The following is an email I wrote in response to an interesting article by Sim Kwang Yang on Malaysiakini, on MCA's campaign for life-long learning.

Dear Kwang Yang,

I have corresponded with you not too long ago regarding philosophy teaching in Malaysia, and your excellent article on life-long learning has made me want to share my experiences with you.

When I was still in early primary school (I think in Standard 1 or 2), my parents bought me a set of childrens' encyclopedia. Now, I'm sure a lot of Malaysian parents buy their children encyclopedia sets, but I actually set about the task about actually reading them. To this date I'm still unsure as to why I did this, but nevertheless I did. This was clearly before the full weight of the exam paradigm hit me (there isn't that much to study in Primary 1 and 2, after all...), and just before the full weight of the information age hit with 24-hour cartoons on satellite TV and video games (this latter was due at least thanks to my parents, who have never succumbed to years of my petitioning to buy a Sega Megadrive). I soon graduated to raiding my parents' collections of 10 year old back-issues in Reader's Digest and Far East Economic Review (!).

For better or worse, I have never stopped being addicted to books, and throughout my primary and secondary education I would rather curl up in my bed with a good book than do my homework. In this respect, I was somewhat fortunate that my parents were too busy to supervise me too closely, and I managed to go through 11 years of state-education without doing much homework at all (my primary education was in a Chinese-medium school, and I consistently got into trouble because of this... secondary school was a government school, which meant very few teachers ever cared...).

I managed to scrape through that 11 years with reasonably good, if not exceptional results... I was intelligent enough to do well in primary education without studying much, and in secondary school I became an expert in last-minute cramming despite my aversion to regular work.

I am now studying in London, doing physics, a subject which I was always fascinated with, and which my parents to their credit allowed me to do, despite its dubious utility (to Malaysian eyes, that is). At the risk of seeming immodest, I have blossomed in university, and I am the top student in my year (there is a Singaporean Education Ministry scholar here who barely edges me in exam performance, but more of my lecturers would agree that I am the better student overall). One of my research supervisors, who has worked with the top physicists in the world, believes that I am one of the top few brains to come from Malaysia, although you would certainly not see that from my SPM or PMR results.

There are almost certainly a lot more intelligent Malaysians out there... my IQ isn't exceptionally high (only about 120-130, and I know friends who are 180). But it is not intelligence which makes me a good physicist, but a critical and questioning mind as well as an ability to think creatively (qualities which, alas, I rarely see in Malaysians).

Clearly, I did not learn these qualities from the Malaysian educational system; indeed, they are IN SPITE of my schooling. You might be surprised that I was totally uninspired by physics in secondary school.... I spent most of my time either asleep or ignoring the teacher during the physics classes. My inspiration to do physics was from reading books outside my curriculum (often at the expense of my schoolwork), and from an inspirational teacher I had in A-levels.

While I do not deny the fact that I had learnt a lot of things from my formal schooling (in particular, I was fortunate that most of my mathematics teachers were good), nevertheless if I not for my intellectual rebellion against the educational system, I would not be where I am today.

I think it's sad that my desire to learn had to be sustained AGAINST the educational system, instead of being fed by it. Perhaps not everyone can be as passionate about a single subject like me, but I have many other interests in history, literature and philosophy in addition to science, so I'm far from a single-minded nerd.

In UK, students who decide to study subjects like history, literature or art do so because they are passionate and interested in it; in Malaysia, they do so because they cannot be accepted into university to do 'proper' subjects. I think this is a sad symptom for the overall condition of a country which aspires to be developed.

Regards,
Khee Gan