28 March 2006

An autistic child’s dilemma

Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Uncategorized.

[As if to underscore the perplexing state of education in the country, here's an email sent to Malaysiakini, dated 28 March].

After failing to receive a reply from the Education Ministry, the mother of an autistic student has turned to the media to get the attention of the authorities.

She made an appeal to Education Minister Hishamuddin Hussein to allow her son Yuri Azzari to sit for the PMR examination in stages over two years.

Che An Abdul Ghani said the relaxation of the rule would enable her son to sit for four subjects in 2006 and the rest in 2007.

She said Yuri Azzari suffered from autism, a condition characterised by abnormal mental activity, and could not take the whole examination at one sitting.

The appeal was made after she consulted her son’s teacher in the special class at the Putrajaya Secondary School at Precinct 11 (1) and the views of a psychiatrist.

“My son lacks focus, is hyperactive, and cannot focus on his studies at school or his revision at home,” she told Bernama.

“This is not a question of postponement (in sitting the examination). This is a question of the boy’s inability to sit for the examination. I know he cannot do it even if he takes five years to study,” she said.

Asked why she was making the request through the media, Che An said she had failed to get any result through other means including approaching the Special Education Department last January.

She also did not receive a reply to the letter which she sent to the education minister’s office on March 19.

Che An also asked the ministry to review its system on providing education to problematic children because the children are required to sit examinations together with normal children.

According to the report, during the interview with his mother, Yuri, 16, who is physically normal, was engrossed in singing without heeding the presence of the reporter in his house.

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27 March 2006

Education for special needs

Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Uncategorized.

It’s a pity that despite the stated intentions of our Education Ministry to promote ‘world-class’ education, innovation and progress are not its best-known traits. For instance, homeschoolers in the country have resigned to any headway in discussing the merits of alternative education and seeking for accommodation in the present national system. In fact we have stopped pursuing dialogue. Compulsory education is the 800lb gorilla that is being fed a diet of race and politics, rendering it unresponsive to alternatives that challenge policies. So, how to talk?

Take the issue of facilities for children with special needs. While the government insists that children with special needs should be enrolled in conventional schools, very, very few schools have trained/qualified special needs teachers or facilities to be of any help. Some years ago, one mother I know went from meeting to meetings with the Minister himself seeking permission to enroll her autistic child in an international school, only to be turned down – this in spite of supporting medical reports and the fact that the international school (generally closed to locals by law) had the necessary resources her child needed.

And to this day, parents intending to homeschool have been rejected for no reason but that it’s the law (how some parents resist official decree is another story for another time). Yet, homeschoolers constantly make the headlines, even here in Malaysia. The most recent being Yao-ban Chan (see March 11 post) whose family, by the way, is no longer resident in the country.

Now we have math whiz Adi Putra, the seven-year old kid who fascinated everyone with his 12th grade mathematical ability. His parents dutifully sent him to a conventional school amidst great fanfare and pledges from the Education Ministry who promised support in cash and kind – you know, the usual platitudes. But he’s one sad unhappy kid.

On Friday, papers reported that Adi had been cutting classes because he was bored. To his parents’ consternation, Adi has been threatened with expulsion.

The parents of the seven-year-old boy have received show-cause letters from his school, SK Jalan Matang Buluh in Bagan Serai, warning them that he could be expelled for cutting classes too often.

His mother Serihana Elias, a former teacher, said her son was reluctant to go to school because he was bored with the basic syllabus of reading, writing and counting (mengira) laid down by the Education Ministry.

Adi Putra, who could read newspapers by the age of four, had told his mother that he would prefer studying at a school like Sekolah Islam Antarabangsa in Kuala Lumpur.

What was the school thinking?

Anyway, there’s good news for Adi finally. Education Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin said yesterday: “The ministry has organised some programmes for him but we are not forcing anyone to do it. If his father wants him to change schools, I have no problems with that. Just send in the application and I will approve it.”

That’s commendable. It’s a concession that’s reluctantly made, apparently, if you read what Perak Education Department director Mohammed Zakaria Mohd Noor had to say (Adi comes from Perak). The department director was reported to have said they would have “preferred Adi Putra to complete his national primary school curriculum so that he could become a well-rounded individual.”

You know what they say about schools dumbing down on real education? It’s true, and it’s happening. Here.

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11 March 2006

Uni’s youngest PhD grad is a homeschooler

Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Uncategorized.

Melbourne University’s youngest-ever PhD graduate is a homeschooler

Achievers who are homeschoolers are not unusual and scores make the headlines every year. But when Melbourne Uni reported that its youngest ever PhD grad was a homeschooler who was born in Malaysia ( his family lived in New Zealand since he was three and later in Australia when he was 16), lots of people here sat up and took notice.

WHEN he was 10, while his peers swung from monkey bars and charged around with rugby balls, Yao-ban Chan sat year 12 exams in statistics and calculus. He scored 91 and 90.

It is such a mind-boggling accomplishment that it almost makes his latest achievement seem commonplace.

At 21, today he becomes the youngest-ever PhD graduate at Melbourne University.

“I always liked maths, I always found it fun,” Mr Chan said with trademark understatement from his office in the university’s mathematics department yesterday. Mr Chan, who was born in Malaysia and raised in New Zealand, was largely home-schooled by his mother Peck-Woon, a microbiologist, and father George, a director with Heinz.

(Read the rest here)

According to the 2001 Newsletter of the New Zealand Mathematical Society, Yao-ban was also an accomplished pianist who studied piano performance (passed LTCL last year) and was a regular accompanist and singer with his church choir. At home, he played computer games and table tennis. He also read extensively and wrote fantasy stories and had s put up two origami exhibitions and conducted a demonstration class.

Way to go Yao-ban!

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