayat Seri Rama. The two major aspects discussed, namely the Hindu/Islam concept and portrayal of the Creator in both epics and at a latter discussion, there is the distinguishing between the form the epics were written; poetry in Ramayana and prose in the hikayat. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">The next and last, certainly not the least, major aspect that I feel vital in this comparative discussion of both kinds of literary work are characterization, events and theme of both types of literary work. </div><div align="left">
Certainly, between the two Malay versions, Maxwell’s, derived from Mir Hassan’s narrative version is very Malay in treatment; various plots, not to mention the changes in the characters’ names, were modified, added to the Indian version to suit the style of the Malay folk romance. Interestingly, in this folk version, the main hero is not Rama anymore, unlike the Shellabear version which still maintained Rama as the hero, but Rama’s son who manifested himself in the form of a monkey. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">No doubt, he is Hanuman, Rama’s monkey warrior. Expelled by his father (Rama) for his disgusting looks, Hanuman became a vagabond. His adventures, nevertheless, includes the plots presented similarly in the Indian Ramayana; for instance. Hanuman served Rama in rescuing Sita from Ravana, including too, the burning of the Rakshasha King’s palace. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">Most importantly, however, the plots in this version has been presented in a way that is suitable with the schemes of a typical Malay folk romance. An example would be that Hanuman, the hero, in one of his adventures, met a princess who later became his wife after he changed into a human form. And like a typical traditional Malay romance, Hanuman later became King and lived happily ever after. </div><div align="left">
The names of the characters in this romance seems to be takem from combinations of various literary traditions. The names “Tuan Puteri Sekuntum Bunga” is a local Malay name for Sita and “Shah Numan” for Hanuman evidently is Persian in nature. However, the names “Seri Rama”, “Rawana” and “Raja Laksamana” are definitely taken from Ramayana. The names of places are either taken locally, like “Negeri Tanjung Bunga” or translated from written version, like “Kacapuri” for “Langkapuri”. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">The setting of the hikayat is definitely Malay. The King Seri Rama resides in a Malay palace, the “istana” with “a garden of mango trees”. Coconut trees, a familiar scene for the Malays, are grown around Ravana’s palace. Probably the intention of the folk narrative storytellers is to present the listeners with the grandeurs and might of the world of Kings but instead, the image of the serenity and simplicity of the local setting manifested itself. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">In this version too, the royal wedding is attended by dignitaries such as the local religious people; the “lebais” and “hajis”. “Anachronism”, like the use of guns and the waring of the white flag to indicate surrender in war can also be found. These elements, evidently, were added from time to time to the epic because, research has shown that these symbols has never been found in the Malay “weltanschauung” before the 18th. or 19th. century. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">Hence, this Malay folk romance that has shaped itself by combining traditional and foreign literary elements has come to be accepted by the Malays as their priced literary posession. (Ahmad, 1981, pp. 113-114). As mentioned earlier, the Shellabear version of the hikayat did not undergo alterations as drastic as that of Maxwell discussed previously. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">The differences lie probably in the slight changes of names of the major characters, like Rama to Seri Rama and Sita to Sita Dewi and in another instance, the marriage ceremony of Rama and Sita in the Indian version is depicted in detail with much “color” whereas in the Malay version, not much grandeur is mentioned. Nevertheless, the version, is unmistakably given an Islamic flavor with the mentioning of the prophet Adam and the Supreme Being Allah to replace the respective Hindu characters. </div><div align="left">
With the discussion and illustrations presented in the preceeding paragraphs, it is hence conclusive that when Valmiki’s Ramayana came to the Malay world, the epic did, from time to time, “change itself” to “suit the existing” philosophy of the people. The philosophy here is Islam and the culture is Malay, hence, the Malaynization and Islamization of the work mentioned is taken rather synonymously. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">The major aspects also touched briefly the Islamic and Hindu concept of God manifested in the two versions of the epic. The acculturation of the epic could be found in both versions of the hikayats mentioned; namely in the way the style of writing is treated: Sanskrit poetry form in the Indian version, the prose-form in the Malay version. Maxwell’s version of the hikayat is treated in a fairly lengthy discussion to show the extent of the Malaynization of the Ramayana. </div><div align="left">
Certainly, this paper does not attempt to analyze in a comprehensive manner the differences of the great Indian epic with that of the Malay versions. Certainly this would be almost impossible, taking into account the very many aspects and magnanimous scope that the discussion should justifiably fall into. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">Not to mention too the numerous versions that exist of both the Indian and the Malay, Ramayana, thus, I account for the mentioning of two representative versions of the hikayat, namely, those of Maxwell’s and Shellabear’s: the former treating the Ramayana more Malay than the latter. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">And hence, too, in my discussions, I have limited the scope to that of: </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">(i) the concept of God and some religious values/ideas transmitted in one of the sections of the epics. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">(ii) the styles in which the two kinds of epics were written in... and </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">(iii) some aspects of the characterization, setting, and plot that both kinds of Ramayana differ in due to, as mentioned, the prosess of literary acculturation. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">
This paper too, nevertheless, implied that at one point in the history of Malay civilization, there was a Hindu period, along with other foreign civilizations, that has shaped the literary tradition of the people of this region. This period had undeniably played a significant role in the process mentioned above. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">Not only has the Ramayana and Mahabharatta been adopted and modified and later be included alongside with other major works of the classical Malay literature, these two epics have also paved the inspirational path of among others, two classics of the Malay literature, the Sejarah Melayu and the Hikayat Hang Tuah. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">Evidently, in the latter, the protagonist, Hang Tuah, also idolized as the archetypal figure of the warrior class of the glorious Malacca sultanate, in one of the episodes of the epic, when he was playing a duel game with his friends in his childhood days, was called upon by one of them.
“Lo, Laksamana my foe!” (Hamid, 1974, p. 61)</div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">
‘Laksamana’ mentioned here is none other than Rama’s half-brother, and, the great Malay warrior has taken the same name later in his life to indicate glorification of the Malay sea warrior class. Interestingly enough, till this day, the Malay people has taken this term as a designation to honor the highest chief of the Malaysian naval force. So everlasting, thus, is the influence of Ramayana!
<strong>BIBLIOGRAPHY
</strong>
1. Ahmad, Jamilah Haji, Kumpulan Esei Sastera Melayu Lama. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1981.
2. Abadi, Drs. Jihaty.; Rahman, Azran.; Abdulhamid, Amida., Sari Sejarah Kesusasteraan Melayu-Indonesia. Kuala Lumpur: Adabi, 1979.
3. Hamid, Drs. A. Bakar, Diskusi Sastera Jilid 1 : Sastera Tradisi. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1974.
4. Akbar, ‘Ali, God and Man : The Holy Quran and Modern Science. Petaling Jaya : MARICANS, 1983.
5. Shellabear, Rev. W.G., ed., Hikayat Seri Rama. Singapore : Malaysia Publishing House Ltd., 1964.
6. Buck, William., retold., Ramayana. Ontario : New American Library, 1978.
</div>Dr. AZLY RAHMANhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07437908281114330911noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11166677.post-1133550999704051262005-12-02T11:15:00.000-08:002006-02-05T19:53:21.520-08:0032] W.S. Rendra's "Struggle of the Naga Tribe"<strong><span style="color:#3366ff;"><em>INTERLUDE WITH MARXISM: RE-READING W.S. RENDRA’S PERJUANGAN SUKU NAGA</em></span></strong> ("The Struggle of the Naga Tribe")
by Azly Rahman
Athens, Ohio
<em>“You got to have patience. Why Tom, us people will go on livin’ when all them people is gone ..... Rich fellas come up an’ they die, an’ their kids ain’t no good an’ they die out. But we keep a-comin,”</em>
-JOHN STEINBECK, The Grapes of Wrath
<em>“If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through, it will blow everything in its way.” </em>
<em>
</em>-EMILE ZOLA, J’accuse
INTRODUCTION
In 1975, Willybrordus Surendro Rendro (Rendra) wrote and performed Perjuangan Suku Naga (The Struggle of the Naga Tribe; henceforth The Struggle,) a play about the Naga tribe which triumphantly opposes the forces of industrialization and modernization in order to maintain their cultural autonomy and to protect their copper-rich territorial chastity from being raped by the “ogress from tanah sabrang,” foreign based transnational corporations.1
</em>
As Max Lane wrote, the enormous success of the play, drawing crowds of several thousand during its first performances, is “besides being due to the excellent acting and script, must also be attributed to its power as a genuine meeting between indigenous cultural experiences and social reality.”2
The Struggle’s dramatic framework adaptatively parellels the epic Bharata Yuddha lakon3 and its theme is that of a critique of Indonesia’s socio-economic reality although in the prologue, the Dalang assure us:
<em>This story does not - I stress once again, does not - take place in Indonesia, so don’t get uptight and censor the story.4</em>
Analyses of the play have been few. Nonetheless, in general most of them center around the affirmation of the palywright’s ingenuity in blending the framework of the wayang with the theme of Indonesia’s socio-economic decadence.5
But is wayang is the dramatic framework Rendra based his play upon, what then appears to be the ideological framework the playwright adheres to in the process of creating The Struggle? One could contend with the brilliant Indonesian literary critic. Profesor Teeuw when he wrote about Rendra:
Rendra has remained faithful to his own calling: he is no politician, he has no ideology and no practical solutions to offer, but he is a poet, whose sole duty is to have a ready ear for the cry of the wounded animal falling from its nest as a man is aiming his desecrating arrows at the moon. (underline-mine)6
Rendra is not a politician but is he apolitical? Non-ideological? Without practical solutions to offer to the problems of underdevelopment? Besides asserting that Rendra remains without ideology. Teeuw also believes: “[o]f all contemporary poets perhaps Ajip [Rosidi] and Rendra are the least influenced by foreign trends.”7 And, in talking about Indonesian poetry and poets after 1965, Teeuw however believes that the rich variety in themes and motives of Rendra’s work (his poems particularly), can be attributed to his syncretic elements and manifested in his literary products.
The syncretist elements which contribute to the playwright’s creative power are drawn from traditional Javanese, Christian, Hindu-Buddhist, animistic, as well as Islamic thoughts.8 However, Teeuw is talking about Rendra’s overall philosophical orientation especially with respect to the latter’s early collection of poems.
Specifically, however, in much of Teeuw’s as well as Lane’s analyses of The Struggle there seem to be a major denial, consciously or otherwise, of the distinct ideological basis the play is grounded within: political economy. Such a discourse, of social analysis, Marxian in tradition, is distinctincly foreign in tradition and serve as the analytical case of Rendra’s satirical piece.
Thus, precisely the intent of this essay is to shed light upon the features of such as ideological delineation in Rendra’s critism’s on issues such as modernization, mass consumption, false consciousness, technological inappropriateness, and authoritarian rule which are not viably analyzable within the political economic framework. Clearly, Marxist analysis - especially from the dependency prospective - is employed throughout the author’s work.
Through the character Abivara - a “critical theorist” within the Naga tribe - Rendra’s voice of conscience is heard loud and clear in his powerful ideologiekritik of both the international bourgeoise and their collaborators, the underdeveloped native elite; the two groups as purveyors of the modern capitalist system.
A POLITICAL ECONOMIC APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF RENDRA’S PLAY: MARXIST THEMES, JAVANESE TERMS
Precisely because the theme of The Struggle is that of an indigenous culture’s sttempt to preserve its existence and cultural autonomy and to perpetuate its cherished pastoral and communal values in the face of super-exploitative desires of modern capitalism, Rendra’s play must be seen within the political economic context. Respectively, the “great communicator”, of Rendra’s ideological orientation is Abivara.
Remarkable and sound are the latter’s philosophical, political, and economic argumentative bases that one would be compelled to analyze the roots of Rendra’s rhetoricism. Abivara speaks for Rendra, Abivara’s words are Rendra’s thoughts. Especially at the time of Rendra’s authoring up The Struggle, those thoughts were the products of a phase in Rendra’s creative process: the Marxist interlude. Through Rendra’s essay on his creative process, his poems lamenting the theme of human disposession in an industrialized society, and plays he translated and authored prior to the writing of The Struggle, one can find the prevalence of Marxist themes in the playwright’s work.
Most remarkable is the universality of Rendra’s analysis for the study of underdeveloped societies; poverty is a structural problem when viewed within a larger historical and dialectical materialistic context. Thus, before further analysis of The Struggle is made, a brief discussion on the structurality of poverty, i.e. political as well as an analytical framework to the study of Rendra’s masterpiece.
Political economy is a discipline for studying how a particular society organizes the distribution of its economic surplus for the benefit of its members. It goes beyond orthordox economics in that not only the means of economic distribution is analyzed, rather, it also recognizes that power relations are embedded within these practices. In addition to that, political economy also looks at how human values are altered or stagnated in the process of development.
Charles K.Wilber and Kenneth Jameson, in an essay which analyzes the various paradigms of economic development which have dominated the theoretical writings of scholars on development, stated that the political economist is concerned with the enhancement of human values in the “active”, - i.e. human beings as subjects of development - rather than the “passive” sense - i.e. as objects of development - within the overall process of economic growth.9 Political economists differ with orthodox economists in their view of what constitutes the means and end in development, in that,
<em>traditional economists look on people’s values as means. Since the goal is growth, if people’s values have to change in order to get growth, then society must effect that change. But for political economist, one goal is to enhance people’s core values. Development become the means, not the end, for the end is to enhance what people value. Development or growth is desirable only if it is consistent with people’s deepest values.10
</em>
Political economy sees the inextricable link between politics and economics; whichever group controls the economic resources and surplus controls the development process. External and internal loci of control over the surplus are crucial topics explored by this form of Marxist analysis.11 With regard to the external control, for example if the economy of a particular developing country is controlled by outside forces - international agencies such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, transnational business or banking corporations, etc ..) political economists would argue that the development policies pursued by that country would be influenced by policies made by those international agencies. In addition, the external forces would collaborate with the internal forces.
As such, an alliance is forged; there would be a First World-Third World dependency based upon collaborations between the foreign political-economic elites with those with political and economic powers in the developing country. Within this context, development means the unequal relationship between the developed and the developing country. Technology, investments, capital, technical skills, and services from the former to the latter in effect not only create a dependency relationship based upon unequal exchanges but also ensure that the primary beneficiaries from such a structural arrangement would ultimately be the political and economic elites for both camps, international capitalists and their “friends”, the native comprador-bourgeoise.
