Education in Crisis - Malaysia's (lack) of storytellers.

Just finished watching a documentary on algorithm. Algorithm is everywhere. It simplifies life, enrich, empower civilisations in leaps and bounds. Face recognition, shopping preference, crime prevention, future trending and so much more. However with any technology there are two sides of the coin, good and bad.

What I want to propose here is that in Malaysia, there is a lack of parallel narratives on the humanistic aspects of algorithms and other technology in general. We as a nation are not ready of the dialogue accompanying its advent into our social construct. And I would like to point out the glaring missing parts in our society, we don't have storytellers. The role of story tellers in the development of technology has been discussed by Cave, Dihal and DIllon in an article:

" Narratives can make or break a science: palaeontology got massive boosts in funding after Jurassic Park, while Frankenstein was deployed to constrain the use of GMOs in food – with huge impact in Europe. The most influential storytellers are able to communicate their vision of the future to millions of people" Kanta Dihal - In "How stories will shape future of AI"  (1)

In the west, the challenge of technology to humanity has been dealt with by storytellers decades before the technology came to society. H.G.Wells, predict what technology could do to civilisations and the essence of human existence, Isaac Asimov has been mulling the dilemma and crisis of robots, George Orwell's premonition of human reactions to state control through detection technology all seems too real these days. With every adoption of technology, the social narrative necessary for its adoption is being dealt with with parallel movement in society. And these have been digested in the society's conscience for years. So when there is a move by authorities to adopt latest technology in crime prevention effort in LA, there are groups who are ready to challenge its total adoption for fear of loss of freedom, enhancing racial bias, creating oppressive attitude against marginalised communities. In Berlin, a new generation of hackers such as CCC, Chaos Computer Club founded by Linus Neuman, use their hacking skills to enlighten society on the deficiencies of techno-centric approach to life . Even people on the street can identify with the sentiments, their storytellers have prepared the society for a transformative dialogue with it.  

Now what does this has to do with our education system? I find the move towards certain kind of knowledge, the marginalisation of certain others, is beginning to show its symptom of social deficiencies. We are depriving our future generations of storytellers. There seems to be a lackluster interest on societal narrative of modern technology and systems. We keep striving to make faster and cheaper product, higher pixel camera, faster computer chips, faster cars, so on and so forth. We focused on profession-centric approach to education with the hope that our children will make better engineers, lawyers, architects and accountants, so that they have a better 'life'. That's the end of our thinking on the purpose of education and perhaps, the meaning of life itself. All discussions about the meaning of life is being delegated to individual parents, to madrasah and mosques, to religious circles, which currently only seemingly thriving in certain communities and group, and not comprehensive enough to include all communities. We don't have storytellers to lure our intellect towards musing on the big issues in life., or at least to reflect on the wider implication of our choice of knowledge and action.

So how does this happen? Just look at our national paradigm of education, we focus on technical education and pushes aside arts and humanities. Just drop a visit to any research universities and you will hear a general complain of how arts and humanities are being transformed into technical, reductionist and mechanistic field of knowledge. Even social sciences now are focusing on issues which have measurable quantities, statistical significance, (which are traits of reductionist mechanistic approach ) and moving away from the essence of abstract ideas, of philosophy, arts, religious study etc.

This glaring gap in our education has a more, apparent and real crisis. Ironically, on the other side of the coin  all the drive to boost STEM education amongst our children does not show much  progress either. Our leaders, policymakers, keep whining about how kids are not interested in science anymore.  Could it be that this apathy torward STEM sprung from similar root? that there is no storyteller in science? There is no Asimov, no HG Wells, no Orwell being nurtured in our generation? Not only we are missing science critics, we are also missing the poetic proponents of technology. There is little effort to create sparks in our young minds, that push them to embark on a passionate journey to explore our world through science? When we see STEM education, we see a lot of focus is on the technical details in itself, too early concern on how physical properties of materials interact and react. There is no play, no wonderment, no story to lure young minds towards a long and exciting journey that is called science.

The  personal computer revolution and modern ICT can be attributed, in a large part, not only to the electronic labs in silicon valley, but also the literary arts and innate childish playful nature of human spurred by..storytellers. Steve Russell, a proud nerd and hacker, a MIT student with avid passion on games, toys and pulp sci-fi was one such catalytic person. He read Triplanetary (By E.E. "Doc Smith) written in 1948, a pulp fiction on interplanetary wars depicting heroes battling aliens in spaceships. The book mesmerised him into a world of heroes in high tech spaceship battling invasive aliens. He attributed the book with his passion into creating "Spacewar" in 1962, the first ever video game depicting sophisticated space battle computer game. The next jump towards the evolution in personal computing was followed by Nolan Bushnell, another playful computing student who like so much to play spacewars. He combined his entrepreneurial skills with computing and created ATARI, the first ever video game console. Following this, the jump towards personal computers was followed through by Steve Jobs generation.(2)

There are many other anecdotes of how revolutions in humanity be sparked by storytellers. Even the most apparent ones are often being ignored, Karl Marx, Rachel Carson, Adam smith, Rumi, they are all storytellers of one sort or the other. Now we might want to take a step back and look at our national education. At which parts in our national education do we nurture our future storytellers? Do we provide enough freedom for them to play and be amused in wonderment? Or are we pushing them to be industry workers from day 1? Creating generations of professionals, lawyers engineers, scientist who are competent but not much more of a generation of robots with empty shell?

Zaky Jaafar (c) 2020

References:

1. Blog article: http://lcfi.ac.uk/news/2020/mar/5/how-stories-will-shape-future-ai/?fbclid=IwAR2xhOGDWYfoPfbWI4q2qeFf_tXBsek9nHYUElxzUlH9HCxE_OrjLj-RTtU

2. " Innovators", Walter Isaacson, Simon and Schuster 2014.New York.