Archive for December, 2005
22 December 2005
Whiz kid
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Uncategorized.
Adi Putra Abdul Ghani, a six-year-old mathematics prodigy from Perak is drawing attention from government types. Minister of Education Datuk Seri Hishammuddin is impressed. “He sat on my chair just now. He looked so comfortable there that I started to worry that I may lose my job to this brainy boy,” joked the Minister.
The boy’s father Abdul Ghani Abdul Wahid is a Tenaga Nasional Berhad officer while mother Seri Hana Ilias teaches English in a school. News reports said Adi who was taught at home (he was never enrolled in a kindergarten is what they mean) surprised everyone with his grasp of algebra, trigonometry and indices. Meanwhile the Terengganu State government announced that it was adopting Adi, and that educational expenses and training programme of the math genius would be borne by the State government.
But what caught my eye was what Hishamuddin said next.
According to Hishammuddin the ministry was looking into ways to promote a more flexible education system which could be equally accessed by all students regardless of their social backgrounds. “We don’t want to see any students in rural areas, who are poor, handicapped or smart like Adi Putra, to be marginalised or deprived of access to education,” he said.
Although I suspect homeschooling was not on the minister’s mind when he talked about a flexible education system, wouldn’t it be great if the MOE start looking at it as an option - and not just for rural kids?
3 December 2005
Preschool for a head start?
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Uncategorized.
I get nervous with all the hype over preschool. California’s initiative in pushing for the Preschool for All Act, if successful, could help make Universal Preschool a reality. The fact that advocates are talking about compulsory preschool for 4-year olds as if it would solve social ills and correct educational deficits, is disturbing.
Here in Malaysia, the education ministry too harbours similar ambitions but infrastructure and funding at this moment are major obstacles in the way. I’m glad for that. Some zealous educators point to Head Start as evidence that preschool works. Wendy McElroy sounds the alarm in an article in Foxnews titled, Will Universal Preschool Give All Kids a Head Start? and points to new studies that show otherwise:
[T]he DC-think tank Cato Institute observes, “The most comprehensive synthesis of Head Start impact studies to date was published in 1985 by the Department of Health and Human Services. It showed that by the time children enter the second grade, any cognitive, social, and emotional gains by Head Start children have vanished … The net gain to children and taxpayers is zero.”
McElroy also has this to say about government’s dangerous presumption:
This is the great danger: the presumption that government can raise children better than parents. If universal preschool is voluntary, then it may merely create another massive and ultra-expensive bureaucracy that accomplishes little.
If it is compulsory, then universal preschool will extend the government’s usurpation of parenthood so that all 3- and 4-year-olds are under state supervision.
I understand there is a place for preschool, but I certainly don’t see why the state should usurp the role of parents and take over their kids at such an early age or at any age. Compulsory preschool! This then is the bigger issue and it is utterly appaling to me. Is not the damage done to families by state-sponsored schooling already self-evident?