Marxist writers such as Paul Baran, Andre Gurder Frank, and Bill Warren have dwelled on the dependency notion of development in their analyses of the under development of Latin America in particular and the Third World in general.12
The Struggle, albeit dramatically framed after the wayang, is primarily based upon the Marxist analytical framework: political economy. Perhaps Rendra fell short of employing class analysis (in the tradition of vulgar Marxism) for the contenting “battle” between classes are reduced to that of the capitalist class and a tribal group, the Naga, rather than between capitalists and workers (industrial and agricultural). Nonetheless, such a lack is perhaps intentional, for the intent of the play is to satirize in non-complex caricaturized manner.
The Struggle, in addition, is perhaps meant to be performed for an unsophisticated audience which would immediately grasp the message social criticism. In short, Rendra wrote the play for the rural masses. In fact, The Struggle was created with the “involvement’ of the rural peasantry. As Marx Lane wrote:
<em>The actual writing and rehearseing of the play was preceeded by a number of visits to villages where the group spoke to the villagers about their lives. These visits were prominently reported in the Indonesian press. Moreover, the rehearsing of the play in an open yard in the kampong involved local villagers as an audience and as commentators right from the beginning of the production. This latter aspect elicited an enthusiastic reaction from the villagers who would often wait to watch a rehearsal. Some parents even began naming their children after the characters in the play just as they do with wayang.13
</em>
At this juncture, the question is : what is Rendra’s perception of the role of art in society? Is art, as in the case of art for art’s sake, merely an aesthetic expression in support of the dominant class in power, or should art expose the contradictions in a society, a mirror of life in the Marxist sense, i.e. constantly in question of the mismanagements of those in power and raising the critical consciousness of the dispossed masses?
In other words, is the artist merely an embodiment of the bourgeoise class or does the artist have a more committed role within the overall picture of contending and continuing struggle between the oppress and the oppressed? Part of the question has been answered. In Rendra’s The Struggle, the simplicity of the plot, the message intended, and the creative involvement of the peasantry in the notion of “committed” art in the Marxist sense art, to be truly meaningful, must ally itself with those marginalized in the face of oppressive forces.
Whilst such an answer can be sought via one’s analysis of The Struggle, the other part can be sought through Rendra’s writings which describe his ideological delineation - from his viewing of art for its own sake to art as purposeful. In an essay centering around that question, for example, Rendra wrote about the event which prompted him to use art as a tool for social criticism.14
The event was his stay in the United States from 1964-1967; the years which introduced him to disciplines such as sociology, politics, and economics, that give him the basic tools to analyze the innerworkings of the capitalist system. Prior to 1964, he was in fact already aware of his tendency to shift to committed art which was then the practice of Lekra (Lembaga Kebudayaan Rakjat) artists who championed the idea of art for the masses. Nonetheless, Rendra did not yet acquire the artistic tools to commit himself in Lekra. He wrote in “Proses Kreatif Saya”:
<em>[S]ukar dibayangkan bahawa saya akan studi untuk terlibat di dalam masalah sosial-politik-ekonomik sebagaimana para seniman Lekra yang didikte oleh keputusan sentral partai. Meskipun begitu saya tidak pernah anti kepada seni yang “terlibat”. Bahkan mungkin sebenarnya sudah terdorong untuk terlibat tetapi belum menguasai sarana-saranan penghayatannya</em>.
<em>Baru setelah tahun 1964 saya pergi ke Amerika Serikat dan tinggal di sana selama 3, 5 tahun saya sempat berkenalan secara bersungguh-sungguh dengan sarana-sarana penghayatan itu. Ialah: ilmu sosial, ilmu politik dan ilmu ekonomi. Bukan artinya saya lalu menjadi ahli di dalam bidang-bidang itu, tetapi saya mulai memahami dasar dari ilmu-ilmu tersebut.15
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Prior to the creation of The Struggle, Rendra and Bengkel Teater performed several plays, both original and adaptations, with themes of revolt against established rules. Two which warrant discussion for their Marxist treatment are the Greek classic Lysistrata and Rendra’s original, Mastadon dan Burung Kondor (Mastadon and Eagle). Lysistrata, was adopted at the time of Rendra’s interlude with political economy, the theme of the Greek classic is revolt, “[t]he women of Athens and Sparta were accusing the male oligarchies, who rule these cities, of waging war against their neighbors while the national economy deteriorated and the people suffered.”17
Whilst Lysistrata can be said to be a political economic treatment of a play set in ancient times. Rendra’s Mastadon dan Burung Kondor is without doubt a play based upon the realities of contemporary socio-economic problems, which find their expression in Marxist terms - a critique of the modern capitalist system. The theme in the latter is “development” (and underdevelopment in a Latin American country and how mass marginalization of the rural poor - via the country’s obsession with the Gross National Product (GNP) is a yardstick of development.18
Mastadon and Burung Kondor is remarkable in its dependency theme. The 1970s was a period when dependency theory of development was at its height. The ripening of social turmoil, mass marginalization of the poor, and the increasing domination of predominantly US-based transnational corporations upon the economies in Latin America gave birth to dependency theory and the study of under development. Wilber write about the theorists as well as the dominance of the theory within the context of Third World development:
<em>Starting with the historical studies of underdevelopment pioneered by Celso Furtado, Andre Gunder Frank, Keith Griffin, Osvaldo Sunkel, and others, a dependency perspective on the process of development and underdevelopment has been in the making, particularly in regard to Latin America. This structural approach builds on the history of capitalist development ..... The development of capitalism and the world market is seen as a twofold process. A highly dualistic process of underdevelopment of Africa, Asia, and Latin America is the consequence of the process of development of Europe and North America. This twofold process created a situation of dependence in which the underdeveloped countries become appendages of the developed countries.19
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Mastadon dan Burung Kondor is Rendra’ analysis of the Latin American experience, employing dependency theory as its ideological base. Perhaps it can be correctly said that sciences of sociology, politics, and economics (“ilmu social, ilmu politik dan ilmu ekonomi”)20 the playwright studied during his stay in the United States are those in the Marxist tradition of dependency perspective. The Struggle Rendra employed such an analysis in relation to the socio-economic realities of Indonesia. But before further analysis is made on Rendra’s interlude with Marxism, in the context of The Struggle a brief note on a similar ideological shift in Rendra’s poetry-making needs to be mentioned.
In his collection of poems Blues for Bonnie, the fruits of Rendra’s years in the United States, he acknowledged that many of the issues dealt with are about morality and commonsense. Such was the period of Rendra’s search for an art form which would suit him best. He wrote:
<em>Dari alam stoned saya harus menyeberangi ke alam common sense. Seperti orang bertapa yang turun gunung, lalu tergagap dan termanggu di dalam pasar. Banyak pengalaman rohani dan pikiran saya didalam persentuhan dengan persoalan sosio-politik dan ekonomi itu. Tetapi saya belum bisa merumuskan pengalaman itu dengan baik di dalam alam kesedaran yang baru itu. Demikian pula saya belum bisa menemukan “bentuk kesenian”-nya yang cocok.
Di dalam ketegangan kreatif serupa itu, persoalan itu menyentuh rasa moral saya. Sebagai hasilnya lahirlah Blues Untuk Bonnie yang tidak merumuskan persoalan sosiopolitik, tetapi persoalan moran dan common sense.21 (emphasis original)
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Nonetheless, although as Rendra himself admits of his non socio-political and not committed nature of Blues for Bonnie, much of what he poetizes about are people dehumanized in a world of progress. In “Negro Tua” Rendra writes about an old Negro from Georgia, despite his deteriorating health, still plucks his guitar for a living.
In “Maria Zaitun”, “Bersatulah Pelacur-Pelacur Jakarta”, and “Rick dari Corona”, the poet championed the prostitutes whom he sees as the by-products of a world dehumanized by modernization. And in “Pemandangan Senjakala” the theme is mass destruction of human lives in the face of war created by human beings themselves.22 Blues for Bonnie is thus about human disposession especially in a nation as rich as America. As Dani N.Toba wrote:
<em>“Blues untuk Bonnie”, merupakan nota universal tentang kemelaratan manusia terlantar di Amerika Serikat, di mana ada diskriminasi dan hak sosial lebih tinggi dari ras putih. Negro tua yang menjadi tokoh Rendra masih lebih lumayan dari “Maria Zaitun” Indonesia, karena masih bisa menyanyi, biarpun tubuh sudah “bagai guci retak”.23
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It was after 1971 that Rendra began writing poems centering around socio-economic and political themes. Written between 1971-1978 and compiled in Potret Pembangunan Dalam Puisi,24 the poems, as Rendra claimed, are meant for his audience rather than for the critics. The strength in a particular art form is judged by the degree the audience understands what the message is, the poet believed.25
The public response to the poems in Potret Pembangunan Dalam Puisi was good at the time Rendra read them in public. That success, Rendra believes is due to the strength of the art form, one which commits itself to the issues of socio-economic and politics. Rendra attacked those in the literary circle who believed that art needs its critics who would help the audience judge its aesthetic value. He wrote:
<em>Kritikus adalah jambatan antara penonton dan pembaca dengan seniman? Omong kosong! Kritikus adalah jambatan antara seniman dengan kemungkinan-kemungkinan spekulatif dalam dunia seni. </em>
<em>Jambatan yang benar-benar bisa diandalkan antara seniman dengan penonton atau pembacanya adalah kekuatan “bentuk seni”nya. Seniman yang mengiba-iba dan memohon agar kritikus suka menjadikan jambatan lagi karyanya, sebenarnya kalau diteliti ternyata karyanya itu memang punya “bentuk seni” yang lemah, atau yang tidak otentik timbul dari penghayatan terhadap kehidupan tetapi timbul dari prasangka-prasangka yang eksentrik dan dari tingkah genit yang dibikin-bikin. Jadi memang serba artifisial.26
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Themes of oppression, alienation and protest against those in power who dehumanizes others, embodied particularly in Rendra’s poems written in the 70s reflects the poet’s use of art as a fool to champion the plight of the masses. Rendra’s engagement with the plight of the wretched of the earth, placed him among writers in the Marxist humanist tradition.
The poet’s use of his intellectuality in making aware the unknown i.e. raising the critical consciousness of the disposessed in seeing the structure of their dehumaning condition parallels what Jean-Paul Sartre - humanist, philosopher, and literary genius - believed about the role of art and the artist in society. Sartre, who believed that literature is always committed said in 1959.
<em>If literature is not everything, it is worth nothing. This is what I mean by ‘commitment’. It wilts if it is reduced to innocence, or to songs. If a written sentence does not reverberate at every level of man and society, then it makes no sense. What is the literature of an epoch appropriated by its literature?27
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Rendra’s art explains to the public the process of ideological manipulation of the ruling class upon the masses. Especially in The Struggle, he analyzes the ruling class’s mystifying of the term “development”. What makes Rendra an intellectual who “has the right” to his art is the fact that he communicates to the masses what is otherwise known: the ideology of the ruling elite. In other words Rendra’s “commited art” attempt to release the masses from the shackles of such ideological domination.
In the Sartrean sense, Rendra is not an intellectual “accidently” (i.e. propagator of bourgeoise ideology), but an intellectual “essentially” (communicator of the miscommunicated).28 As Sartre summarize the role of the written (intellectual) within the contending demands of “universality” (real knowledge) and “particularism” (ideology of those in power):
The commitment of the writer is to communicate the incommunicable (being-in the-world as lived experience) by exploiting the misinformation contained in ordinary language, and maintaining the tension between the whole and the part, totality and totalization, the world and being-in-the-world, as the significance of his work.
In his professional capacity itself, the writer is necessarily always at grips with the contradiction between the particular and the universal. Whereas other intellectuals see their function arise from a contradiction between the universalist demands of their professions and the particularist demands of the dominant class, the inner task of the writer is to remain on the plane of lived experience while suggesting universalization as the affirmation of life on its horizon. In this sense, the writer is not an intellectual accidently, like others, but essentially.29 (emphasis original)
And in The Struggle, Rendra attempts to universalize what is particular, communicate what is miscommunicated and though remaining on his plane of existence, reaches out to the masses to feed them with thoughts essential to the understanding of ideological dominate and the structurality of their socio-economic condition. Albeit simple in message and its framework.
The Struggle is rich in its Marxist analysis of economic dependency and bourgeoise ideology. More than just an analysis, Rendra does suggest an alternative development program based upon the idea of a participatory development. And more than any other character in the Naga tribe, perhaps Abirara can accurately be tamed as the dramatis personae; the great communicator of Rendra’s thoughts.
THE STRUGGLE AS IDEOLOGIEKRITIK
Though the play is set in Indonesia, the message is universal; one can relate it to the critique of modernization in the capitalist portion of the Third World. As such this essay, does not attempt to ground Rendra’s analysis specifically as it pertain to the Indonesian society. As mentioned in the introductory section, Max Lane’s analysis already serves as a major reference to the study of The Struggle as it relates to Indonesia’s socio-economic reality.
Enough have been said by lane for that matter. Because of the universality of Rendra’s message, perhaps a more general and conceptual connection can be made of the play with a Marxist discourse rooted in German philosophical tradition: Ideologiekritik. As the term suggest, such a discourse, or more accurately a cognitive science, deals with the critique of ideology. Particularly, ideologiekritik serves as a tool for the critique of the modern capitalist system. The Frankfurt Institute of Social Research (commonly referred to as the Frankfurt School), established in the 1920s, serve as an institution which gave prominence to critical theory; social research movement anti-thema logical positivism.
The heart of critical theory lies in ideologiekritik. The latter attempt to analyze the role of ideology in a capitalist society; a role which prevents the working class from seeing the structurality of their situation as well as one which prevents them from carrying out the revolution Marx predicted would tear down the capitalist state.30 Three features of Ideologiekritik explain why it could aptly be related to the suggestion that Rendra’s play theorectically is based upon ideologiekritik:
(1) Radical critism of its dominant ideology (Ideologiekritik) are inseparable, the ultimate goal of all social research should be the elaboration of a critical theory of society which Ideologiekritik would be an integral part.
(2) Ideologiekritik is not just a form of ‘moralizing criticism,’ i.e. an ideological form of consciousness is not criticized for being nasty, immoral, unpleasant, etc. but for being false, for being a form of delusion. Ideologiekritik itself is a cognitive enterprise, a form of knowledge.
(3) Ideologiekritik (and hence also the social theory of which it is a part) differs significantly in cognitive structure from natural science, and require for its proper analysis basic changes in the epistemological views we have inherited from traditional empiricism (modelled as it is on the study of natural science.31
The theory’s aim is to literate individuals from the manipulations of ideology, especially that which serve the interests of those in power. In the same vein as Paulo Freire’s idea of conscientization,32 critical theory attempt to subjectivize the objectified, communicate the miscommunicated, and unlearn what has hitherto been learned. In other words, critical theory is in character reflective and in its potential, emancipatory. As Brendo and Feinberg summarizes:
<em>[C]ritical theory attempt to explain communicative distortion in terms of a history of events in which people’s interest were involved: it recognizes that this historical context gives meaning to present communicative distortions can be used to reveal the partial interest behind current ideologies made sense in their earlier lively days when they fitted their practical social contexts and the ways in which those social contexts changed, the critical theorist can better understand current distortions and the limited interest that they serve.33</em>
How is Rendra’s The Struggle related to Critical Theory/ Ideologiekritik?
