By Emmanuel Samarathisa
IF there’s one thing the movement control order (MCO) has forced us to do, it is to think creatively about our approach to life. Working from home, social distancing and, for some, layoffs are the order of the day.
That’s just the struggles of the Average Jane and Joe. Then there’s Higher Education Minister Datuk Noraini Ahmad who decided to be “cool” and “rad” by organising a TikTok contest. For the uninitiated, TikTok is a video-sharing social networking platform where users create mini videos using dance, lip-syncing and other comical gestures.
Her posting is now taken down after being slammed by social media users but the original pitch (from the poster above) shows her collaborating with two influencers to organise some kind of contest.
And, because the internet never forgets, here’s the YouTube video below:
Now, I’m going to disregard all the backdoor government rage for a bit because what matters now is proper policies and also activities for our pupils and varsity students to keep occupied during the MCO and even probably for a while after the MCO.
Some of the initiatives she could have TikToked about include e-learning platforms and online classes. But all these were left wanting.
And it’s not like there’s a dearth of ideas. Even if she doesn’t know about the various providers out there such as Coursera, or edX, or all those easily searchable entities on the world wide web, there are initiatives at home.
For example, non-profit Teach for Malaysia partnered with YTL Foundation to provide online content for pupils covering Mathematics, Science and English for Standard One to Form Five.
Even her colleague, Education Minister Mohd Radzi Md Jidin, wants to introduce
TV-based learning programmes to offer a series of practice sessions for students facing public examinations this year, particularly those without internet access. Of course, we can debate the merits of such an initiative later, but at least something is in the pipeline over there.
The problem here is Noraini is not a political greenhorn. But, for now, it also shows she lacks a vision for her ministry. University and college graduates will literally brave a whole new world now.
I remember someone once telling me, when we were talking about the future of education and reskilling and the like, that this will no longer be a world about “what you learned” but more of a “how you learn” environment.
And that remains true today. With so much uncertainty, the one thing we can possibly equip our varsity students, since this is the higher education ministry, is options to pick up skills, because the internet has already democratised education to a certain degree. Maybe we should just give our varsity students free Coursera or edX accounts?
Hopefully, after this, Noraini is able to fashion the ministry and our higher education into something less campy than her TikTok gaffe.
For now, she has been inducted into Putrajaya’s hall of comedians joining the likes of Rina Haron for her advice to women to cajole their partners in a Doraemon voice and Health Minister Datuk Seri Adham Baba’s advice to drink warm water to flush the coronavirus down the stomach.
But woe to us if what Noraini did is actually an ominous sign of things to come. — April 10, 2020
