Tiara Shafiq is the maintainer and founder of EducateDeviate, a blog and resource site that aims to inspire young people through alternative education. As she is originally from Malaysia (currently studying in Brisbane) the blog is targeted towards Malaysians, promoting young Malaysians and providing opportunities outside the traditional school system that they can participate in.

Tiara is currently applying to the KaosPilots, a social enterprise and business design school in Aarhus, Denmark - hoping to become the first Asian student in their 17-year-history! To achieve this goal she has set up a blog, Wanna Be A KP to document her progress.

Last August you were at the UN Youth Assembly, and you have just been accepted as a delegate to the World Youth Congress 2008 - what makes these events worth attending? Are there any in the future you have your eyes on?

For me, it’s the opportunity to connect with other inspiring young people around the world and find out what they are passionate about. Being in a room filled with all that passionate energy is very inspiring - it certainly motivates me to continue making a difference! That said, some events are better planned than others.

The UN Youth Assembly I went to wasn’t very well-organized despite its high costs, but soon after I was accepted for the Asia Pacific Cities Youth Summit in Brisbane which was free, and so much organized and fun! It is a bit of a roulette with these conferences. The World Youth Congress sounds promising, but I still need to work out airfare, haha!

I like that I got accepted based on my blog - it shows that conferences are starting to see the Internet as a viable medium for making change and it would be exciting to talk to the other attendees about how we can all use the Internet for the greater good.

I would have liked to go to the i-genius summit in March, mainly because the KaosPilots are there but also because it seems to be a bit more relaxed and casual. TED would be great if I could afford $6000! CIVICUS in Scotland just opened up applications and I’m considering going, as it’s also mostly free (everything except airfare) and is also well-respected. Generally any sort of conference that gets young people together working on interesting goals and actions would be great, and often it’s the smaller ones that work the best.

You have studied at University in Malaysia and Australia but you said that the current education system is more about scoring than learning, what does Alternative Education mean to you?

For me, alternative education refers to anything outside the tradition education system - this means regular school, graded on exams, chalkboard-and-textbook learning. A lot of focus is on external factors - how did you score? What was your grade? There isn’t really any focus on the internal - what did you learn? How do you feel? What did you understand? Certain intellectual pursuits (such as math and science) are heavily supported while other subjects (music, arts) are considered “not smart”. It rewards those that perform best by memorization but punishes everyone else. It’s about study not learning.

There are many alternatives to the traditional system that encourage diversity of interests, the love of learning, different styles of learning, and a holistic view of students. Whether you’re learning how to paint in watercolours in a small group, or going on a volunteer group trip to Zambia, or reading a book on bugs because you saw an unusual beetle yesterday and want to find out more about it, alternative education lets you use all of yourself to learn whatever you want to learn. You direct your own learning; it’s not dictated for you.

I get the feeling that you don’t stay in one place for too long, what are some of the things that you have learnt from traveling around the world?

Haha! I am quite the nomad. I’ve learnt that assumptions are rarely true - I’m often surprised with how often some long-held assumption I’ve held about a place or people is nowhere near the truth. I’ve learnt about interacting and living with all sorts of different temperaments - often what is required in one country is absolutely taboo elsewhere! I have definitely learnt how to absorb the local norms and cultures instead of imposing my own worldview (that doesn’t mean I cease to be myself - I just don’t insist on small things having to go my way when it’s obvious it works better their way).

The biggest thing I’ve learnt from my travels is just the psyche of different countries…each place has its own personality, its own mindset, its own way of doing things. Some are more individual and specific to the person, but a lot of it is definitely communal. It’s fascinating to learn why people behave the way they do, why they believe what they believe. There’s a lot of history behind that, so even just finding out why one culture loves soya sauce (for example) is an interesting historial educational opportunity.

Your main project at the moment is trying to become a KaosPilot. What exactly is that and how is your progress going so far?

The KaosPilots is a social entrepreneurship and business design school in Aarhus, Denmark (they also have schools elsewhere in Europe). It’s a very different kind of business school - instead of lectures and papers, you learn through hands-on real-world work with actual companies on actual projects. Final exams are projects developed by yourself. The education gives you a toolbox for turning your ideas into workable projects, which are sustainable and also competitive. There is a strong focus on sustainability and what they call “win-win-win” - profitable not just to you and your client/customer, but also to society. A lot of their business focus is on the creative industries, so there are many KaosPilots that go on to advertising, fashion, media, events, consulting, and so on. Many others go on to work on community projects - one KP worked with women’s empowerment, while another formed the first Tibetan football team. The education encourages you to be independent, creative, and productive in your community and the world.

The KaosPilots used to be very Scandinavian but now is expanding throughout the world. They have had a number of international students, as well as international Outposts, but they have yet to have an Asian student - until me, if I get accepted! Right now I’m still finalizing my application - not only would I have to submit a diary and a written form, I also have to make a 100 second video answering a few questions. I have less than a month to do this! I’m also working on getting funding and sponsorship to cover tuition and travel costs - I’ve found a couple of grants that look promising, but I still need a lot of help. I’m considering organizing a couple of events to help me raise funds along the way.

I’m chronicling my progress on another of my blogs, Wanna Be A KP.

Most young people use blogs to talk about what they did on the weekend and to share photos, but the internet makes it easy for young entrepreneurs to do much more than that. What are your goals for your blog and how effective has it been so far?

My goal for EducateDeviate is to make it a useful and viable resource for young people interested in alternatives in education and looking for ways to delve into their passions. Currently I am working with Matt Johnson, an experienced web developer and designer who is helping me use Expression Engine to expand the site’s functionality and allow me to make it even more effective. I’m so grateful that he’s willing to help me pro bono - as a young person, I don’t exactly have thousands of dollars to spend on designers or developers, yet that is what my website needs most!

I get emails regularly from young people, particularly young Malaysians, who are looking for ways to do what their heart wants to do and find my website to be a great push in that direction. In school, most unorthodox passions are stifled and young people are told to do what’s conventional and safe. My blog gives inspiration and support to those young people that want to buck the system and do their own thing. In the past couple of years, the Ministry of Education has taken on a different view of education that recognizes the danger of relying too much on exam results and emphasizes the importance of extracurricular activities. I find this really heartening as this shows that we are moving in a better direction with regards to education, and I’d like to think that my blog helped with the mindset change.

Where do you want to be in 2020?

Hmm! I’d be 35 then. By then I would have liked to work on projects that make a big impact on young people in their communities - actually put my myriad ideas into practice. The Education Revolution would be well underway, and more and more young people are taking up all sorts of different ways to learn different things - with “traditional” schools being dramatically reformed to the benefit of the students. I’d like to be somewhere that has a lot of creative energy and potential, where people are constantly working on things that benefit themselves and their neighbours. I always have trouble with immigration (due to my Bangladesh passport) and if I don’t have a UN passport by 2020, hopefully I could have a passport that doesn’t require so many visas all the time - or hopefully by that time visas would be abolished and it’s easier to travel across lands!

Interviewed by Ross Hill, an Australian entrepreneur with a strong interest in the social web - his current projects include Yabble, Rentoid, CoverHunt and The Hive.

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Posted on February 25th, 2008 by Ross