AUGUST 28 — 1. Education is ultimately about making giga-loads of money; forget this and your place in the story of the world is screwed for life.
All those idiots who want to be "social workers" or "artists" should’ve been aborted for wasting society’s money.
The only people who decide to do courses like Sociology are Datuks' kids or folks who already have a business degree and are so insecure they need another academic cert to enhance their sex appeal
2. You must never say that education is about becoming rich, richer, richest — because this would ruin appearances.
Instead, keep talking about clichéd stuff like "independent thinking", "social responsibility", "creativity" and other cool words you find in Facebook ads which make people "Hide This Post."
Just remember that if you get 12As for SPM and you’re not making, like, eight bleedin’ figures by the time you’re 30 then guess what you haven’t learnt shit.
Children, please don’t give your parents a heart-attack by telling them, halfway through your law degree, that you want to be a missionary to Nigeria or a Greenpeace activist.
Finish your degree, make truck-loads of cash first, then if your sanity is still disturbed by concepts as futile as sacrifice and social responsibility, you can take a few holidays to these unfortunate but virtue signalling-happy places.
3. To reiterate, don’t even think about an Arts degree or, worse still, one on Art History – what the hell is wrong with you?
Can’t you see there’s no future in understanding precisely how Picasso juxtaposed realism, cubism and neo-classicalism? Dude, the only kind of future worth having is one in which you can afford multiple trips from KL to Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, stand in front of a work titled Guernica (or outside since it’s not likely they allow phone-cams and shit inside the exhibition halls), take a selfie and post it on Instagram with a smart-ass comment like, “I love Picasso! The painting really looks like my inner life!”
4. This is why subjects like Art and Physical Education and basically anything which allow "dumb" students to excel at are useless.
Sure it’s nice to bring back an A in those subjects — makes the report card look pristine — but if you neglect your Maths and Science you deserve all the humiliation you’ll receive when you fail to reach the top 5 per cent of your class.
In fact, nowadays parent-teacher meetings should include that desired but unasked question, “Will my kid be able to succeed in life?”
5. The disproportionate growth of business courses in the country? That’s a good thing.
The death of the humanities (including the lack of a Philosophy department at our "famous" public universities)? A better thing.
It don’t matter how obsolete studying about free markets is or how dangerous concepts like "value-added risk" are – just get lecturers with the most colour CVs to facilitate classes which run 12 hours and make sure the sandwiches are fresh during the convocation, an event where Vice-Chancellors get to accentuate the importance of making money without at all mentioning the word "money."
6. Religious studies? For Fridays, Sundays and the occasional weekly study, sure.
As a balm to manage the stress of making bigger and better investments, absolutely.
In fact, throw in Buddhist meditation as well; ironically, the West is now an authority on this partnership between Eastern spirituality and corporate advancement.
7. Most importantly, from womb to tomb, never stop teaching about scarcity, ROIs, KPIs, etc.
That’s because the moment folks realise that scarcity is really a mindset, that all this "production" is chasing a ghost of insufficiency, who knows what could happen to the foundations of capitalism?
This is why no matter how great the report card your kids bring back, never let them enjoy even a shadow of a thought that they can rest.
Only the dead rest — that’s a bona fide capitalist truth because if rest was truly allowed into the system... we’d all be out of a job.
Now. Go and make a killing, or score some As – same difference.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