Exactly how and when Rendra studied critical theory is not the issue here, rather the dialogues in The Struggle do suggest an abundance of instances where critical theory is the underlying theorectical framework. The whole play is in fact a critique of positivist ideology permeating in Western modelled developmentalism, value neutrality of technology, cultural manifestation of modernization, etc.
In other words, communication from the dominant class (international capitalist and its collaborator, the native bourgeoise) is analyzed as a miscommunication; the latter distorts real communication. Through the voice of the Naga, Rendra offers the anti-thema to such distortions in communication, and hence, in the tradition of critical theory, attempts to anticipate his audience from such ideological mould.
Remarkable is the manner Rendra exposes the innerworkings of the modern capitalist system; both in its mode of production (economic base) and the ideology to sustain it (superstructure). In The Struggle, a careful analysis would reveal that not only the Astinamese use their critical tools to oppose the rhetorics of capitalism but also most interestingly, Rendra even equipt capitalism with similar tools to degarde itself and thus, in the process, exposing its own inner contradictions.
In the very first scene “The Machine’s Chorus”, Rendra, in the Marxist sense, relates the development of capitalism with its tool of exploitation: technology. Dudley Dillard, in his essay on capitalism, wrote about the parallel but dependent development of capitalism and technology. Beginning with the Industrial Revolution with the shift of commercial activities to industry, technology became the major force aiding capitalism in promoting such a shift:
<em>Two of three centuries of steady capital accumulation began to pay off handsomely in the 18th. century. Now it became feasible to make practical use of technical knowledge which has been accumulating over the centuries. Capitalism became a powerful promoter of technological change because the accumulation of capital made possible the use of inventions which poorer societies could not have afforded. 34
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The machines - i.e. the promoter of capitalism -, speaking in chorus, described their capability of producing goods for mmass consumption; the latter are to be sold cheaply via huge markets. Largely developed in the industrialized countries, “land of the ogres” as Rendra calls them - “rich in capital and in machines that produced commodities”,35 - technology, personified, talked about the link between production and the inability of capitalism to withstand its own weight thus, have to search for markets abroad:
<em>The warehouses overflow/ We’ve got nowhere to store our goods./ ......
We sell our products cheaply/ We must have a huge market./ ..... Working fast requires a big market/ cheap goods can be sent far and wide.36
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The machines also talked about “economics” in the neo-classical Milton Friedman sense; time saved by the advancement of technology for mass production will generate profit and if the workings of free market enterprise is disturbed, the economy will collapse. The machines reveal the logic of such a system:
<em>Profit increases capital./ Capital increases profit. More money means more schemes./ We can’t be help up, we can’t be interrupted ... Money must circulate./ Money must circulate/ Time is money./ Goods are money/ we call this economics..... If you distrub us/ Unemployed workers will bite their nails.37 </em>
And, besides their search for huge markets, the international capitalists also demand raw materials. Such is a scheme the machines termed in unison as “Progress”. They chant:
<em>Give us raw materials/ So that we can run. ....Progress This is the age of progress / The age of agriculture we leave behind./ The age of industry we make a reality. 38
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Thus, in the very beginning of The Struggle, Rendra lay the bare facts on the innerworkings of the international capitalist system as such Dillard described - capitalism help develop sophistication in technology and in turn, the latter make efficient the production of goods for mass consumption, to be sold in as huge a merket as possible.
Marx, writing as early as in the Communist Manifesto39 observed the alliance of capitalism and technology, and in the years after World War II writes such as Immanuel Wallerstein,40 Richard Barnet and Ronald Muller,41 and Paul Baron42 - those writing in the Marxist tradition, observed such a tendency of capitalism - technological development alliance to surbanked upon the globalization of world economics.
If the machines provide an expose, of such capitalist logic - i.e. Rendra providing technology the tools for self explanations, - the playwright, through the Dalang’s narration provide anti-thetical arguments to counter the already self degrading rhetories of capitalism. The Dalang, albeit answering in a somewhat confused manner when explained about economics, nevertheless debunks the “trickle down” myth of development advanced by free-marketeers and modernization theorists. Dialectical to the argument on profit, the Dalang relates development as such with poverty:
<em>Money goes round and round/ Money circulates/ Round and round in the sky/ Up towards heavan./ Ah, but from there/ It never comes down to earth. The god of money gets richer/ The poor remain coolies/ For all eternity./ The people are cultivated, schooled and moulded/ To be nothing but consumers.43
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Whilst the “Machine’s Chorus” scene provide The Struggle’s audience with the knowledge of international capitalism’s logic for penetration into an “undeveloped” society, the “Astinampuram” scene described the mentality of the native comprador-bourgeoise - the Indonesian elite set - who make possible the development of underdevelopment. Equipped with the paraphenalia of Western affluence and modernity, - dark sunglasses, heavy make-up, girdle to slim the body “before it’s too late”,44 - Rendra’s “Sri Ratu’ is given the honor to lead the role of an Imelda Marcos - type wife of a leader obsessed with the rhetorics of Western-modelled developmentalists.
Nothing should obstruct the collaborative effort between the foreign investors and the elites of Astinampuram - for, there are benefits to be accrued in the latter’s approving of such a development scheme. For example, when the Prime Minister proposses that Sri Ratu approve the building of Wijaya Kasuma hospital, the latter see it as a viable project for a developing country whilst the Prime Minister assured that the queen will personally profit from such a deal. Rendra wrote its brilliant dialogue:
<em>SRI RATU: .... Our nation must not be left behind in developing modern science.
PRIME MINISTER: No need to worry, Your majesty. Happily there are many foreign companies who want to invest here and build pharmaceutical factories.
SRI RATU: Their requests must be given priority - providing, of course, they show sufficient “understanding”.
PRIME MINISTER: Their “understanding” is quite large. They are going to keep aside ten percent of the capital for unforseen matters, the use of which will be entirely up to your Majesty, and will be entirely deposited in Your Majesty’s bank account in Hong Kong.
SRI RATU: Excellent! 45
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Clearly, as in the earlier scene with machines, the native bourgeoise are also given the tools to expose their inner contradictions; the Prime Minister himself suggests the corruptness of the system with wealth from the country chanelled into foreign banks. Rendra does not even limited his criticism of the capitalist ideology (permeated into the thinking of the native elites), by making the elites contradict themselves, he uses the Dalang to further conscientize his audience on the issue.
The latter anti-thematically argued the building of Wijaya Kusuma:
What’s the use of all this for the ordinary people? Most people in this country still live in poverty. What they need it not the most modern hospital in all Southeast Asia, but more small hospitals in each district. One luxury hospital could mean fifty simple hospitals available to all.46
Thus, the preceeding discussions on the two scenes show that Rendra criticizes the capitalist ideology which mystify the term development. For the international capitalists, development means larger markets for goods, which are mass produced, and no longer consumable in the industrialized societies, they are marketed in the underdeveloped societies. For the native elites, it means believing that those goods are inherently necessary for progress and the notion of modernization (albeit such is a false notion development).
The free enterprise model - allowing markets to regulate uninterruptedly, - is transplanted by international capitalists, “the ogress from tanah sabrang”,47 into the economy of the developing society with collaboration from the native elite who equates progress with development along such a line. Rendra sees it as mystification and via Ideologiekritik unlocks the distorted communication.
Throughout the play, especially in the scenes of Astinampuram, and the Parliament, such a Marxist discourse the critique of capitalist ideology is employed.
In the overall context of The Struggle, the Naga represent, as a group, a critique of those in power. Specifically though the voice of Abivara, Rendra offers his notion of how the younger generation, especially those equipped with Western-education (in the Marxist tradition) should think. One can almost see a biographical element of Rendra in Abirara; the critical theorist amongst the Naga. With the tools to analyze the capitalist system and its ideology, Abirara, back from his studies abroad (i.e. Rendra back from the United States?) offers his view on among other issues, technology, development, false consciousness, and the maintenance of one’s cultural autonomy in the face of foreign cultural imposition.
Abirara see the value of technology more in its potential for liberation and to be used for social purposes rather than as display of one’s power and prestige. For example in the same where he comes home to the Nagas, when asked by Sapaka why he did not bring a car come, he answered,
Indeed, as I lived modestly, I could have easily saved enough to buy two cars. But we don’t need cars here. What we need are trucks. Cars aren’t progress - they’re just a luxury.
On the other hand, trucks can fulfill our basic needs. They can carry both more goods and more people. But first, the roads between the villages must be improved. To bring in trucks before the roads are improved is to show that you don’t understand technology.48
The relevance of appropriate technology is equated with the desire to meet basic needs and not basic greed. And with proper technology and infrastructure, society can produce goods for the market with absence of the middle-man; those who have the tendency to buy cheap goods from the produces whilst in turn reap profit of the urban market:
<em>ABISAVAM: So it’s important that our village also build roads?
ABIVARA: Yes father. Our village will then be able to run its own transport which can take our produce straight to the market.49
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Abivara’s, thus Rendra’s view of development is one which would let the society control technology and use it as a tool to produce their basic necessities.
Perhaps the most important scene laden with Rendra’s thoughts on the mystification of progress - one which saw the primacy Ideologiekritik - is Abivara’s expose on: false consciousness generated by the powers of the Western media to dominate society’s thinking. In “Abivara and Setyawati”, responding to Setyawati’s equating of urbanization and progress, Abivara asked: “What do you mean by ‘progress’”.50
Such is perhaps the question par excellence asked by those attempting to attack the rest of Western - developmentalist ideology. It is a radical question, demanding one’s analysis of the underlying assumptions, values, motives, etc. that has hitherto gave primacy to capitalist economic base and its superstructure (ideology of the state apparatuses). Abivara argues for the social value in village life rather than for the impersonalized feature of urban life:
<em>Is it really true that there is more social life in the towns? Good God Townspeople hardly ever know the names of their own neighbors. Social intercourse between friends has become expensive in the town. All social intercourse must be related to some practical interest. It doesn’t matter if it’s a business or sexual interest, or some other material concern. It’s only one-sided social intercourse, not total. So in fact it’s really the townspeople who lack social life.51
</em>Further along, Abivara demystify the notion that to progress means to adopt Western defined “fashion” which is “nothing more than new habits and new customs ... and ... only binds people.”52
Abivara linked such definitions of progress and development with how false - consciously townspeople view those in the village:
<em>Their the townspeople’s view that they are superior than the villagers is an uneducated view. They should know that village people are more productive than townspeople. Villagers produced things from the earth. But what do townspeople produce? All thay can do is import. Their economy is a hawker’s economy. Or the most they’re capable of producing is bureaucracy. And bureaucracy is an obstacle to progress.</em>53
Bereaucracy, in Rendra’s mode of analysis, is a means to maintain the status quo which benefits those in power. And bureaucracy in the Astinamese circle means the abuse of the rule of law - a corruption of power. As the character “Mr. Joe” said in response to the “Big Boss” on the possibility of branding Abivara a subversive:
<em>What law? There is no law here, only power. And the powerful here are very clever. There’re not concerned with the law. They’re concerned with tidiness.54
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Rendra perhaps acquired sufficient tools to understand international capitalism’s profit-motif and exploitative shceme while his stay in the United States and hence, through Abivara, makes a plea to those with Western education to see serve in rural development efforts rather than work with foreign firms of the state bureaucracy. Abivara’s first speech, after returning from his studies aborad, clearly reiterate Rendra’s thoughts:
<em>My father, uncles and all friends. I, Abivara, son of Abisavam, have now returned from studying across the sea to work in may village.55
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The playwright debunks the myth that to get ahead in life means to be an important person working in the capital; a successful person is one who perpetuate the bureaucracy - one who maintains the status quo. In Abivara’s dialogue with Supaka, he defined leadership:
<em>SUPAKA: Abivara, don’t you want to become an “important person” in the capital?
ABIVARA: No, I’m not the “important person” type.
SUPAKA: Don’t you want to get ahead in life?
ABIVARA: Oh yes, I want to be a person who is useful. But to be an “Important person” is on the contrary, not to get ahead, not to progress. I want to be a leader. The “important persons always defend the status quo; leaders are willing to go forward”. 56</em>
Such is Rendra’s plea to the educated in that, they should see the immediate needs of the larger messes and not the perpetual greed of the elite for, society has invested a great deal in educating them. And, that leadership feature is present in Abivara who “has rather grown closer to his environment ..... doesn’t need electric guitars, air conditioning and porcelain toilets.”57
Within this context, Rendra is indeed critical of those dominated by Western developmentalist ideology in that, they fail to see that they are indeed mentally captive - unable to break away from such ideological imprisonment - thus, potential failures in understanding the plight of the poor. These leaders cannot possibly become leaders in the sense Rendra categorized for, the false conscience pervading them - i.e. modernization values, - only ensure that the international capitalist ideology is maintained. They, like the international capitalists, will in turn be oppressors of their own people. Paulo Freire, in analyzing such a psychological state of mind, wrote:
<em>How can the oppressed, as divided, unauthentic beings participate in developing the pedagogy of their liberation? Only as they discover themselves to be “hosts” of the oppressors can they contribute to the midwifery of their liberating pedagogy. As long as they live in the duality in which to be is to be like, and to be like is to be like the oppressor, this contribution is impossible. The pedagogy of the oppressed is an instrument for their critical discovery that both they and their oppressors are manifestations of dehumanization.58 (emphasis original)
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To that effect, Abivara can be said to have discovered himself to be a “host” of the oppressor - the international capitalists and the Astinamese elites, - and with his knowledge of such an oppressive system, analyzes its contradiction and in turn “contribute to the midwifery of ... the ... liberating pedagogy”.59
The preceeding discussions on Abivara attest to the idea that there is, among the Nagas, a critical theorist who provides an Ideologiekritik to the capitalist ideology. Issues such as the ownership and control of technology, the mystified view on development, false consciousness of the elite in power as well as future leaders who would be perpetuators of such consciousness, bureaucracy as a mechanism of oppression in alliance with international capitalism, and foreign economic penetration, are among those Abivara spoke of in order to entangle their logic.
