Blogging Diversity

A few months back, I wrote about the need for diversity in thinking of different ways to solve old problems. I'm well aware of the fact that the three bloggers who run this blog are anywhere close to being representative of the population that we are reaching out to.

The three of us - Tony (who started this blog), John (the latest invitee) and myself (the in between) - are all Chinese Malaysian males who are 'Western' educated, been through a national school education (John spent some time in an SRJCK, Tony speaks Chinese with his parents and his Chinese has most definitely improved after going full time into politics, I speak Chinese with my parents and recently took 2 years of Chinese classes here at Duke) and have been / are educated at the so called 'elite' schools (Oxford for Tony; Darmouth for John; LSE, Cambridge and now Duke for myself).

I try to expose myself to as many views on the education system as possible but there is no way that I would be able to understand the struggles of someone who has studied all his or her life at an SRJK (C) and then later at a Chinese independent school, or someone who has studied in rural Kelantan in a religious school or sekolah 'pondok', or someone who has studied in a Tamil school in the middle of a palm oil or rubber estate. I would not be able to identify with the experience of someone who studied Medicine in Manipal or Chinese studies in Taiwan or Islamic studies in Jordan or Egypt. I would not be able to identify with the experience of a girl who studied in an all girls environment in Malaysia through high school and then came to the US and studied in an all woman's college.

Ideally, we'd want as many viewpoints represented on this blog as possible (and I think I speak for John and Tony as well). Our challenge is that we don't know people who have the kinds of educational experiences like those that I speak of above. Furthermore, even if we know of some people who fit the above profile, there's the issue of 'quality control' and also whether the person is willing to blog regularly or be associated with this blog.

Moving on, the three of us, with input from our readers will have to figure out a new 'model' of blogging about education issues in the Malaysian context. Tony doesn't really have much time now and if I were to join a university in Malaysia (whether public or private), my blogging on this blog would probably be curtailed in voluntary and involuntary ways. John would be left to 'man the fort' so to speak.

Here are some options I can think of to increase the volume of posts (so that some of the pressure can be taken off Tony, John and myself) and the diversity of opinions as well:

1) Post items / pieces written for this blog by some of our readers. I think we're more than willing to do this on the condition that the posts are not inflammatory and that they represent an interesting viewpoint. It doesn't have to be long.

2) Invite more people to join this blog as permanent writers. Again, I think we're more than willing to allow for different voices to join the conversation here but we have to figure out a way to 'vet' the applicants. I think there's the issue of time (we don't have time to vet everyone) and also of process (do we send out 'applications'?). But if you guys can give us suggestions / 'applications', we'd be more than happy to take them.

3) Others? Please let us know what other ideas you may have.