‘We must not only prepare our youth for the future; we must prepare the future for our youth.’
— Abang Johari Tun Openg, 2018
The statement, made years ago, was not merely political. It was philosophical. It contained a silent revolution: the future is not a fixed destination we must fit ourselves into. It is clay to be shaped by the hands of those we empower today.
My mathematics teacher, all those years ago, operated on the opposite principle. She believed the future was a rigid mould, and my red marks proved I did not fit.
Part I: The Prophecy of Red Ink
My report card was a sea of red. Never blue. She looked at me, not with anger, but with the cold certainty of a judge passing sentence. “Kamu tidak akan berjaya dengan keputusan matematik serendah ini,” she declared. You will not succeed. “Lupakan sahaja impian angkasa. Matematik anda terlalu buruk.”
Her words were a spiritual enclosure. A wall built around a young mind’s horizon. For years, I inhabited that enclosure, believing the future was a room I was not allowed to enter.
Then the crack — a Diploma in Communications from USM; an A‑B in Microeconomics; and an A‑B+ in Macroeconomics.
No fanfare. Just a silent, tectonic shift. The prophecy was not fate — it was a suggestion I had mistaken for law. She was wrong. This is the first, critical unlearning: that an external verdict holds the power to nullify your inherent potential.
The system I endured was less a garden of curiosity and more a factory of compliance. Sit. Be silent. Do not share. Finish first.
We were taught to fear the stumble of a word, to see collaboration as cheating, to equate a wrong answer with a flawed soul. We emerged not with illuminated minds, but with institutionalised tremors.
So, when Sarawak now speaks of a ‘lifelong learning’ revolution for its workforce, why does the phrase land with a thud, not a spark? Because the very concept of ‘learning’ is spiritually entangled with that memory of judgement. You cannot build a temple of continuous growth upon the foundation of a prison.
Part II: The Hidden Dao of Modern Pathways
Here is the hidden Dao of modern education, a truth known to perhaps only one in ten: the pathways exist.
An SPM holder with a decade of dedication can walk the path to become an accredited doctor. The doors are not locked; they are simply unmarked.
I know this because I have helped build the very corridors — designing faculties, crafting modules from textbook to final assignment.
Yet, I also saw the limit of design: you can build a perfect lecture hall, but you cannot mandate the spark of true transmission from teacher to student.
That requires a different currency — makoto, sincerity, a heart unburdened by the bureaucratic KPIs that stifle spirit.
But now, observe the universe’s response to this scarcity of spirit: an overwhelming abundance of access.
The I Ching speaks of opportunity arising when the time is correct. The time is now.
- Harvard University offers the satori of its knowledge for free.
- MIT OpenCourseWare opens its entire treasure trove to the sincere seeker.
- Google grants professional certifications, the new artisans of the digital age.
For those called to formal pilgrimage, full scholarships to the halls of America, Japan, Korea, and Dubai are meticulously catalogued on platforms like Scholarships for Development (scholars4dev.com).
The gates are not just open; they are inviting. The system is not a linear ladder for the blue-marked few; it is a fractal network for the resilient many.
The question for Sarawak is not ‘Who is smartest?’ but ‘Who has the courage to shed the old skin?’
Part III: Sarawak 2036 – Where Learning Becomes Identity
Let us step forward, past the threshold of unlearning. Let us project ourselves to a more crystallised vision: Sarawak, 2036.
The post-pandemic education blueprint, launched over a decade prior, has completed its metamorphosis. It is no longer a policy. It is not even a culture. It has become identity.
How do you recognise a Sarawakian in 2036? By a certain light in the eyes. A particular texture to their curiosity. The old, familiar feats we were always famous for — our craftsmanship with keringkam and terendak, our innate understanding of the rainforest’s symphony, our communal gotong-royong — these did not disappear. They underwent a profound translation. They became the foundational syntax for a new kind of intelligence.
In 2036, the keringkam weaver from Kampung Sabuloh does not just produce exquisite gold-threaded veils. She is a sought-after ‘Pattern Architect’ for a neuromorphic AI lab in Kuching Sentral.
The ancient, intricate logic of her craft is now a formalised language she teaches to machines, creating bio-inspired neural networks. She holds a micro-credential in Computational Ethnography from MIT, earned online at her loom.
Her passion was never just weaving; it was the love of complex, beautiful structure. The system finally saw it, valued it, and gave it a namespace in the global economy.
The Iban ngajat dancer from Sri Aman is a ‘Kinetic Data Choreographer’. His mastery of space, rhythm, and storytelling — attributes honed in the ruai — is the secret algorithm behind immersive digital worlds.
He studied Human-Computer Interaction through a Google certificate, but his final thesis was performed, not written. His passion was never just dance; it was the transmission of story through the body.
This is what happens when a workforce blueprint evolves into identity: your deepest cultural attributes become your most valuable professional competencies.
Part IV: The Society That Loves Another’s Intelligence
And in this Sarawak of 2036, something even more beautiful has taken root: a society in love with learning.
Not the grim, utilitarian upskilling of the 2020s, but learning as the Japanese revere a master craftsperson — with awe for the depth of their takumi spirit; learning as the Chinese venerate a scholar — with respect for the weight of their xuéwèn. It is the French appreciation for American ingenuity, and the American fascination with French elegance.
Walk into a kopitiam. You will not just hear gossip or football. You will hear a retired fisherman, 75, explaining the oceanographic principles behind his new hydroponic farm to a table of rapt young engineers.
“This,” he will say, tapping his temple, “I learned from a 19-year-old in Finland on a learning circle last month — brilliant mind.”
There is no jealousy; only a shared passion for another’s intelligence.
A Melanau fermentation scientist is a celebrity for the sheer beauty of her wisdom. Students ask for the story of her most glorious failure. They are passionate about the intelligence of her process.
The stigma of the ‘second attempt’ is gone. It is the mark of a true learner. The most respected figure is the one with the most interesting portfolio of transformations. Their path is not scattered; it is symphonic.
In this world, the math teacher’s curse is incomprehensible. To tell a child they cannot succeed is like telling a river it cannot find the sea. It contradicts the fundamental law of the land, which is growth.
Part V: The Invitation to Shape the Clay
The 70-year-old with the student card is the elder statesperson of the learning community. Their graduation is a public festival. When they walk across the stage, their grandchildren do not see an old person finishing late. They see a mountain that chose to grow taller, and understand their own potential has no expiry date.
This is the viral frequency, the resonance that reaches the bang Joharis of our society. They hear it not as policy success, but as a spiritual homecoming. It is the sound of a people remembering that their greatest natural resource was never in the ground, but in the collective mind and spirit.
The invitation, therefore, is not to a course. It is to an identity.
Enrol — in anything. Let your first certificate be your rite of passage into the Sarawak of 2036. Do it to prove the old verdicts wrong. Do it to translate your heritage into a future language. Do it so that in twelve years, you can be the one in the kopitiam sharing a beautiful piece of wisdom you learned from a brilliant mind in another hemisphere.
Do it so that when your daughter builds her Roblox worlds, she does so knowing she is part of a lineage where passion is legible, curiosity is funded, and where the only thing red marks ever predicted was the fire of a spirit they could not, in the end, contain.
We are not preparing for an economy. We are composing a society where to be Sarawakian is to be, by definition, a luminous and perpetual student of this wondrous world.
This is how we prepare the future for our youth. We first prepare ourselves to believe the future is ours to shape.
Graduate with your grandchildren. Let that day be the most ordinary, and therefore the most extraordinary, day of our new.
The views expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of Sarawak Tribune.