And if Abivara represents the promising dialectical thinker among the Naga, his creator Rendra not only is one amongst the Indonesian society but most remarkably, represents that voice of conscience among the oppressed masses all over the world at large. Such claim may not be exaggerated one, for eventhough the capitalist portion of Third World societies may represent an almost irreconciliable melange of different features - ethnic, religious, physiogomy, etc. - an underlying similarity amongst them is perhaps evident: the capitalist development path they travel on has paved way to authoritarianism, military rule, underdeveloped elitism, and abysmal gap between the haves and the have nots - in correlation to the development of international capitalism.
The Struggle’s dealing with those issues thus made it an aesthetic document of ideologiekritik. In each and every scene, and in the multitude of dialogues and philosophical reflections of its characters, - especially those in the Naga tribe - Rendra’s thoughts are like prescriptions to correct the ills in a society torn apart by political, economic and social decadence. Such a pathological condition prevails, ten years after Rendra wrote The Struggle.
The reigns of many Astinamese-type regimes in the post-war era have been overthrown by dialectical forces in alliance with the poor; those of Marcos in the Philiphines, Jean-Claude Duvalier in Haiti, the Shah in Iran, and Sothoza in Nicaragua. Nonetheless, Suharto still reigns perhaps due to his power of mystifying the masses via his (albeit contradictory), Yudhistira charm. Until the masses can see their wretched poverty better than the glitters of the charm, Suharto’s Astinamese Kingdom will continue to reign.
Perhaps Rendra does not have, if one agrees with Prof. Teeuw’s statement, any practical solutions to offer in correcting the political, social and economic ills in his society. But he does have a practical solution by making his audience start thinking about the ills as an initial step towards searching for alternate forms of social organization. Perhaps Rendra learned from the liberations movements in Nicaragua, Cuba, China, and the Soviet Union by analyzing the teachings of Sandino, Che Guevara and Castro, Mao Tsetung, and Trotsky, Lenin and Bukharin - that such a step not only is necessary but within a dialectical and historical context, inevitable. Such a step, in other words, will emerge by itself - perhaps the dialectical thinking generated as a historical inevitability and borne into individuals “chosen” by history as revolutionary thinkers - given the ripening of the socio-economic turmoils.
The playwright invites his audience to adopt such a mode of thinking. By caricaturizing the societies into good and evil, Rendra does want his political statement to be understood to the maximum. He could have presented the dual nature of the Astinamese, i.e. a combination of good and evil, and likewise present the Naga with their inherent contradictions. Nonetheless, he does not want his audience to be confused with such an apologetic - especially towards the Astinamese - approach to his art.
Such is the manner Rendra uses his drama to suggest the possibility of envisioning an alternate reality embodied in the cultural values of the Naga. These are the values which see the inherently humane approach of how a particular society should govern itself given its ability to make choices in deciding its path to progress and development. And such a path require one’s examing and reexaming - in the Marxist idea of thesis and anti-thesis - of these goals of development in relation to human beings relationship with Nature and their relationship to other beings. As Lane wrote about such a “humanist radicalism”, in the Naga thought:
<em>The goal of the Naga society is the productive relationship between man and man, and between man and nature. The farmer “who greet mother earth” and “take the benefits given”, but then, in accordance with the way of nature (jalan alam), protect the earth in turn, symbolize this productive relationship.60
</em>
And in The Struggle, that thought represents Rendra’s anti-thesis to the prevailing thesis - of capitalist borgeoise ideology which dominates both the Indonesian elite and the masses. With this dialectical thinking then a synthesis could emerge which consequently would lead one to envision a better reality, rejecting one which is invented by those in power. Perhaps this dictum is best summarized by Abivara’s friend Carlos:
<em>People must awakened/ Witness must be given/ So that Life can guarded.61
</em>
CONCLUSION
Viewing Rendra’s The Struggle within a Marxist framework is not an exercise in intellectual speculation; it is a viable and accurate way to approach the playwright’s masterpiece. The remarkable similarity of Rendra’s mode of analysis, to such variation, in essentially Marxist critique of the capitalist mode of production and its mode of ideological manipulation - variations such as dependency theory as well as Frankfurt School-inspired ideologiekritik - must be attributed to particular phase in the poets’ life: the years of his interlude with Marxism.
Such a claim is not far-fetched nor one based on the desire to embed Rendra within an ideological mould. It is a claim to in fact ground the playwright within one of the ‘notches’ which has hitherto contributed to his rich and diverse intellectual base. Such a base too contributed to the wisdom of Rendra as a poet of the people who refuses to bow to elitist and static modes of thinking, especially that which is purveyed by international and native capitalist bourgeoise.
He is an artist who is not willing to let artistic conventions dictate his art; he thus deplores the role of literary critics in judging how his art should be. Rather, he lets the suffering of the masses and the easy livings of the elites dictate in what form his art would expose such contradictions. That commitment thus justifies his role as an artist - in the Sartrean sense - who has the right to use his art to mirror life.
And, as long as Rendra is alive to hold such a mirror, the hopes of those dreaming for an alternate reality would not be extinguished for, as Rendra believed,
<em>People must be awakened
Witness must be given
So that Life can be guarded62
</em>
NOTES
1. W.S. Rendra, The Struggle of the Naga Tribe, trans. and intr. Max Lane (New York: St. Martins Press, 1979), p. 5.
2. Ibid. p. xxv.
3. Ibid. p. xvii.
4. Ibid. p. 3.
5. Perhaps Max Lane’s introduction and commentary of the play represent a single major analysis of Rendra’s work.
6. A. Teeuw, Modern Indonesian Literature II, 2 vols., (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979) p. 113.
7. Ihid., p. 97.
8. Ibid., p. 111.
9. C.K. Wilber and Kenneth P. Jameson, “Paradigms of Economic Development and Beyond”, in C.K. Wilber ed. Political Economy of Development and Under Development 3d. ed (New York: Random House, 1984) p. 13.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid., p. 14.
12. See for example: Paul Baron, “On the Political Economy of Backwardness”. Andre Gunder Frank, “The Development of Underdevelopment”, Bill Warren, “The postwar Economic Experiences of the Third World”, in Ibid.
13. Rendra, The Struggle, p. xxv.
14. See Rendra, “Proses Kreatif Saya”, in Dewan Kesenian Jakarta. Dua Puluh Sastrawan Bicara. (Jakarta: Sinar Harapan, 1984), p. 34.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Rendra, The Struggle, p. xxxiii.
18. Ibid.
19. Wilber and Jameson, “Paradigms of Economic Development and Beyond”, in C.K. Wilber ed. The Political Economy. p.17.
20. Dewan Kesenian Jakarta, Sastrawan, p.34.
21. Ibid.
22. See Dani N. Toba, Hamba-Hamba Kebudayaan, (Jakarta: Sinar Harapan, 1984), pp. 110-119.
23. Ibid., p. 34.
24. Ibid., p. 36.
25. Ibid., p. 37.
26. Ibid.
27. Jean Paul Sartre, Between Existentialism and Marxism, (New York: Panthean Books), p. 14.
28. Ibid., p. 284.
29. Ibid.
30. Eric Bredo and Walter Feinberg, Knowledge and Values in Social and Educational Research (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982), p. 271.
31. Raymond Guess, The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermans and the Frankfurt School. (London: Cambridge University Press, 1981). p. 26.
32. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, (New York: Continuum, 1986).
33. Bredo and Feinberg, Knowledge and Values, p. 279.
34. Dudley Dillard, “Capitalism”, in Wilber ed. The Political Economy, p. 83.
35. Rendra, The Struggle, p. 5.
36. Ibid., p. 6.
37. Ibid., pp. 6-7.
38. Ibid. p. 7.
39. See Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles, The Communist Manifesto, Samuel H. Beer (North Brook, Illinois: Att ed. M Publishing Corporation, 1955) pp. 88-89.
40. See for example Immanuel Wallerstein, The Capitalist World Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).
41. Richard Barnet and Ronald E. Muller, Global Reach: The Power of the Multinational Corporations, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974).
42. See Paul Baran, The Political Economy of Growth (Harmondsworth: , 1973) p. 133.
43. Rendra, The Struggle, p. 25.
44. Ibid, p. 7.
45. Ibid., pp. 2-2.
46. Ibid., pp. 27-28.
47. Ibid., p. 5.
48. Ibid., p. 22 For discussion on inappropriate technology, see for example, Dennis Goulet, The Cruel Choice, (New York: Anteneum, 1971).
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid., p. 42.
51. Ibid., pp. 42-43.
52. Ibid., p. 43.
53. Ibid.
54. Ibid., p. 67.
55. Ibid., p. 21.
56. Ibid.
57. Ibid., p. 66.
58. Freire, Pedagogy, p. 33.
59. Ibid.
60. Rendra, The Struggle, p. xxvii.
61. Ibid., p. 69.
62. Ibid.Dr. AZLY RAHMANhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07437908281114330911noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11166677.post-1131846749073623372005-11-12T17:50:00.000-08:002006-02-05T19:51:35.543-08:0031] Deconstructing Ralph Tyler's Curriculum Ideology<strong><span style="color:#3366ff;">ON THE DECONSTRUCTION OF RALPH TYLER’S BASIC CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION</span></strong>
by: AZLY RAHMAN
Ralph Tyler’s work Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction must be understood within its milieu; a time wherein schooling in America is at its stabilizing “cruise gear” in response to the demands of the Industrial Revolution. The ideology of schooling as a mass babysitting enterprise to produce good workers for the then emerging corporate America of Ford, Chrysler, Exxon, Texaco and the merge of enterprises within the democracy of the military industrial complex is seemingly in natural obedience with the scientific management ideology of Frederick Taylor. The cult of efficiency was beginning to be dominant embodying the tune of Walt Rostow’s economic ideology of The Five Stages of Growth; of which the nation was at its post take-off stage.
Tyler’s seemingly Deweyian approach if one is to read it superficially nonetheless has its fundamental flow in the assumption if we analyze it within the critical theory perspective; of which the work of The Frankfurt School was then beginning the be developed at the same time scientific management was.
First, the assumption that the body of knowledge to be passed through the disciplines within the Tylerian curriculum context, presumed its neutrality. Knowledge is never neutral; it is preconditioned by its philosophy and politics and produced by those who owns the means of production. They take the name “facts” and in some instance, oxymoronically passed down as historical facts.
Second, the Tylerian curriculum presumes that the learner can be “banked” of the facts for them are merely tabula rasas to be disciplined and socially reproduced in an input-output condition within the structural functionalist point of view. The controversy the radical humanistic view of the existentialists or Marxist humanists who believe that learner can be conceived as critical beings who can see experiences dialectically and who are in the process of “being and becoming”.
Third, the locus of control in the Tylerian tradition lies in the state and delegated to Committee members so that curriculum interpretation is held at the minimum and state ideology is disseminated top-down. Culture is to be reproduced as industry; culture of science and industry, Hellenistic tradition, the bourgeoisie interpretation of American history and the attitudes of the mythical Horatio Alger and the utilitarian view of democracy.
Conflict paradigm and Habermasian ideologiekritik if applied to the analysis of this locus of control should reveal the “constituted human interest” and “supremacy of the cult of efficiency” in the intent of the curriculum within the human capital mould.
Fourth, teachers are given some freedom in getting involved in implementing curriculum through the freedom of Committees overseen by “experts”. They are then merely functional or instrumental intellectual and agents of social reproduction for the military-industrial complex supporting the hegemony of the dominant (very) few.
There is no room to develop as “committed” intellectuals in the Gramscian sense or to become mediators and communicators of the contradictions of the ideology of capitalist formation then. Teaching was not, in the Tylerian milieu, to become a subversive act; it merely is a functionalist and status quo maintaining profession.
Last but not least, Tyler’s curriculum is linear, one-dimensional, logically arranged and excessively frameworked. In this modern world wherein kaleidoscopic, holistic, autogenic and metaphoric approaches to looking at knowledge and information is the emerging norm, the Tylerian view is no longer adequate.
Our milieu and that of Tyler is radically different in many ways. Half a century has brought advancements in virtually all known human disciplines with information exploding every second. The view that Human Beings preside and have control over nature, that History is “his story, that the mind is a chemical – biological construct functioning along stimulus-response principles, that “grand narrative” reign over subaltern voices, and that education must be conceived as an input-output process of mass-industrial socialization by the state (“the state as a necessary evil”) – all these are beginning to wither. We are entering another ideological construct wherein reality is constantly being invented and reinvented, wherein the distinction between the Surreal and the Real blurs and is changing our fundamental concept of what curriculum is, why should it be arranged as such, how can its alternative organization be and towards what ends should it serve.
With reference to the five criticisms of the Tylerian concept of curriculum, it must be summarized that first, we act on imperfect knowledge and no one possesses the truth and all knowledge is propaganda and “knowledge”, “information” and truth are three distinct entities; second, the learner is an existential being who possess socially-constructed knowledge personalistic in nature and any attempt to bank and deposit concepts may alter the natural growth of his existential-ness.
He/she is born free and ought to remain so; third, our milieu demands us to decentralize and disintegrate the locus of control in order for us to answer the question who should govern and why should we be governed (by curriculum as authority); fourth; teachers are existential beings who help give birth to learning and in the process become learners themselves attempting to subjectivize objectivities; and fifth, the human mind is complex and its capacity to know is much bigger than the physical universe it occupies.
Our role is to deconstruct the meaning of work and phrases in Tyler’s writing. They are “no longer his”. They are “now ours” as we personalistically should give ourselves the freedom not to reinterpret what Tyler has prescribed. The once Tylerian view must then be scrutinized, broken apart, and examined from a variety of lens powerful enough to give one own meaning to what basic principles of curriculum and instruction means.
Perhaps this would be a first step in our understanding of the differences between “facts”, “information, “knowledge” and “truth” so that through our understanding of what curriculum means, one may be able to differentiate what “schooling”, “training”, “educating”, and “liberation” means. The atomistic and mechanistic view of these concepts as well as the Tylerian notion of curriculum must then be deconstructed.Dr. AZLY RAHMANhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07437908281114330911noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11166677.post-1131846582843251262005-11-12T17:47:00.000-08:002006-01-28T20:32:50.086-08:0030] A Postmodern Reading of Dewey<strong><span style="color:#3366ff;">ON DOING A POSTMODERN READING OF DEWEY’S EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE</span>
</strong>
by AZLY RAHMAN
One of the most challenging exercises in analysis and reflection of and upon a monumental educational philosophical text such as John Dewey’s Education and Experience is to look at what education means within the contemporary perspective of post modernism which forces one to look at issues such as freedom, intelligence, knowledge, power, class, control ideology, and human destiny.
