PPSMI: MY LAST RESPONSE

I know from the beginning that I would be fighting a losing battle when it comes to PPSMI. This is because, PPSMI in the first place, was an ingenious idea; radical and unconventional in nature, therefore do not suit  a 'stagnant' or 'play-it-safe' society like ours. Risk-taking is still an alien concept to us; all there is, are just the countless rhetoric. I believe, not many of us can appreciate, to the highest degree, Mark Zuckerberg's utterence:

"The biggest risk is not taking any risk… In a world that is changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks." - Mark Zuckerberg

As an ingenious idea, originated from the best Malay's brain, PPSMI is not meant for a smooth ride, it demands determination and sacrifice for it should be perceived as 'the strategy' or as the 'special ingredient' of our success. It should be the answer to the question, "As others are also moving, in fact at much faster speed, what is the extra-special thing that we have which allows us the possibility to overtake?", which the answer is supposed to be, "Luckily, we have resorted to PPSMI at time others had not think of it". This aforementioned statement of mine should be read in parallel with the following Einstein's words for better understanding:

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein

What we have is actually a different levels of concern. Mine is higher and my 'opponent''s is lower. In my opinion, the latter is rooted from over-optimism. One of the great danger of over-optimism is that it can lead us into the state of denial. As an analogy, celebrating our winning at Geneva Exhibition as great scientific achievement would make the success of the People Republic of China in building their own space station (after been rejected by the ISS program) looks like a mediocre work. For an over-optimistic society, if 'time permits', they think they can build it too.

When I said contemporary learning requires learners to read 'English' books of thousand pages on their own, my 'opponents' simply replied "So, what we need is our professors to produce such a book but in Bahasa Malaysia". Due to over-optimism towards their professors, my 'opponents' fail to appreciate the fact that our professors are not really that capable of producing such books. Below is my major reference on finite element, a book written by KJ Bathe, an MIT professor published in 1996.

Despite its 15 years of age, I dare to say, no one in Malaysia understand completely this book including me; to produce one is therefore beyond any 'right' Malaysian mind. Since nobody in Malaysia can produce such a book neither in Bahasa Malaysia nor in English, at least not in the next 10 years to come, what must we expect of our learners to do? Keep reading lecturer's notes? And the irony is, our next ten years is the year 2020. Over-optimism makes us to be contradictory, you see. We want to be advanced but we want to do it slow and steady. In this era, 'advanced' and 'slow and steady' contradict each other most of the time (I said most of the time not all the time).

All right, by now you might be asking whether I can show some proofs or hints on what reading these kind of books can do for us. Below is the video of a computer program which has been written fully and 100% by my master's student, Mr Erwan Hafizi Kasiman who's is now a tutor at the faculty. It is not some use of existing software like Fluent, Comsol or Abaqus but a pure source coding from scratch of the mathematical equations including the interface. To watch, just click PLAY and please wait for a few second for the flow disturbance to become obvious

What the above video shows is the unsteady incompressible flow, either of fluids or of gases, known as Karman's Vortex which development requires the discretization of the following Navier-Stoke's Equation. And to do this, Mr Erwan has been required to read the same Bathe's book which success are due to, of course hard work but also due to the luxury of having me 'besides' him to explain every words. But we are not living in a quantum mechanics world where I can be at different places at one time, aren't we?. So we need more teachers like me, which are self-taught. Believe me, if a hundred of our countrymen has this kind of knowledge, then we can build our own 'space station'. Below is the aforementioned Navier-Stoke equations for your viewing.

If you ask, can any other Malaysian do this?, as far as I know, NO, and I have been in the business for quite sometime now (please read about my publication, HERE and HERE). Another proof for my claim would be the ERCAD software which I have developed with my post-graduates students. I have posted about this previously so to read just click HERE. This software is equivalent to the foreign software which the latter all cost more than RM 50,000 but since ERCAD is 100 per cent developed by us, we able to dictate the price to the lowest of RM100 for Malaysian students. You see, if we really have the knowledge, we can no longer be the 'user' and the 'buyer' anymore in fact we can start selling our 'products'. We can be the 'real deal'.  And all that we need is to take some risk. For your information, more than 130 units of ERCAD have been sold since it was launched a couple of months back, and if these were foreign products, if would have cost our country 130 x RM 50,000 = RM 6.5 million. So we have saved about that much in two months time. Oh, why can't you see?

Having said all these, I therefore, do not want to write any further about the issue because I believe I had written enough in this blog (9 entries to be exact). What I have been trying to say is all down to this:
1. We need our newer society to be self-taught.
2. Why self-taught? Because one, this is the way of the new world and two, our older society are no longer able to teach us, but please, do not blame our older society for they have served their intended purposes brilliantly, that is to survive us the newer society
3. To be self-taught, the newer society must read by themselves the 'English' books of thousand pages, and they must read it 'quick'.

So, this is about it and I do not want to talk about it anymore. But, one thing that amused me during this endeavor is the childish behavior of some people I personally know, not from this blog but in FB (I am glad that those in this blog have responded in most intellectual manner). Such childish responses only mean two things: 1) either they do not understand my writing due to their intellectual limits or 2) they have personal issues against me or both. Whichever the case, this behavior is an immediate proof of how many of us have been bred with shallow minded and prejudice; they are the sole cause for our social instability. To these people, the following phrase of Einstein would make no difference:

"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence." - Albert Einstein

They fail to accept the facts that there are still existed people who are really sincere in their endeavor and a 'weird' idea or opinion should not be an excuse for them to reduce the quality of such a sincerity. Neither the following phrase of Allama Dr Muhammad Iqbal which I extracted from his book, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam matters to them:

"..if he ceases to feel the inward push of advancing life, then the spirit within him hardens into stone and he is reduced to the level of dead matter. But his life and the onward march of his spirit depend on the establishment of connections with the reality that confronts him" - Muhammad Iqbal

And before I leave, I like to share with the general readers a beautiful poem which I found at the last page of Muhammad Iqbal's book. Initially I thought it was his as he was also a great Muslim poet but it turned out to be written by an unknown author. I googled it up in the internet and found some information which I am not going to tell considering some of us are still not really that open minded. So just read it and enjoy.

When I was young and free,

and my imagination had no limits ,

I dreamed of changing the world.

As I grew older and wiser,

I discovered the world would not change,

so I shortened my sights somewhat

and decided to change only my country.

But it too, seemed immovable.

As I grew into my twilight years,

in one last desperate attempt,

I settled for changing only my family,

those closest to me; but alas 

they would have none of it,

And now as I lie on my death bed,

I suddenly realize: 

If only I had change myself first,

then by example I would have changed my family.

From their inspiration and encouragement,

I would then have been able to better my country and,

who knows, I may have even changed the world.

 

Wallahhualam