COMMENT | Black shoes have become the dark jokes about Education Minister Maszlee Malik – that his preference for black (shoes) suggests an inane mind at work.

Wouldn't white shoes be better, argue some Malaysians. At the very least, white would instil discipline, especially if one can keep one’s shoes clean. Individual and collective cleanliness, in other words, is commonly taken to signify a discernible rise in intelligence of the whole country.

But the issue is not necessarily the colour of the shoes, nor the discipline that comes with it. Society has to understand that there is no causality at all.

Take the argument that white shoes can lead to better discipline. Well, all school-going children, who were lucky enough to receive an education, grew up with white shoes since 1957. But Malaysia is in a deep crater now precisely because of a prime minister who polished his (black) leather shoes every day when he was in a boarding school.

In one of his last interviews to Bloomberg prior to the end of his tenure as the sixth prime minister, Najib Abdul Razak claimed that he would not be easily bullied by the opposition front – including Dr Mahathir Mohamad – since he has had the benefit "of going to a boarding school."

In other words, he withstood the discipline, and did not grow up as a cavalier and nonchalant person. He seemed to be hinting that he was a "man of steel," rather than "man of steal," which The Economist parodied.

But look at his tenure. A legacy of unaccountable fiscal indiscipline. Did his well-polished leather shoes in English boarding school help his ability to be a prime minister one bit? No. There was no causality at all.

Then we have Arul Kanda Kandasamy, a product of the Royal Military College. He must have polished his (black leather) shoes thousand times over before he went to UK for his further education.

When he was interviewed by The Malay Mail back in 1985, he expressed his preference for the West Point military academy. As a mere teenager then, even three years at RMC was not enough. He wanted more discipline at a top US military college.

Was he any better as a CEO of 1MDB? No. Again, no causality. Indeed, what one remembers of his entire tenure are his words at the South Bangsar open-tent meeting: "Hang on, hang on, you have spoken, let me exercise my right of reply."

This happened just days prior to the fateful May 9 election. Since then, Arul Kanda has been relinquished of his responsibility, and (probably) blacklisted from leaving the country in light of the ongoing investigation and court case into 1MDB.

Then there is Lim Kok Wing University College. The entire staff is asked to wear black. But the college that has risen through the ranks in recent years appears to be UCSI. It is now of the top 300 private colleges in the world. Did UCSI have a wear black code? No. Again, no causality.

Failure of our education system

To date, despite the wide use of Facebook and WhatsApp on a per capita basis in the world, most Malaysian students have yet to make it to Ivy League universities. The failure of Permata, which is now under the jurisdiction of the Education Ministry, is a case in point.

Malaysia is still struggling with multiple streams of education systems, some of which have jacked up the cost of education considerably.

The whole debate about Unified Examination Certificate (UEC) is even facetious, since most UEC students can make it in lives on their own. Their credentials are already accepted by University of Oxford, Kyoto University and other top universities around the world.

Why would it matter to them – other than pride in Malaysia – if Putrajaya accepts UEC credentials or not? Besides, if Sarawak, Malacca and Selangor state governments have all accepted UEC, it goes to show that the issue has crossed the point of no return. It is only a matter of time before the proverbial shoe drops.

No one knows if Maszlee (photo) can be a good education minister. In fact, no one knows whether Malaysia has ever had one. When one talks of the glory days of Universiti Malaya, for example, the plaudits appeared to be due to former vice-chancellor Ungku Abdul Aziz.

The academic scholarship of Syed Hussein Alatas, Wang Gung Wu,  Rajah Rasiah, Edmund Terence Gomez and KS Jomo remain outstanding to this day. Their excellent books on Malaysian society, political economy and inequities are invaluable to the current effort to reconstruct Malaysia.

Malaysia should be taking their time to understand the education revolution once described by Anwar Ibrahim as "information explosion." That every degree can become useless in four years or less. Anwar, to his credit, warned about this spectre in the mid-1980s when he was the education minister

But no one listened. When no one did, the "information explosion" happened anyway, and the results are clear to see: hundreds of thousands of university graduates now remain unemployed, and cannot find a job within the first six months of their graduation.

With or without black shoes as a diversion, Malaysians should be asking themselves why and how the students can be made employable?

PHAR KIM BENG is a Harvard/Cambridge Commonwealth Fellow, a former Monbusho scholar at the University of Tokyo and visiting scholar at Waseda University.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.