The challenge comes from allying with Dewey’s “process philosophy” paradigm which attempts to mediate cultural continuity and futurism on the one hand and to deconstruct entirely the meaning of education on the other so that process philosophy may no longer become tenable in this era of “change, complexity, competition and chaos.” It is to be remembered that Deweyian “pragmatism” is an evolution of the idea championed by William James and Charles Sanders Pierce and essentially American in character as opposed to the transcendentalism of the European and Continental philosophy of Immanuel Kant, Hegel and the like which has different perspectives on what education should be like.
The great debate between Dewey and Leon Trotsky in Their Morality and Ours, an ideological documentation of the Mexico trial in the 1930s perhaps illustrate the contending viewpoint of how democracy can be conceived and correlated to education within the context of political socialization and citizenship education.
In Experience and Education John Dewey argued that education is not a “banking concept” of the transfer of knowledge solely for cultural continuity nor it is a process of “experiencing” without clear and goal-oriented organization; that schooling is a process of producing “good citizens” and not merely “good workers” who would live by participatory rather than protectionist democratic principles; that in order to achieve the level of “freedom with responsibility”, schooling must be organized along the lines of experiential learning which are educative and promotes “growth” with the criteria of experience specifically geared towards generating more “child-centered” learning so that knowledge and learning can continue to progress in a scientific mode.
Educational philosophy, thus for Dewey is not a question of Either/Or between so-called traditional and progressive philosophies, but essentially of democratic living, and being and becoming which should be translated within the domain of cultural continuity and scientific rationality.
The participatory ideal in Dewey’s concept of democracy, at least in this post modernity of corporate America is problematic to be accepted. Dewey’s concept of knowledge did not analyze its politics and philosophy, the question of who owns knowledge; his idea of scientific nationalism in educational thought masks the direction science is taking us in this modern era plagued with the question of control in Computer Revolution; the source of “experience” of the individual in school may fail the scrutiny of the epistemology, ontology and axiology of it in this age of alienation, Simulacra and technophilia and hyper-reality; the question of freedom is devoid of distinction between “freedom” and “liberation” as proposed by liberation theologists such as Gustavo Guttierez and Denis Goulet and many a transcendental and postmodern philosophical thinkers such as Martin Buber, Radhakrishnan, and Jacques Derrida and those in one way or another championing deconstructionism in our conception of human nature and human freedom.
And last but not least, the concept of producing “good citizens” through schooling will fail to look at the issue of global capitalism as a tightly-knit system of systematic mental and ideological oppression masked under the shibboleth of free trade and liberalism. In short, Dewey’s democracy is democracy for the many the Deconstructivist Age democracy of our times is for the few evolvingly creating, in the sense talked about by Herbert Marcuse, “one-dimensional human beings” unable to perceive the contradictions he/she is in.
What can possibly be an agenda in the reconstructing of Dewey’s philosophy; in the noble ideals he attempts to mediate in the Essentialist and Progressivist traditions?
It can be argued that there are indeed standards of post modernity in Dewey’s Experience and Education and this perspective can be illustrated from Maxine Greene’s writing particularly in The Dialectic of Freedom wherein Dewey lamented upon education, schooling and learning being preyed upon by the cult of creating mass consumers of which the most obvious benefactors would be the financiers, the bankers and corporate capitalists in general.
Dewey’s participatory democratic ideals can be explored to its existential libertarian limit and in fact can also move towards creative anarchism. How would educators committed to the dismantling of protectionist, Republican-Democrat type of “mass deceptive” democracy extend the Deweyian dialogue into the spheres of millennial issues such as alienation, environmental degradation, structural violence, one-dimensionality in thinking, and analysis of the pervasive British inspired oligarchic monopoly capitalism which has pervaded American economy since Hamilton and Jefferson days, much to the opposition of the ideals of the American revolution which had chartered an egalitarian brand of American political economy?
How do we make dominant the people’s history of the United States – of the struggle of the common people marginalized by crypto-crony corporate capitalism? How do we bring in dialogues brought about by Thomas Paine, Norman Thomas, the IWW and Noam Chomsky in the teacher education so that the growth of America can carry the banner of international and economic, social and political justice alongside with youths of other nations which must also be radicalized into dismantling international capitalism.
If schools can be (and loved to be) blamed for all the ills of today, can we teachers use this avenue to turn the tide and channel our energy into one powerful international social movement? How then must we teach? must be the quintessential question. Herein lies the possibility in a postmodern reading and praxis of Dewey’s ideas circa Millenium.Dr. AZLY RAHMANhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07437908281114330911noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11166677.post-1131846384621356502005-11-12T17:44:00.000-08:002006-01-28T20:31:08.886-08:0029] On Thinking Like Maxine Greene<strong><span style="color:#3366ff;">ON THINKING LIKE MAXINE</span></strong>
by Azly Rahman
“… since a Maxine Greene has existed, more should be created” were the words which were crafted in my mind as I was walking home after listening to the existential phenomenologist’s narrative of the Self, curriculum, schooling, and what the possibilities in education should be.
Maxine Greene’s idea of the mind as “verb” rather than a “noun” captured my imagination in analyzing what mass deception can potentially do to creative young minds schooled in a capitalist, totalitarian, or a mixture-of-both state. “A mind is a terrible thing to waste” would be an appropriate juxtapository statement to Professor Greene’s maxim.
It frames the question of the role of schooling as a mass babysitting state-sponsored enterprise which pegs thinking and human beings, mould them, and invent their realities into believing that the modern state is a moralistic and democratic institution to be abidingly served in the name of “national interest”. I think much of what is said by Professor Greene has given me the added fuel to go more miles ahead in exploring the terrain of the more radical humanistic philosophies such as radical humanism and creative anarchism; the latter a much misunderstood perspective of the Self in the relation to the State.
Several points made by Professor Greene have helped me link existentialism with the meaning of teaching. First, the idea that the “self doesn’t exist but created in the course of action” and second, “individuals become persons because of other persons and culture”. These two can be interpreted by the notion of the evolving creative self in dialogue with others and with experience to create a community of learners closer to humanity than to forms of ideological domination and mental constructs which limit the meaning of freedom.
I find these transcendentalizingly refreshing notions which are Deweyian, Vygotskian, and Freirian in essence. The notion of dialogue in Greene’s narrative is similar to Dewey’s idea of “democracy to be lived for”, to Vygotsky’s “learning as a social cognitive enterprise based upon collaboration culturally meaningful”, and Freire’s “conscientization and the subjectivizing of the objective so that the power of the word can be realized”. Greene talked about life as the activity of “naming things and after doing so change them”. “To name the world and to change it”, as she puts it.
I would extend Greene’s notion of existential phenomenology with the idea that the Self is in “trialogue”, i.e. in constant dialogue with the Surreal, and the Supreme Spirit; that the “I” in us powers Technology in the presence of the Inner Conscience so that what the I creates (technological tools, ideology, institutions, and ideas for social change) is imbued with a deep sense of moral conviction and reflectivity which constitute ethical behavior. The Creative Self is hence existing within Creativity in the Moral domain. What is the use of one being schooled if in the long run is agenda is to be engineered as beings who would create and propagate structures of oppression such as militarism, structural violence, state-sponsored terrorism, engines of mass destruction, and instruments of the perpetuation of Space Age imperialism?
I believe Greene’s idea of teaching for understanding, much popularized by Howard Gardner these days, points to such a notion of developing the trialogical self through a curriculum which brings meaning and creates authenticity in learning and promotes inclusionary practice. Her idea of freedom as also mentioned in her Dialectic of Freedom must begin with the developing of the holistic self through the arts, for, human beings themselves are a metaphor of the humanism governing life and living which is in constant threat of technologism we too, ironically, has created.
We live perhaps in an Orwellian society wherein realities are invented and packaged out of an industrialized culture and schooling has become a powerful instrument of social reproduction rationalized in the language of utilitarianism, technological determinism and liberalism. With apologies to Albert Camus, “one must imagine our human race happy, as we roll the rock up the hill of mass deception” after having been condemned by the God of Economic Productivity or the Goddess of Surplus and Plenty! In the words of Roger Waters of the British rock group Pink Floyd, “… all and all we’re just another brick in the wall”.
But however captivating Greene’s idea of human freedom within the context of existentialism is, she left me with some perplexing questions: Is freedom merely a means to and end? If it is a process, from what should one be free from? Is death the end of freedom or the beginning of one? We live in a world of wants and needs and of constructs – race, ethnicity, ideology, biological, political etc. – and what is the condition like to be free whilst at the same time still “be in this world”?
We are biologically constructed and by virtue of such a construction, can our mind be a “verb” without being conscious of the desires of the flesh we are encapsulated in? i.e. the “noun” we live in? and by claiming one to be an existential phenomenologist, can one also claim to be ideologically free from domination?
I reflect upon a “goodbye phrase” written be my advisor at Ohio, George Wood who cautioned me of becoming an ideologue (Marxist humanist presumably) when he wrote: (to the effect) “be closer to the people and to the self rather that to ideals for Marxism, existentialism, and anarchism are themselves constructs; they condition one to become an ideologue” For ten years hence, I have reflected upon these words and attempt to capture the essence of what education and teaching means within world wherein the only permanent thing is change!
To recap this reflective notes, I would say that Maxine Greene has provided us with an example of an intellectual commitment for dialogue within the world we call education, within the context of contending paradigms of the what schooling should mean and how curriculum should become. This dialogue must be continued so that we may then, as teachers become closer to becoming a “verb” than continue to exist as “nouns” unaware of what “adjectives” are used to describe us or how we use them to describe ourselves.Dr. AZLY RAHMANhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07437908281114330911noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11166677.post-1131846230410025762005-11-12T17:42:00.000-08:002006-01-28T20:29:59.100-08:0028] Curriculum and Postmodernism<strong>ON CURRERE: CONTEXT, COMPLEXITY, AND CHAOS IN ITS CONCEPTUALIZATION
</strong>
by AZLY ABDUL RAHMAN
Rather than take the position of encapsulating the authors’ viewpoints in Perrenialist,
Essentialists, Progressivist, Postmodernist, or Multicultural moulds, I reflect upon the unity in themes and speculate on their differences in these brief reflection notes. We first look at the authors’ varying claims. Dewey (Ch. 7) sees the importance of a progressive organization of subject matter; Taylor (Introduction and Ch. 5) instructed readers to organize themselves into communities to look at how students’ experience can be enriched; Connelly and Clandinin (pp. Ix-10) implicitly asked us to organize our way of perceiving curriculum so that it become metacognitive, metaphorical, and mass-dominated (as opposed to elitist-dominated); Campbell (Ch.12) sees multiculturalism as a potential avenue to organize our educational philosophical obligations for a society demanding such changes; and finally Slattery (Ch.3) invites us to organize our thoughts amidst the chaos and complexity of our postmodern condition. In short, “organize” and its variant “organization” is the key terms, which unite the viewpoints.
Like it was once said that “All roads lead to Rome”, the pedagogical pathways championed by the authors attempt to suggest ways the human experience can be objectified so that he/she may understand “reality out there” through the organized educational process called “schooling”. In this process the currere is conceived as a racecourse in which thoroughbreds have presumably been prepared to “race” with each other in the game called life in a race called “human race”.
Tyler seemed to echo Dewey in his tone of writing about progressive organization of subject matter. Like Dewey he denounced the exaggerated distinction between Essentialism and Progressivism in educational philosophical demarcations. Tyler in fact took a neutral stand in introducing other perspectives such as Social Reconstructionism, Perennialism, and Romanticism. Like Dewey however, he insisted and instructed upon orderliness in the presenting of subject matter, much in the logical-positivist paradigm and called for a cooperative and empowering effort by the school decision-making members to “attack” curriculum that has been passed down from cultural tradition so that it may be enriched to the desirable ends befitting students’ interests. In Dewey and Taylor we find the absence of discussions on the complexity of reality and knowledge source and multi-facetness of learner behavior. In the Tylerian and Deweyian worldview of curriculum, a body of knowledge is already present and agreed upon for the sustenance of society and for scientific, social, cultural, economic, and political reproduction; -- the question lies only in how they are to be contextualized, organized, enriched, and transmitted to the living and partial “tabula rasas” almost most oftentimes housed within four walls called classroom, so that education may take its meaning. Status quo is to be maintained and “denying the past and historical tradition” (whatever history means and according to and for whom it is written) is never an issue.
Perhaps Tyler and Dewey were entirely relevant at the time, in the Roosevelt Era of
The New Deal, whence United States was in the full force of industrialization with the
Scientific Management of Frederick Taylor the main philosophy to drive America’s
engine of growth. Perhaps Dewey was necessary as a powerful mediator between the
tension inherent in the industrial-capitalist ideology and the anarcho-syndicalist
Labor movement ideology, which was threatening the nation into Depression. Had not
Roosevelt brought America to World War 2 after Russian had lost 20 million of its
people, the country would have fallen into internal chaos. Thus, education as an
enterprise for human capital and social reproduction needed philosophers to articulate
the demands of such an age of chaos and complexity. It is no different in the late
1990s with ideas such as Total Quality Schools, the Accountability, and “Back to
Basics” movements inherent, and well illustrated in documents such as those which appeared during the Sputnik era, and in Ronald Reagan’s A Nation at Risk, and in contemporary suggestions for educational visioning such as America 2000: Developing America’s Talents.
And if the unity in theme in the authors’ expose of what currere in education is, is in the idea of “organize” and the “organization of experiences” to be subjectivized and objectified in the process of schooling through the use of curriculum, the breaking away of the themes lies in the question of experience itself. Slattery, Connelly& Clandinin, and Campbell, writing to a degree or another within the postmodern tradition extended the Tyler-Dewey notion of the debate on how experience should be organized. For the postmodernist writers, the question of ideology, power, class, race, ethnicity, and gender are brought into play when describing the politics and philosophy of knowledge as well as the nature of “lived experience.
The postmodernist view is attractive as it relates to the contemporary world; a world of experience described in terminologies such as “reflectivity”, “subalterns”, meta-narratives” gaia consciousness” “androgyny”, “voices” and others postmodern in character. How do we conceptualize curriculum in this age of chaos and complexity?
