THE underperformance of Malaysia pupils in international benchmarking assessments, such as TIMMS and PISA etc, is nothing new to us.

There were many research papers and opinion articles that pointed out the underpinned flaws in Malaysia education, such as a highly centralised and hierarchical system, the substandard teaching profession, outdated syllabuses, teaching pedagogies, and instruction language.

However, most of these papers and articles usually revolve around measuring the system’s worth in science education through direct and tangible economic impacts.

It is understandable and perfectly sensible that education, especially science education, needs to account for itself in economic terms.

However, by doing this, we might fall into believing that this is the only way of attributing value to science education.

First and foremost, let me remind everyone of us that the indicators arise from values we embrace, and those indicators are often poorly chosen, simply because our limitation in seeing broader insights of the measured system.

Let us start with the basic question: what is science? The word ‘science’ originates from Latin scientia, which is literally best interpreted as a systematic enterprise that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world.

Science first started when humans answered those “superficial” natural phenomena, then led to the invention of tools that improve our quality of daily life, even though most of us still stagnantly see the direct impact of science, and ignoring its role in equipping us in dealing with broader aspects of life.

Perhaps I am being biased, but for me, science is everywhere, and its range is not limited to physical, biological and mathematical, but almost every aspect of our life, ie societal and political systems etc.

Following this, we shall navigate further into determining the value of science.

While vast majority of society appreciates the instrumentalism of science application ie cutting-edge ICT and AI technologies, the mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccines etc, we often ignore the unmeasurable values of science like critical thinking skills, abilities of accepting different evident or hypothesis/opinion, assessing data holistically and therefore able to make decision rationally.

In general, teachers, parents and academic syllabus planners do not welcome pupils questioning scientific knowledge printed in textbooks.

They take the knowledge printed in textbooks as an absolute, and therefore eliminating children’s curiosity about the surrounding world and activities.

For example, they want pupils to memorise facts like gravitational force pulling things towards the core of earth, basic mathematical principles like 1+1=2 etc, but at the same time not daring to disclose human limited abilities in offering comprehensive answers for the underlying mechanism.

Newton’s gravitational law fits perfectly and the principles have enabled us to launch satellites into space and the invention of GPS when driving (some even extensively use GPS navigation between their home to usual workplace), but the phenomenological law to this day does not explain the mechanism of gravitational force pulling two massive objects together.

Until 1915, Albert Einstein had cracked his head for years and then proposed the general theory of relativity, which explains the space-field altered by moving objects that causes the gravitational force to pull two massive objects together.

This example clearly indicates that Newton’s law is imperfect but not entirely wrong, but so is Einstein’s theory.

I wonder how many parents and teachers with knowledge of science and technology are able to inspire young children to remain curious and seek new ways of thought to explain the so-called known facts, like how an object will always drop down to the Earth’s surface.

From the above example, we should be rethinking the essential values of science education, and not limited to merely offering a platform to presenting ideas and testing them vigorously based on available data and thoughts. It should be:

1) inspiring us to push our boundaries to facilitate humanity’s ability to turn ambitious dreams into reality;

2) exploring scientific reasoning as a precious social capital for humanity to rejecting populist pledges, as well as preventing authorities from imposing draconian rules and retarding human liberty;

3) and last but not least, to equip every one of us not limited to pupils, a capacity to question and challenging the status quo, regardless how thought-provoking the question will be, as long as it is tabulated in a professional and logical way.

Science education cannot move forward if we do not discard our existing instrumentalism ideology. Perhaps it is time that society has more debates on how to move forward. – November 22, 2021.

* Chong Kok Boon is a member of Agora Society. He is a self-declared Peter Pan who advocates science in forging a more democratic and humane society.