WITH Maszlee Malik’s resignation, the search for someone to fill one of Malaysia’s most important cabinet posts begins.

Given the politics surrounding the teaching of Jawi that has stayed with us for five months (not to mention the spin-offs created), calls for a “non-politician” to take over the education portfolio come as no surprise.

It’s an alluring proposal, really, that by taking the politician away from the position, we take the edge off our discourses on education. Contentious topics, such as language, religion and culture, can be put to bed, while the technocratic fixing of our declining education standards (pretty much the only thing everyone can agree on) can start.

Nevertheless, it’s questionable that just because someone is a politician, they would be automatically divested of the “technocratic” side of running the education system. The outpouring of support for Maszlee after he quit certainly doesn’t suggest that.

Whatever you think of the man’s more controversial moments, the poignancy shown towards his departure indicates that his technocratic fixes are not forgotten. We are so engulfed by the polemics of those who have turned education into a proxy culture war that only Maszlee’s shock resignation could make us stop and evaluate things with cooler heads.

But to think that a non-politician can strip our discourses on education of landmines is something we must reassess with cooler heads, too.

Imagine a non-politician in corridors of power

To begin, it is simply difficult for a non-aligned technocrat to navigate the cabinet in a Westminster parliamentary system (I am not using the term “nonpartisan” because I think everyone is, to some extent, partisan; “non-aligned” here simply means the person has no party affiliations).

While it is technically true that cabinet members hold office at the pleasure of the prime minister, the situation in Malaysia is different from the presidential system, where the president has significant autonomy (pending scrutiny by the legislature) in appointing ministers, such as in Indonesia or the US.

The PM under the Westminster system usually selects cabinet members from among elected reps in the ruling party, who form the government side of the frontbenchers.

And because we are a coalition government, the PM’s cabinet selection is not only about balancing interests within a party, but also between parties. A non-politician plunged into a portfolio as contentious as education (it has always been so for Malaysia) without any party backing means they are even more at risk of stepping on a landmine because of how intricately linked education is to our quotidian politics of race and religion.

For example, is there any guarantee that the current tussle between preserving a multi-stream education and putting in place a single stream will stop when a non-politician becomes the minister? Will the political actors within the government – let alone those outside it – be willing to come to a détente if a technocrat isn’t interested in it (and that’s a big if)?

If even politicians with party backing can be made scapegoats, the non-politician will be turned into a kebab in no time – unless they have the backing of a strong politician, but then, there goes being apolitical.

Decisions are always arbitrary, hence always political

There is also this idealistic thinking that everything in politics can be stripped down to its technocratic core, in which politicians deserve less say than technocrats. But, we must also acknowledge that technocracy provides no absolute solution to a lot of our problems, because whatever decision we ultimately make, there is a degree of arbitrariness to it.

For example, we recently passed a bill to lower the voting age to 18. But why 18? Why not 16? Since Greta Thunberg is leading a cause that adults seem utterly incapable of or unwilling to lead, surely we can rest our faith on young(er) people? A Cambridge professor in politics (who better to wear the “technocratic”, or rather, “epistocratic”, crown?) even proposed that the voting age be lowered to 6 to save our “ailing democracy”.

In education, we have a similar roster of problems that a technocracy won’t be able to resolve. Even if we take away the issues of language and religion that Malaysians argue over ad nauseam, I can still list at least three here.

First, what is the balance to strike between STEM and arts education? What is the minimal literacy level expected of a typical Malaysian graduate for both, no matter their specialisation? What gets selected for the curriculum? Trust me, as someone who’s been through both science and arts education, I can tell you that the argument for both sides is equally valid.

There are enough arts-educated people who I wish would first read basic biology before they talk about things like evolution, and there are enough engineers or doctors who turn out to be fanatics telling us that a supposedly dispassionate, “rationalist” education is not actually producing dispassionate, “rational” people.

Second, even if we accept that our education is in decline, what standards are we to use to assess it and make improvements? If we are to use standardised testing schemes as a guide, then why should we pick the Finland route instead of the top performers in East Asia (and Singapore)? And given that there is already a pushback against the hegemony of global ratings (including at the level of tertiary education), will we do better without them? But we have tried doing things our way and things haven’t turned out well, so can we trust our own standards?

The third has to do with the management of education. Malaysia has one of the most centralised education systems in the world, with the Education Ministry having almost complete control over the 10,000 schools across the country, notwithstanding some efforts at devolution.

No doubt, centralised and decentralised management each has its own advantages and pitfalls, with the former enabling better equity in outcomes but risking inflexibility, and the latter enabling better experimentation and localisation but can entrench pre-existing inequities. And with the boom of private and international schools in Malaysia, the public/private nature of education deserves some soul-searching, too, although like the issue of healthcare, it’s something we barely discuss.

So, where do we draw the line for these questions? This is where politics comes in. And as much as we hate politics for its adverse effects, it is the only thing that can – at least to a healthy degree – keep these decisions accountable. That is not to say everyone will be happy with the outcome. That is not the role of politics. But at least, society as a whole can feel sufficiently included in the process.

The nerd and (in) politics: maintaining a balance

To be sure, I am not dismissing the utility of hard, technocratic work. Certainly, we would not be able to talk about the climate crisis resolutely now without decades of work by scientists. Technocratic means supply us with the data to inform our sociopolitical discourses. But the way we design our methodology and the lenses through which we process the data are not as above politics as we might think.

This point may be controversial to some, but suffice to say, the more we want our new education minister to focus on issues that are not politically contentious (let’s say, improving English or math competency), the better the politician they must be. This is so the person can manage the expectations of a politicised society (which is not unique to Malaysia, really).

The alternative would be to have a less-competitive political system, which would mean the severe ring-fencing of public discourse or total control by some algorithmic overlord – hardly the better options.

It would be bad luck to end this on such a gloomy note, given that we’re fresh into a new year. So here are a few ways we can instil more “technocracy” in our education system.

First, we can decentralise horizontally, splitting education from higher education (as we have done in the past), so that the politics of education can be better managed on two fronts instead of being consumed by the polemics surrounding one.

Second, we can decentralise vertically, so that some decision-making can be delegated to authorities at the state, district and school levels. This lowers the stakes of the minister’s every decision and allows the minister to conserve energy instead of wasting it tussling over trivial matters. One reason ministers are often bound by the trivial is because they have all the power to make even the most trivial interventions.

After all, it is true that with one signature, the minister can make it mandatory for all students to wear black school shoes. Which power should belong to whom, however, is something that cannot be addressed without the political process, even if we technocrats have our say.

Third, to allow for the better technocratic management of the ministry, the minister should be given more autonomy and resources to manage the upper echelons of the ministry instead of relying on the current system of special officers. The flexible hiring of senior management from within and without the civil service should be made an option available to the minister, with oversight mechanisms in place so that the practice doesn’t turn into a patronage fest.

The minister’s job will never be that of a full-time nerd, but they should be able to bring in technocrats they want to work with, as long as these figures also understand that their appointment is, ultimately, political. – January 9, 2020.

* A Forensic Science-Asian Studies hybrid, Nicholas Chan is interested in how authority is shaped, exercised, and more importantly, resisted in Southeast Asia.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.