In this age of hyper-reality and cyber-communities, questions of further redefining “schooling”, “training”, “educating”, and “experiencing” seem all the more pressing. As they are, “to be schooled”, “to be trained” “to be educated”, “to be experiencing” – all these carry differing epistemological and axiological connotations. They force us to bring in Dewey, Kandel, Kilpatrick, Carnoy, Bowles and Gintis, Leonard, Counts,Friere, Derrida, Rorty and a range of others into the educational philosophical debate in determining what the destiny of the human race would be in his/her existence as “beings” subjected to “schooling” via the “employing of curriculum” in his/her travelling in the pathway to become authentic, thinking, feeling, and philosophizing beings in this challenging age of Simulacra, Techno-surrealism, mass consumption --- in a postmodern “throw-away” society.Dr. AZLY RAHMANhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07437908281114330911noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11166677.post-1131846094556362002005-11-12T17:38:00.000-08:002006-01-28T20:29:02.083-08:0027] Curriculum Theory and Postmodern Tools<strong>ON CONELLY AND CLANDIN’S POSTMODERNIST TOOLS
FOR CURRICULUM PLANNING</strong>
<p><strong>by Azly Rahman</p></strong>
Conelly and Clandin’s Teachers as Curriculum Planners provides perspectives which are not entirely new to teachers involved in Whole Language approach to teaching. Tools such as journal writing, biography, picturing, and document analysis are among those which have been in use in Language Arts in addition to a range of other tools in the domain of creative movement, reading, writing, media, and speaking which are personalistic in nature. Conelly and Clandin essentially tried to contextualize the principles and strategies within the field of emerging curricular practice partially using the rhetoric of postmodernism. Refreshing perhaps is the authors’ Gestalt and transcendental analytic approach to curriculum planning they called “rediscovering of curricular meaning” framed to include the learner, teacher, subject matter and milieu. Whilst William Pinar’s seminal work in the 1970s on reconceptualizing of the curriculum has given us the paradigm shift upon which curriculum is to be made more personalized and whilst William Slattery’s Curriculum Development in the Postmodern Era provide the rationale why curriculum need to be looked at from the postmodern context, Conelly and Clandinin’s work detailed the nature of involvement which can be undertaken by the actors ready to re-engineer the curriculum; from the board of directors to the child in the classroom.
The strength of the work lies in the comprehensive range of suggestions on how to create an inclusionary and meaningful approach to such a rediscovering which in turn would scaffold learners’ construction of knowledge. It is thus constructivistic in approach permeating all levels – from administrators to learners. I find the idea relevant to our realization of the terms “situated cognition” wherein teachers are also required to define their philosophy and exercise reflective ability so that they and the learners are together subjectivity knowledge; echoing the Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran’s idea that “your children are not yours… they come out of you but not of you” and “…children are like arrows of which you are the bow which launch them” and in Socrates’ idea of the innateness of knowledge in the human being. Teachers, in this postmodernist context are ones who live in a shared milieu but do not necessarily claim monopoly to knowledge, for in Arthur C. Clarke’s words, “the future is a different world… they do things differently” and for learners, we are preparing them for a future which in fact is a present consisting of a archived past. Through apprenticeship and guided participation, learners appropriate knowledge, skill and understanding of “situations”, via scaffolds erected by teachers, learning then becomes situated, dynamic, and transformative.
Reading the underlying assumptions of Conelly and Clandin’s work, I could sense a strong undercurrent of complexity and chaos theory, anti-foundationalism, subaltern narratives, reflexivity, and futurism as strands. If I could envision the aftermath of a many decades of mass deployment of Conelly and Clandinin’s strategies in all schools, something as such below would develop:
State-mandated curriculum would be transformed in character; from a “rock logic” to “water logic” nature in which fluidity in growth and shifting grounds in its parameters will be the feature. Within the disciplines, knowledge will be organic, mutative, and morphic, much more than interdisciplined. An analogy of this organic-mutative-morphic nature of knowledge construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction (the “Brahma-Shiva-Vishnu” nature of things in Hindu philosophy) would be the three-dimensional pattern created out of the Artificial Intelligence – generated patterns derived out of mathematical equations as in the Mandelbrott set manifested within the paradigm of Chaos and Complexity theories. The water logic transformation as such can give birth to Kuhnian paradigm shifts which would be characteristic of integrative, comprehensive, and complex systems based upon the principles of “perpetual transitions”.
Since state-mandated curriculum legitimizes the state and hegemonizes over the minds of those schooled (echoing the claims of Theodore Adorno and Antonio Gramsci), decades of “water logic” transformation of bodies of knowledge (especially in the area of “soft ideological sciences” such as social studies and history) can wither the state an pave way for its dissolution, echoing Thomas Kuhn’s idea that paradigms will shift when contradictions can no longer be contained, just as capitalism within a particular nation can no longer carry its own weight and therefore had to transform into imperialism. Such a dissolution and consequently withering away of the postmodern state can then set the stage for peaceful revolutions which can give rise to the leadership of the techo-mystics as such as much dreamed of by Socrates and Plato who saw the beauty of the republic governed by philosopher kings. Perhaps the nature of world politics will change if the most powerful nations on the face of our Spaceship Earth are governed by techno-mystics who will then spread the message of goodwill through the use of technology towards moral ends and through the sharing of creative products in altruistic ways. Wouldn’t there be beauty in looking at a perfect world, one which would be ruled by those who have understood the maxim “I wept when I had no shoes until I saw a man with no feet”?
Since the managers of virtue (curriculum implementers, principals, teachers, curriculum committees,) will become decentered and “empowered by being disempowered” by the postmodern possibility of personalistic interpretation of knowledge constructs as well as freedom for the individual to make his/her history to demystify power an to deconstruct invented realities – all these can help create a positive atomization of society as critical, creative, and futuristic, and life-long learning organic entity. Everyone can then find their own meaning to living and truth within themselves and achieve wisdom in their own lifetime. The “McDonaldized” idea of “state-legitimated schooling for economic development and social advancement “ can be transformed into the notion of learning as living and living as learning “ with the “truth always out there, within, and everywhere” Perhaps the notion of “TRUST NO IDEOLOGY” (with the greatest apologies to The makers of X-Files!) can be the dominant idea of the age.
Such comments above thus reflect the link between the ideas proposed in Conelley and Clandinin’s work and the possibilities which can emerge if we look at these from a speculative philosophical and futuristic perspectives. I have provided a scenario based upon the principles of futurism (trend analysis/scenario-building) of which ideas when extrapolated as such can perhaps predict changes. Just as the postmodern perspective can provide us with tools to critically analyze modernity and modernism, Connelly’s and Clandinin’s suggestions which are postmodern in character can provide educators with the means to build scenarios of living, learning, and creating which must be made more and more humane. The idea of growth then, can be looked at not necessarily as one spiraling upwards and acquiring more and materials in the process but to grow would then mean, to live, to simply live, and to continually ask the ontological, epistemological, and axiological questions of living. In short, to reflect upon Kung Fu Tze; we may then continue to live with questions and to ask ones which are simple. For, aren’t the simplest questions the most profound?Dr. AZLY RAHMANhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07437908281114330911noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11166677.post-1131845859669663492005-11-12T17:35:00.000-08:002006-01-01T09:13:25.493-08:0026] Curriculum and Mass Schooling in America<strong><span style="color:#3366ff;">ON THE HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF MASS SCHOOLING IN AMERICA: NOTES ON KLEIBARD AND COLLIN’S PERSPECTIVE</span>
</strong>
by Azly Rahman
Columbia University, New York
Reading, comparing, and reflecting upon Kleibard’s ( 1995) and Collin’s (1979) account of the beginning of mass schooling as a State-sponsored enterprise in America, I discern the oppositional paradgmatic stand taken by the authors entailing me to question the discourse, ontology, and epistemology inherent in the words “struggle”, “history”, and “rise”.
Like the Hindu myth of Ramayana and Mahabharatta in which the struggle is those of Gods and demigods, and of Kings good and evil, over control of cosmic property and dissemination of metaphysical ideology, Kleibard’s account of describing the “Other” (i.e., those schooled and curriculum-ed) hovers within the realm of “figures” floodlighting their educational-ideological figurines on what constitute the best ideological mould to school and construct human beings in.
Thus, I sense the historical account reflecting the battle of concepts, community of scholars, and constructs. Kleibard’s interesting and linearly progressed treatment of the battle of Whites, Anglo-Saxon Protestant men with their own agenda to push under the banner of movements such as “humanists”, “developmentalists”, “social meliorists”, etc. is constructed within the conceivably well-documented historical-ideological framework. I find it tempting to believe that such a struggle actually exists as perhaps, Kleibards’s rendering of mass schooling can easily be inter-textually juxtaposed with similar accounts of such ideologically-frameworked demarcations I can find in many a mainstream liberal and neo-liberal body of literature on curriculum theorizing written in the Fernand Braudel Annales-like school of thought. How does Kleibard’s account differ then, with that of Collin’s?
Like the story of the struggle of the Parisians during the French Revolution of 1789 which overthrew King Louis Capet in which the “masses disposed their “representative of God on Earth” and the ideology of the “Sun King” reign with, Collin’s (1979) account can also be metaphored as such. His is about political-economic changes described from the point of view of waves of peoples as attempting to situate themselves or be situated in in the process of America’s mid- and late- stages of capitalist formation. Collin’s neo-Marxist interpretation (should this be a fair discursive label to put it in,) which ought to put Columbus Day celebration into the trash-can of future historizing, is about how superstructure (ideology) schooled people into the industrial and post-industrial ethos.
Unlike in Kleibard’s there is conceivably no movements nor “towering intellectual figures” propped onto center stage in the drama of the struggle for the American curriculum. Collin’s is about movement of people moved and removed in the conveyor belt of American industrial-capitalism. His account is neo-Marxist with emphasis on the ascendancy of material and cultural capital within the matrix of, borrowing Pierre Bourdieu’s terminology, “technocratic habitus”. It is about how individuals are made to participate in the rat race so that under the guise and shibboleth of technological progress, meritocracy, and social mobility, the capitalist machinery with its hidden agenda and invisible human agency can continue to reproduce people.
Whether one calls these accounts historical-functionalist or Marxist-humanist respectively, they remain as those, which attempt to describe the “Other”. Kleibard’s is good reading for mainstream middle-of-the-road educators whilst Collin’s is a welcoming breath of fresh air for post-Woodstock, survivors of the McCarthy era-type of educators for critical consciousness. These accounts are essentially and intentionally paradigmating, whose facts are grounded within their own historicity.
Must there be these two versions of history then? What is the real struggle? In what ways can a larger picture be constructed; one which looks at the discourse of curriculum historizing in a more complex fashion – like a Mandelbrott set, with the perspective of chaos and complexity theory and beyond the borders of America as a modern production house of multiple curriculum theories?Dr. AZLY RAHMANhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07437908281114330911noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11166677.post-1131845708707103712005-11-12T17:32:00.000-08:002006-01-01T09:11:35.606-08:0025] Education, Curriculum, and Colonial Subjugation<span style="color:#3366ff;"><strong>ON EDUCATION FOR COLONIAL SUBJUGATION: REFLECTIONS ON THE IDEA OF A GOOD TEACHER IN ANDERSON’S AND KLEIBARD’S CURRICULAR HISTORIZING</strong>
</span><p><strong>by Azly Rahman</strong></p><p><strong></strong>
Anderson (1998) narrates a poignant historical account of the education of Black teachers in the South between 1860-1935 chronicling particularly the inherent power relations embedded in the Tuskegee-Hampton model of industrial training. If, borrowing from the notion that teaching is a subversive act, Anatole France’s idea of teaching as the awakening of curious, young minds, and Gramscian notion of “organic intellectuality”, I conclude from the historical-materialistic perspective that the Black teacher is blatantly doomed to serve the interest of the imperialist—capitalist ruling class.
If there is a paradigm to situate such a dehumanizing conception of how a Black teacher should be educated, it is one which would relegate them into having the minimum basic education enough to help socially reproduce their people into menial –industrial laborers chained to the shop floor of the industrial capitalists or trained to be good servants in the mansions of powerful and wealthy white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants.
The Hampton-model and the curriculum cemented this colonizer-colonized ideal with its proponents’ faith in elevating the Blacks to yet another level of institutionalized slavery (Chapter 2). Even if there exist an apparent ideological “tug-of-war” between the camps of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois pertaining to the insistence for a liberal curriculum, the referees and the sponsors in these are strategically imperial-capitalist so-called “philanthropists”. I state the word “imperial” to also refer to the Hampton model being excitedly transferred to Liberia, Africa around that that time which must also be looked at historically as a phase in British-oligopolic-inspired, American-styled colonialism. </p><p>Such projects too happened in the case of the transfer of vocational education on the Philippines and in Latin American countries wherein American industrialists see the Third World as a huge and dirt cheap pool of labor not only to provide bread on the table of the industrialized nation-states but also the help speed up the production capacity of the then emerging automobile and canning industries.
Kleibard’s (1995) account of the ideal is about the struggle of white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant theorists in a “tug-of-war” on how best to groom America’s political-economic elite. His is about the search for the one best system of, among others, to train teachers to teach the masses to acquire good habits of the heart, mind, and body so that they can be socially reproduced to run the industrial-based economy. </p><p>Kleibard’s arm-chair styled of doing history his and “issue versus non-issue” treatment of what constitute a humanistic struggle for the teachers, did not give any account of the national and international dimension of capitalist formation and contradictions during the early and middle period of American rise to world industrialism.
The ideal of the Black teacher, in Kleibard’s account, is almost non-existent. His narratives revolve around which “towering figure” in which ideological camp goes to war aided by which individuals and institutions occupying power and authority and controlling the means of base and superstructural production. Absent is the perspective of the “people’s history of the United States” and particularly relevant to this discussion is the voice of teachers, be they Black, white, or in-between.
But aside the discussions above, a question remains: can these accounts still be categorized as attempts towards “Othering” in curriculum theorizing? Can it not be shameful of me to use a poststructural critique on historizing and my reflecting upon such a phase in history, as what is important is not to become apologists to what happened in history but rather, to discern beyond historicity the praxical judgement of it.</p>Dr. AZLY RAHMANhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07437908281114330911noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11166677.post-1131845309311809752005-11-12T17:23:00.000-08:002006-01-01T09:07:46.700-08:0024] Schooling and Technological Fantasy<strong><span style="color:#3366ff;">REDESIGNING SCHOOLING AND SOCIETY, REDEFINING ‘DEVELOPMENT’ IN THE AGE OF VIRTUAL REALITY: THE CASE OF MALAYSIA’S SMART SCHOOLS IN ITS MULTIMEDIA SUPER CORRIDOR
</span></strong>
<strong>by Azly Rahman
Columbia University, New York</strong>
<strong>Introduction
</strong>
When discussed within the context of aesthetics of technology and when brought deeper into the analysis of superstructural (ideological) underpinnings of transnational, pan-, and virtual capitalism, Malaysia’s grand design to ‘cybernate’ society and to wire up all of its 10,000 secondary schools situated within its even grander design of The Multimedia Super Corridor, represents an interesting case study and a text to be analyzed via the paradigm of Critical Theory through the means of discourse analysis on “development”.
