From Ubercab to Uber: The Needed Paradigm Shift in Malaysian Education

When UberCab decided to ditch the word Cab from its name, it was a revelation in the importance of stepping back and doing less and not doing more. This is something that our education system in Malaysia can learn. We are at the time  when doing something different almost always mean doing something new, the idea of doing away with unnecessary baggage as a way to progress is almost unheard of.

In 2011, when Uber CEO decided to change it's name from UberCab to Uber, one of its team asked "If we ditch the word Cab from UberCab, then we are Uber what?", as if Uber cannot stand on its own as a word. Nevertheless the company proceeded changing the name. The move was quite significant in the history of the company. San Francisco Municipal Transport Authority has been threatening UberCab with many potential lawsuits due to its unconventional practice in cab service. By getting rid of the idea of the company as a cab service, and reposition itself as a non cab service,  it simply removes these threats and allow the company to continue on its exponential growth. If Uber had decided to add a different word to its name, quite possibly it would land them in another quagmire similar to their episode they had with San Fransisco MTA.

But what is interesting, to me, the mentality of asking " Uber what?" is part of the crippling factor in pushing for transformation in Malaysian Education. Let me explain.

In a discussion, I was suggesting that perhaps it is better for our education setup to stop doing what we are doing because all we did was adding extra layer of complication that only partially solve a problem and yet creates more problems  than found in the original scenario. The immediate reaction I got from this suggestion was "If we stop doing this, what is the alternative action then?" As if stopping doing something bad is not good enough.

I was suggesting perhaps we have too much mechanisms, tools, indices, measurements, reporting and auditing that problems keep piling up. The accompanying mentality is that, we have to add even more tools to solve these arising problems. The idea of stopping doing something in order to solve a problem is a strange notion. I would describe this crippling mentality with this analogy. Somebody is training to participate to run in competitions. The competitor complains that he will never win because he has this iron chain  strapped between his legs. When somebody suggested to him to remove the iron chain from his legs, he reacted, "okay if I remove the iron chain, what else should I use to tie my legs together?

Mechanistic and reductionistic mentality always rely on processes, templates, mechanisms, frameworks, formula and procedures to trust any phenomena to be repeatable and measurable so that they can have a bit of confidence in treading in real world. removing these 'iron chain' for us is like taking away a crutch from a cripple. While a cripple needs a crutch, it would in no way helps the recovery of a totally capable person to walk normally if he insists on using it forever. In fact for a normal person, it would rather cripple (pun intended) his journey to recovery.

The idea of removing all these iron chains somehow scares our education administrators and policymakers. Our addiction to reductionistic worldview is part of the problem, no longer a tool for progress. Question like "so how do we know progress is made?",  "How do we measure them?", or "how do we compare them?, often leads us to adopt reductionist mentality, and the crisis ensued.

Let us acknowledge the full potential of human in dealing with reality. A full functioning human, intact with cognitive, intuitive, spiritual faculty, is fully capable of dealing the complexity of real world phenomena. Breaking them down to processes and mechanisms would only hinder this full potentiality. We should stop reducing human behaviour down to uniform algorithm and just another predictable natural phenomena. We should start to embrace, respect the peculiarity of each individual human. Teachers and students alike, they are full of potentials to achieve their own version of excellence without us having to determine what it should be.

Zaky Jaafar
May 2023