Malaysian National News Agency :: BERNAMA PEKAN, Nov 4 Bernama -- Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak has called for the countrys memory-based education system to be replaced with one that promotes mind development so that the students become more creative and critical.

The Deputy Prime Minister said the education system was currently directed towards memorisation which became the basis in assessing the students performance especially during examinations.

This little new story goes to the heart of the whole problem of education. Is it about knowledge of facts or skills? Well, in fact it is about neither of these things. The primary purpose of education is socialization. This is often concealed because only a small proportion of it is ‘primary socialization’ in the sense of socializing into one’s immediate ethnic group. Education provides multiple socializations: into all the various groups of specialists, into a group of people in education with a view of a membership in a group of people who have received an education. In fact, it is possible for somebody with only a minimal grasp of fact or limited skill to be socialized into a particular group if they can engage productively with that groups code (or discursive practices). Very often the prerequisite for that is a certain amount of knowledge and skill but the performances that membership in a group calls for are mostly symbolic. It reminds of ‘Trading Places’ by David Lodge in which an professor of English has never read Oliver Twist.

So what is the implication for the educational system? Its stated and apparent purposes seem to be fairly divergent but that is a necessity. What would the curriculum look like in a system that was explicitly focused on socialization? Interestingly enough, some of the recent debate on faith schools in the UK has had that focus but even there with a few exceptions (teaching of evolution, religious education) the examples were extracurricular (dress, environment, background of teachers, etc.).

Therefore, we are forced into an instrumental view of education which is where ultimately the skill argument seems to win over. This is because the argument for memorization ends up being mostly reminiscent of the argument for socialization. However, the problem is that skill-based (competency-based) curricula often do not deliver the desired results, i.e they do not ‘produce’ people who appear to have been well-educated in the sense of not being able to engage with particular discursive communities. Bringing back memorization then seems to be the solution favored as a countermeasure. But since memorization is then treated instrumentally rather than as a means of secondary socialization(s), it is also doomed to failure, particularly since the skill-based approach has changed the frames of expectation.

I would therefore predict great conceptual as well as practical problems for Malaysia (and any other country) as it tries this particular reform. Is there a solution? Not really! Perhaps a hint of one might be: use the skills-based approach when viewing education instrumentally and the memory-based approach when thinking of it socially. And make sure that both perspectives are present in equal measure in the underpinnings of the system of schooling.