In this brief analysis of the transfer of discourse on technological change and the heteroglossia surrounding it (see Bakhtin, 1984), I will first present a scenario of change – of how agents of technological change is playing its role in a world of fantasy reminiscent of Arthur C. Clarke’s statement that “… the future is a different world, they do things differently there…”, and proceed with a brief discourse analysis drawing from ideas proposed by Broughton (1984), Marcuse (1941), and Terkel (1997 ).
<strong>Malaysia’s MSC (Multimedia Super Corridor) Project
</strong>
The picture of change is, in the Baudrilliardian sense, a fascinating one. Malaysia, under the rule of its Prime Minister of 17-years, Mahathir Mohamad has of late embarked upon the creation of a cyber-society run from an administrative capital called CyberJaya within the techno-cultural context of so-called a “Multi-Media Super Corridor” (MSC). The MSC is a built on several hundred square kilometers of area in which “seven flagship applications” will be its feature.
It mimics California’s Silicon Valley and Singapore’s cybercity concepts among others of which Malaysia will be moved to a new paradigm of living based upon the “humane application of high technology” manifested in the sub concepts of electronic government, tele-medicine, electronic banking, electronic commerce, and pertinent to our analysis, the smart schools.
The biggest airport in Asia, the Kuala Lumpur International Airport was recently opened to facilitate the development of CyberJaya. From the “wired-up” capital city as the initial program of mega-structural change, the Malaysian government planned to create cyber-principalities out of the thirteen states constituting the federation.
It is envisioned that by the metaphorical year of 2020 the country will have achieved the status of a fully-industrialized nation able to compete with other advanced industrialized nations namely the United States of America, Europe, Japan and Singapore that such an advancement would however be based upon a strong foundation of religious and moral values.
Thus, through its “smart schools” of which the prototype will be operating on January 1, 1999, future generation of this nation will be able to fully and democratically participate in the Information Age. The country now has specialized universities among them moving towards the total implementation of the Internet as a mode of delivery. One that was recently established itself as the first “virtual university” in the country prides itself in its total absence of physical interaction between the student and the instructor.
<strong>Discourse Analysis</strong>
<strong>
</strong>Broughton (1984) summarizes the rhetoric of value-neutrality of technology, embedded in the discourse of technological change in that the semantics involved clusters of terms such as “necessary” “irreversible”, “unavoidable”, “travelling rapidly”, “total”, and “fait accompli” to describe the advent of the Computer Revolution. (p.2).
In the rhetoric of change embedded in the discourse concerning Malaysia’s Multimedia Super Corridor, one finds such cluster of words to be more developed, couched in even neutral and positively appealing terms, signifying the nation’s unbridled faith in quantum leaping into the era of cybernetics.
Words like “world class”, “world’s first”, “leading edge”, “high powered”, “top quality”, “bold initiative”, and other “magnificio”-resounding ones are employed in the discourse. Illustrative of the use of these is in the vision statement of the Multimedia Super Corridor; a blend of aesthetics of technology and the drive to be technologically competitive in a borderless world. In describing Cyberjaya (Malay for "Cyber City") the Prime Minister eulogizes:
</strong>
<em>Cyberjaya is envisaged to be the model multimedia haven for leading, innovative
multimedia companies from all over the world to spin a ‘web’ that will mutually enrich
all those involved with it. Especially created as the first MSC designated cybercity, it
enables world-class companies to take full advantage of the unique package Malaysia
offers to create an environment that is fully conducive towards exacerbating the</em>
<em>growth </em><em>of </em>information technology and multimedia industries. It offers a high capacity<em> global
and logistics infrastructure , backed by a ‘soft’ infrastructure, which includes financial
incentives and competitive telecoms tariffs, as well as a set of new cyberlaws that will
form a legal framework to facilitate the growth of electronic commerce. (p.1)
</em>
And his rhetoric on the importance of accepting the futuristic idea of the MSC is summed as such:
… <em>it will enable Malaysia to leapfrog into the Information Age.
The establishment of the Multimedia Super Corridor, of which Cyberjaya
is the nucleus, is an evolving step towards embracing the future. It’s
long-term objective is to catalyse the development of a highly competitive
cluster of Malaysia multimedia and IT companies that will eventually
become world class. (p.1)
</em>
And thus, Smart Schools (“wired” schools) is designed to become the means of social reproduction to live with the nation’s fantasy of becoming technologically aggressive and competitive and one in which the MSC will become, as the Prime Minister’s technocrats say “Malaysia’s gift to the world”.
The setting up of the Smart Schools within the Malaysian government’s project to establish Cyberjaya and Putrajaya as two of the world’s first intelligent cities, is a technological deterministic step towards further linking the nation to the world’s financial capital. And within the perspective of schools as a means of social, economic, political, cultural, and technological reproduction, Smart Schools are aimed at producing citizens able to function effectively in the Information Age.
<strong>Discourse on Malaysia’s Smart Schools</strong>
<strong></strong>
In early January of 1997, as a lecturer in Creativity, Thinking Skills, and Ethics, I was invited to represent the university I worked with to the first session of the unveiling of the idea of the smart school. The idea of the “wiring up” of the Malaysian schools can be summarized by a communiqué from the Ministry of Education (1997) which read:
By the year 2010, all approximately ten thousand schools will be Smart
Schools. In these schools, learning will be self-directed, individually-paced, continuous
and reflective. This will be made possible through the provision of multimedia technology
and worldwide networking. (p.1)
The plan for such a purposeful change was thus to utilize computer-mediated learning technologies particularly the Internet and World Wide Web so that the national agenda of creating a “cyber society” will be realized by a targeted metaphorical date of year 2020.
Echoing Sarason (1996) on the need to look at changes in the school system as derived from inside and outside of the schools (p.12), the case of the initiated “smart school” concept can be said to be derived not only out of “first order analysis, but particularly apparent and dominant out of “second order “ dictates – out of political-economic perception of what constitutes progress and how education must be made to respond to them. As the “smart school” concept relates to this second order changes, the Ministry of Education (1997) notes that:
<em>Malaysia needs to make the critical transition from an industrial economy to a leader
in the Information Age. In order to make this vision a reality, Malaysia needs to make
a fundamental shift towards a more technologically literate, thinking workforce, able to
perform in a global environment and use the tools available in the Information Age. To
make this shift, the education system must undergo a radical transformation (p.1)
</em>
The Minister of Education announced that the first Smart School is being built with a cost of Malaysian Ringgit 144.5 million of which, aside from it being “wired”, “will also be equipped with a hostel for 800 students, an Olympic-size swimming pool, a hockey pitch, a hall, and other facilities” (Business Times, 1996, p.3).
It is also said that the school will start operating in January 1999 and eventually all Malaysians will be operating based upon this concept. Within the rhetoric embedded in the discourse on Smart Schools, what is the issue in the larger context of the meaning of “development” for a nation mimicking advanced capitalist countries?
Whether the control of high technological production in the hands of the few in the techno-industrialized West and whether nations such as Malaysia plunging itself into this long term program of uncertainty and in the wheel of the international capitalist machine – all these are not issues in the educational and social reform.
The idea and implementation of such a controlled paradigm of “progress” and “development”, once institutionalized may carry consequences anathema to the idea of reform based upon the use of “available technology and appropriate resources” constructed within a paradigm celebrating grassroots, bottom-up, and humanistic initiatives with philosophies “closer to the people”.
In what way is Malaysia attempting to realize its fantasy of cybernating its society entire?
In realizing this dream, this post-colonial cybernating nation has invited a panel of advisors more impressive than those who sat on the advisory board of the National Council of Educational Excellence (NCEE) of the United States of America whose report “A Nation At Risk” evoked a national debate on the “rising tide of educational mediocrity”.
In the case of the Malaysia’s project those in the panel, among other are Chief Executive Officers/Presidents of the following corporations: Acer Incorporated, Alcatel Alsthom, Microsoft Corporation, Bechtel Group Incorporated, British Telecom, Cisco Systems, Compaq Computers Corporation, DHL, Ericsson, Fujitsu Limited, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Motorola Corporation, Netscape Communications, Reuters, Motion Picture Association of America, Twentieth Century Fox, and tens of others of global giants in the telematics and media-related industries. Professors of Business and Public Policy from Silicon Valley’s Stanford University are among those guiding the development of Malaysia’s cyber initiatives.
Malaysian subsidiaries of these giants in the world of multi-billion dollar club transnational corporations have been set up for such a project. The multi-billion dollar airport recently opened thus is an important infrastructure to help these companies land quickly and safely on the Multimedia Super Corridor. What do all the interlocking directorates and picture of controlling interest have got to do with the discourse on “development”?
<strong>Discourse on development: Further questions</strong>
<strong></strong>
The shibboleth of developmentalism embraced as discourse of technological progress by Independent nation-states quantum leaping into the Era of Informatics most often mask the ideology, power relations, and human agents involved in the production of the discourse itself.
Broughton’s (1984) notes of concern for the presumed neutrality of technological change, reminiscent of those of Norman Balabanian, Neil Postman, Ian Reinecke, and Jacques Ellul, can be extended to the analysis of rhetoric of Malaysia’s MSC and Smart Schools. Parallel to the government’s euphoria on how cybernetic technology can become a “habitus”, (as Bourdieu would term it), for its newer form of “guided democracy”, and how schooling will play its role in a cybernetic form of ideological state apparatus, is the neo-Marxist analysis of dependency.
As it concerns dependency, is the involvement of major Silicon Valley corporations signifying what Latin American dependendistas would call an era of Center-Periphery pan- and virtual capitalist formation, or in what Frederick Jameson would call, a cybernetic era of late capitalist formation?
Whilst Marcuse (1941) may see the progressive dimension in modern technology as it may shape social relations, in the case of cyberneting Malaysia, will the technological deterministic and hypist mentality embraced become yet another tool for social control and as a cybernetic extension of patriarchal “Big Brotherish” brand of Asian Machiavellian political machinery much needed to be dismantled?
And as it relates to learning, as Terkel (1997) put forth in her critique of computer-mediated learning technologies, will the rapid, massive, unavoidable, irreversible deployment of computers in all Malaysian schools bring schooling closer in meaning to education and liberation – or will it be another means to coerce Malaysian children to help realize and carry forth the agenda of computer hardware and software giants fighting their unending battle over global domination?
And finally, in relating to Bakhtin’s (1981) notion of heteroglossia, is the term “development via technological progress superficially analyzed by technocrats of the MSC such that much of the “pollutants” which has glossed over a more liberating meaning of the term, are taken ass aura itself? In other words, who defines what the meaning of technological progress mean and in what ways do that definition get embraced uncritically and contextualized and next be turned into policies in a megastructural scale as such as in the case of the MSC?
<strong>Conclusion</strong>
<strong></strong>
In this brief essay I have discovered more questions on the issue surrounding Malaysia’s technological fantasy. Paradigmed from the Critical Theory perspective in looking at power and ideology embedded in the transfer of discourse, I have used Malaysia’s strategic plan, the MSC as a text to be analyzed.
The contradictions inherent in the development of pan- and virtual capitalism (see also Kroker & Weinsten, 1998) is alluded to in the discussions on the tension between this nation-state’s wanting to be free from the economic label of “underdeveloped and developing” and to its potential leap into a more sophisticated world of globalism – that of virtual and post-post-industrial capitalism, beyond the classic Rostowian definition of “mass consumption” as the highest stage of capitalism. The contradictions and questions are worthy of further analysis guided by the essential questions “qui bono” and “what then must be done”?!
<strong>References</strong>
Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). “Discourse on the novel,” in The dialogical imagination: four essays. Holquist, M. ed. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press
Broughton, J. (1984). “The rhetoric of technological progress” TK 6628 Class notes. Unpublished.
Fullan, M. & Steigelbauer, S. (1991) The new meaning of educational change, 2d. Ed.. New York: Teachers College Press.
Kroker, A. & Weinstein, M. (1998) “The political economy of virtual reality: pan capitalism”. Available:http://www.ctheory.com/com/apolitical_economy.html.
Marcuse, H. (1941). “Some social implications of modern technology” in Studies in philosophy and social sciences, Vol. IX
Ministry of Education Malaysia Communique (1997) “Implementation of smart schools” Available: <a href="http://eprd.kpm.my/imp">http://eprd.kpm.my/imp</a> smart.html.
Ministry of Education Malaysia Communiqué (1997) “Smart schools in Malaysia: A quantum leap” Available: http://eprd.kpm.my/prosmart.html
Multimedia Development Corporation (1998) “Overview” in What is the MSC? Available: <a href="http://www.mdc.com.my/msc/index.html">http://www.mdc.com.my/msc/index.html</a>
Sarason, S.B. (1996). Revisiting the culture of school and the problem of change. New York: Teachers College Press
“Smart schools will start in January ’99: Najib,” Business Times, September 23, 1996. Available: <a href="http://www.cmsb.com.my/subsil/ubg/smart99.htm">http://www.cmsb.com.my/subsil/ubg/smart99.htm</a>
Terkel, S. (1997) “Seeing through computers: education in a culture of simulation” The American Prospect no. 31 (March-April 1997)Dr. AZLY RAHMANhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07437908281114330911noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11166677.post-1130524935752888632005-10-28T11:36:00.000-07:002006-01-01T09:03:42.430-08:0023] Colonial Education: French and American<span style="color:#3366ff;"><strong>COLONIAL EDUCATION: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
OF FRENCH AND AMERICAN SYSTEMS</strong>
</span>
by Azly Rahman
Columbia University, New York
In this brief essay which calls for an exposé of the descriptive, analytical, contrastive, and evaluative aspects of colonial education as a special case of educational transfer, French and American colonial education are chosen for this comparative analysis. Literature review pertaining to the French in Algeria and Vietnam and the American in Philippines and Japan and of colonialism in general will form the first part of this essay and a comparative aspect of both will follow, culminating in some reflective notes on what can be learned from the illustrations.
<strong>Literature Review
</strong>
Descriptions of the salient points of the ideological, administrative and policy- implementation aspects of French colonial education are particularly derived from Alf Andrew Heggoy’s (1984) “Colonial Education in Algeria: Assimilation and Reaction” and Kelly’s “Teachers and the Transmission of State Knowledge: A Case Study of Colonial Vietnam” in Altbach and Kelly (1984).
Heggoy (1984) wrote about the assimilationist/associationist policy of French colonial education in its occupation of Algeria from 1830 to 1962 in which the agenda was to make the colony one of the natios under a greater France as a “civilized entity”. Although Heggoy noted that the French were “unprepared” as a colonizer, a systematic program of “enlightenment alá French” was successfully carried out under the tutelage of the “soldier-administrators” to develop Algerians into a nation consisting of Franco-Algerians elitist in character and a larger segment of the population as French-speaking Algerians proletarian and marginalized in disposition.
In the process of creating such colonial plurality, an imposition of French language as a medium of instruction through the creation of French madaris was made, destroying the primarily Arabic and Quranic-based system of education already in existence before 1830. Although at the onset of colonization the Islamic court is allowed to continue functioning and Islam to persevere, French colonials systematically impose control of the schooling system though its imposition of French as a medium of instruction and through its structural assurance that teachers of the madaris and imams be retained to propagate the French language-policy ideology.
Whilst language becomes a powerful force for cultural “re-engineering” of the Algerians, the French “enlightenment” project via the assimilationist or associationist policy which “offered philosophies that sought to explain how a dominant European nation should sought to train its African subject”, the policy of creating a “dual-system” of elite-proletariat in character was administered through direct control by Governor Generals of which Inspectorates of Education fall under their jurisdiction.
This direct rule allows the colonists to execute agenda which would “civilize the Algerians into a natio with deep sense of French consciousness so that they would be able to then function in the modern world. The 132 years of domination carried out through a highly selective, evolvingly systematic planning ideologically based upon the idea of the superiority of the French, as Heggoy concluded, created a tragedy in the Algerian experience in that by 1962 when Algeria was released from the shackle of domination through a bloody war which killed 2 million people, French colonial education created a French-speaking elite who no longer belong to either culture, and an illiterate 90% of the Algerian masses (predominantly Arabs) who violently opposed the over-a-century French rule.
Whilst Heggoy’s (1984) essay focused on the macro analysis of French colonial education as it effects the 90% Arab-Algerians, Gail P. Kelley (1982) looked at the micro level how Vietnamese teachers, between 1918 to 1938 responded to the imposition of French assimilationist/associationist agenda between within the timeline of French colonialism which began in 1838. Kelly’s analysis looked specifically at issues such as curriculum content, knowledge transmission, textbook-use and interpretation, and how teachers as a “highly regarded but lowly-paid” members of the society act independently of the mandates “entrusted” to them by French-controlled Office of Public Instruction.
As in the case of Algerians, who had their Arabic-Quranic schools before colonization, the Vietnamese too had an indigenous system of education based on Sino-Vietnamese features. Beginning in 1916, a systematic Franconization of Vietnamese education began, orchestrated by the Office of Public Instruction which imposed a top-down curriculum which Vietnamese see as “a ‘cruel parody’ both on their traditions and aspirations”.
French values are imposed as superior to those of the natives and through a program of gradual introduction of French as a medium of instruction and the creating of Franco-Vietnamese schools which is neither French nor Sino-Vietnamese, the assimilationist/associasionist policy was, like the Algerian project, carried out to create ‘French-Indochinese’ subjugated and disempowered from thousands of miles away.
Textbooks written from the perspective of how the French wanted it to be, which stressed moral values though French eyes, became part of the curriculum which, as Kelley wrote “denoted instructional turn to hygiene, manual labor, mathematics and physical education – subjects totally alien to Sino-Vietnamese schools – but not necessarily to French schools’ (p.179). Textbooks in history took the imposed view that the French was there to end a Vietnamese past colored by “civil war, exploitation, starvation, strife, and foreign domination.” (p.182) To alter the consciousness of the Vietnamese into a subjugated existence as farmers and labors, the rural peoples’ pastoral life is glorified and their urban life is propagated as a portrait of decadence.
Thus, French consciousness as ideology was propagated, state-controlled school administration was instituted, and the policy of assimilation and association was orchestrated as agencies of socialization in the Vietnamese experience. Nonetheless, Kelly’s article primarily pointed out too that teachers as cultural mediators and protesters of French colonialism played a significant role in demystifying knowledge of French superiority by selectively transmitting state-legitimated knowledge which, in the end perhaps contributed to the Vietnamese psychological strength in her movement for liberation.
American colonial education, as will be illustrated in the Filipino and Japanese experience of it has the agenda of decentralizing, democratizing, and demilitarizing. Douglas Foley’s (1984) “Colonialism as schooling in the Philippines, 1898-1970” and Harry Wray’s (1991) “Change and Continuity in Modern Japanese Educational History: Allied Occupational Reforms Forty Years Later” illustrates the ideology, administration and practice of American colonial education.
Foley (1984) argued that the democratization and decentralization ideology of American colonial education, through its collaborative type of administration by educational professionals and through its policy of ensuring basic education on a massive scale cannot necessarily be looked at as progressive and humanistic but rather must be understood as part of the American agenda of making a “showcase of democracy” out of its colonies.
It is a project to integrate the colony into the then emerging global market centered at the headquarters of American industrial capitalism. Vocational education and its corollary -- community education -- is expanded and overexpanded so that a nation of citizens literate enough to be good producers for the American economy can be created with the collaboration of power-seeking Filipino elites. Filipinos were made to crave for credentials in a euphoria of democratization whilst the agenda for American colonials under the garb of the Progressive movement was to create a safe and sound enough social structure which would play the tune of American transnational capitalism.
Foley’s analysis, perhaps categorized as coming from a Marxist dependency perspective and drawn from a political-economic framework of analysis is excellent in its debunking of the oftenheld thesis that American Progressive education as a democratizing project is in fact pseudo-democratic in its goal of creating a long-term strategic supply of cheap pool of labor.
Wray (1991) in his analysis of the short-term allied occupation reform in Japan’s educational history looked at the collaborative aspect of American colonial educational professionals who worked with the Monbasho (The Japanese Ministry of Education). The American organ of colonial educational restructuring, the Division of the Civil Information and Education (CIE) Section in its attempt to decentralize and demilitarize Japan by attempting to dissolve the fundamentally hierarchy-based, meritocratic-emphasized and state-legitimated education system the Japanese, as a militaristic-chivalric nation has built over centuries.
The CIE introduced concepts such as mass-based schooling and relaxation on educational students, progressive curriculum reforms, compulsory 9-year schooling, teacher training and a range of other decentralizing and democratizing tools which are anti-thetical or in opposition to the practices of pre-colonial Japan.
Wray’s writing, set in a bias tone against all aspects of the progressive movement, concluded with the idea that most of the areas of structured reforms that are kept after the end of the brief occupation are those which were “close to the hearts of Monbasho’s officials”; those which are predictable of the Japanese character as compulsive borrower of ideas.
Drawing from Eric Carlton’s (1994) “Occupation: A Typology” to look at French and American colonial education ideology, administration and policy, I would argue that both empires to a certain degree practice assimilation. In many an analysis of colonialism it is said that the French are clearly assimilationist/associationists with its policy to make colonies French in language, culture and thinking which at the same time having a political economic agenda of exploiting the resources of its colonies. A similar judgement can be made on the Americans; they attempt to assimilate the Filipinos into thinking like them, speaking their language, and being as conscious and democratic as American while at the same time having the political agenda of exploiting the human resources to fill the coffers of Wall Street.
Whilst French language is propagated to be superior, English is the means to achieve similar effect in the case of American colonization given its status as lingua franca. The Americans are perhaps more successful in the Philippines that in Japan as occupation spanned almost a century. Had they been given more time in Japan, even the crystallized and rock-solid state Shintoistic foundation of the Japanese political philosophy would have been eroded or blended with the culture of consumerism and laissez faire capitalism.
Carlton’s typology, albeit enlightening in its delineating of thirteen styles of colonialism seemed too specialized and particularizing in differentiating one colonial from another. His tried to guide us into believing that there indeed existed a continuum of humane and barbaric colonials throughout different historical era whereas the question remains: are there good and bad colonials or are the merely colonials who are good and bad planners?
Comparing French and American colonial education
As an overarching description of the paradigm of operation of French and American colonial education, in can be said that the former utilizes the policy of assimilation through such features as widespread use of French language, enrollment limitation, and dual nature of schooling whilst the latter utilizes the policy of democratization, decentralization, and demilitarization through such features as the use of the English language, implementation of progressive educational principles, and systematization of basic education on a massive scale.
Ideologically, as noted by White (1996) who studied signposts of French and British colonial education, the French assimilation policy which led to “associationism”, is meant to be a crusade by France to bring the natives of its colonies to the level of modernity and to create a French consciousness. This mission, carried out via the imposition of French language as a medium of instruction, and a dual-nature school system supported by the work of the church, has been successfully carried out over a century of colonization of nations in Africa and Asia.
The ideological foundation of American colonialism is based upon the creation of vocational and civic literacy through a mass democratization process which would also bring natives to the level of “democratic and consumer-producer consciousness” able to function well in the global market of industrial capitalism.
This ideology illustrating the educational manifestation of the logic of American capitalist expansion is well argued by political-economists such as Martin Carnoy (1974) in Education as Cultural Imperialism, Robert F. Lawson (1994) in “The American Project for Educational Reform in Central Europe” and Immanuel Wallerstein (1990) in “Culture as Ideological Battleground of the Modern World System”.
Thus, whilst comparatively it can be said that both ideologies have the similarity of raising respective “consciousness” – French and American capitalist and consumerism – the difference lie in the notion that whilst the French see its cultural value as a force majeur for its civilizing agenda, the Americans see historical-materialistic gains within the logic of advanced capitalism as agenda for its colonial education project.
Administratively, the French and Americans differ in their operations in that the former utilizes direct rule via the setting up of Inspectorates of Education to oversee its assimilationist project, the Americans worked collaboratively with the colonies’ Ministry of Education with the setting up of administrative organs staffed by progressive educationists.
Perhaps the unique development of American political system and the idea of democracy derived from a succession of ideas such as “political revolution, naturalism, realism and liberalism,” according to Lawson (1994) not replicable elsewhere, conduced American colonials to work together in collaboration in transplanting the Progressive ideas in its colonies. French- perceived racial superiority on the other hand conduced them to administer the colonies in a somewhat British-styled bureaucratic manner.
In terms of policy implementation, the highly selective and limited enrollment of the dual-nature system of French colonial education is clearly designed to create an administrative elite amongst the Franco-Algerians and to leave a larger segment of the population with low literacy rate enough to become conscious of the “superiority” of the French empire. The Americans or the other land, perhaps having become an astute student of colonial strategies, provided widespread basic education for vocational and civic literacy first to the elite of the colonies and next to the masses so that all will be conscious of their role as good workers in the American-based capitalist empire.
Thus, the paradigms of colonial operation in both empires have their similarities and differences in terms of ideology, administration and policy in that one prides in racial narcissism and the other in the beauty of capitalist advancement. However varied the modus operandi though, the response from the colonies are similar in that revolts were precipitated as, echoing Marx, “the masses have nothing to lose except their chains” in reclaiming their tradition and dignity.
<strong>Conclusions for Research on Educational Transfer and Borrowing
</strong>
Studies on colonial education as a special case of educational transfer have perhaps provided us with voluminous information on the “whys” and the “hows” of colonialism. In the case of French and American colonialism education above, the “hows” are primarily discussed and the “whys”, are widely known in that historical materialistic and political-economic rationales have elsewhere been widely documented. Questions such as “what has” and “what still is” being transferred and borrowed within the context of “world without borders” as we approach the year 2000 seem to be fertile areas of investigation.
Areas pertinent to “what has” been transferred from colonial education system might be the “quality” aspect of French colonial education and the “quantity” aspect of the American; of what constitutes a good borrowed meritocratic and egalitarian dimension of the experiences. Modern management theory would subsume this dimension under “best practice” educational models.
Steiner Khamsi (1997) for example suggested a “culturalist” perspective of looking at this fertile ground in answering the question of “what has” been transferred or borrowed. It seemingly moved beyond the systems and conflict paradigm of looking at comparative education in the manner policies and models are enculturated by independent nation-states. What is retained and modified from legacies of colonialism is discussed in light of rhetoric of best practices in educational transfers and borrowings.
“What still is” retained as practices not necessarily liberatory to education – policies and models subliminally conducive to late capitalist formation in the areas of foreign aid, technology transfer and mega investment project – is another area of research potentials. In this area of suggestion, “what still is” I believe must utilize the tools of analysis which look at Center – periphery, role of transnational corporations, global movement of capital, and sublime cultural-ideological formation within the matrix of Center-periphery modern states, as important emerging dimensions of comparative education. How do independent nations maintain sovereignty by, borrowing models and enculturing them intelligently enough so that “neo-colonialism” in the form of cultural imperialism pervasive and postmodern in its construct, as Albert Memmi (1991) skillfully analyzed, will not be a feature?
In recapitulating the question of “what has” been and “what still is” in comparative education, research must take “liberation” as a nexus in constructing a postmodern typology of model practices which have evidently illustrate how certain independent nations have successfully build “national shields” against future colonials though their culturally powerful, technologically appropriate and sovereignly sound education systems. Perhaps in this respect, we can look at Cuba, Tanzania, Iran, Switzerland, Malaysia, and Singapore as starting points for such analyses.
Perhaps too, comparative education as an emerging field of study can be all the more enriched in its “generalizing” stage not only to be used “to explain and predict” (4th level) but also to be “enlightened by such and hence to construct” models liberatory in manifestations for, shouldn’t education mean liberation more than development?
<strong>Bibliography</strong>
Carlton, E. (1994). Occupation: A typology. International Journal of Sociology and
Social Policy, 14 (3/4/5), 153-176.
Carnoy, M. (1974). Education as cultural imperialism. New York: McKay.
Foley, D. (1984). Colonialism and schooling in the Philippines, 1898-1970. In P. G. Altbach and G. P. Kelley (Eds.). Education and the colonial experience (pp.33-53). New Brunswick:Transaction.
Heggoy, A. A. (1984). Colonial education in Algeria: assimilation and reaction. In P. G. Altbach & Gail P. Kelley (Eds.). Education and the colonial experience (pp.97-116). New Brunswick:Transaction.
Kelley, G. P. (1982). Teachers and the transmission of state knowledge: A case study of Colonial Vietnam. In P. G. Altbach, Robert F. Arnove, & G. P. Kelley (Eds.). Comparative Education (pp. 176-194). New York:Macmillan.
Lawson, R. F. (1994). The American project for educational reform in Central Europe. Compare, Vol. 24, No. 3., 247-258
Memmi, A. (1991). The colonizer and the colonized. Boston:Beacon Press.
Steiner-Khamsi, G. (1997) Transfering education, displacing reforms. Comparative Education Review, in review.
Wallerstein, I. (1990). Culture as the ideological battleground of the modern world-system. Theory, Culture& Society, 7, 31-35.
White, B. W. (1996). Talk about school: education and the colonial project in French and British Africa (1860-1960). Comparative Education, 32 (1), 9-25.
Wray, H. (1991). Change and continuity in modern Japanese educational history: Allied occupational reforms forty years later. Comparative Education Review, 35 (3), 447-476.Dr. AZLY RAHMANhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07437908281114330911noreply@blogger.com47