Archive for the ‘Malaysian schools’ Category
10 November 2005
Unintended consequences?
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Malaysian schools.
AB Sulaiman makes a no-holds barred commentary on the state of education in Malaysia following our local universities’ slide in international ranking. His frank and painful analysis leads him to admit that the unintended consequences of social engineering in the country is the 800-pound gorilla in the way of progress.
The unintended consequences are dire: teachers teach only whatever is necessary and become mediocre in their performance, and students do not shine because they do not see any further than the need to pass an exam. They seem to be taught thus: “This is how I want you to think. This is the book you can read. Those are books you cannot read.” Do not talk about achievement motivation and striving for excellence to the students when they are taught only to conform and to the protection of the status quo.
Teachers and students alike are reduced to conformists. Teachers have to conform to the wishes of the university management only in order not to jeopardize their career prospects. Students on the same token have to behave to help ensure their studies are not interrupted by dismissals. Teachers lecture in order to guarantee their monthly salary, and students study just to pass an exam and get a degree.
What has caused the country to lead to the development of these negative features in the UM? Who is accountable for this entire fiasco?
10 November 2005
Out-of-job grads
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Malaysian schools.
As if Malaysia’s education system is not in a bad enough shape, here’s more bad news. Human Resources Minister Datuk Dr Fong Chan Onn said the week-long census carried out by the Economic Planning Unit of the Prime Minister’s Department uncovered 59,250 graduates looking for jobs.
The New Straits Times reported Dr Fong saying 81 per cent of those jobless had attended public universities and that the three main reasons the graduates cited for not getting jobs were:
- No job experience (49.7%)
- Poor command of the English language and lacking in communication skills (33.3 per cent)
- The courses they took in universities were not relevant to jobs available in the market (32.2%).
Another report in the Star had this to add about unemployed graduates:
- They want only the easy jobs
- They think they should not be inconvenienced by their work
- They do not have social skills
- They are just not hungry enough
It appears one reason for their poor attitude is due to over-protective parents who spoilt junior rotten by not giving him or her responsibilities at home. Of course there’s the over emphasis on scoring A’s, and excessive tuition, but I can almost hear parents complain that it’s the system that’s to blame. There’s this confusion and parents can’t tell schooling from education, and pity the kid who has to pay for the misapprehension. Something’s seriously amiss with education in the country and it’s a blight that’s tainted schools from primary to university levels.
A recent survey in the World Universities Rankings compiled by Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) revealed that Malaysia’s premier university Universiti Malaya (UM) fell sharply from 89th place in 2004 to 169th place this year. That’s an 80-place plunge. Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) was in 111th place last year but this year it has been unceremoniously dropped from the Top 200 bracket. Poor show all round.
It’s a situation that should have invited soul-searching but not for university administrators at UM. UM vice-chancellor Hashim Yaacob instead made a boast of its Top 200 placing in a farcical display during a press interview. He was quoted in a local daily that although UM may have slipped in its ranking, it nevertheless is better than some 30,000 major institutions around the world, having made it to the Top 200! En. Hashim expressed “great happiness” that it even did better than last year (!) since UM made it to the top 100 in three sectors. That’s an educator speaking here. What’s more appalling, billboards (see pix) celebrating UM’s ‘achievements’ have appeared in the face of public criticism and even agitation for the smug vice-chancellor’s removal. There’s something comical about the whole business, but few people are laughing.
Across the causeway, Singapore’s national university took a tumble too, from 18 to 22nd place. That’s cause for a ruckus for anyone who has any sense of pride in their public institutions, although 4 places down is nothing compared to UM’s abysmal drop. Curiously, someone wrote to the Straits Times online wondering if the slip may be attributed to insufficient ‘branding.’ You know, wrong perception of strengths and leadership, etc. Now isn’t that something?
I don’t want to go into an “I-told-you-so” slanging match but what’s happened can only be a sort of vindication for homeschoolers. You won’t believe how many people have asked if by homeschooling, our two boys would be able to find a place in local universities. Do you think they will see the light now?
25 August 2003
The Seduction of Sameness
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Malaysian schools.
It appears that the Ministry of Education is now ready to introduce significant changes (again!) to the Malaysian education system. According to a report in the STAR dated August 15, former education director-general Tan Sri Murad Mohd Nor, who heads a special committee said the review was meant to create “a national system, in which students in religious, private or national schools learnt the same things and shared the same philosophy.”
It was thought that a shared national educational experience was desirable, as it would enhance national unity. Now, what was our education system doing all these years since Merdeka, if not to provide a shared national experience? And look where it has led us all. Uniformity is not the same as unity.
While it is fine that all children should have equal and similar access to education, it is doubtful if cookie cutter education is the way forward.
For one, it assumes that everyone develops or possesses the intellectual-emotional capacity to learn at the same pace (and on cue), while ignoring the gifted and differently-abled. Worse, the state sells her people short when in the same breath we are urged to think outside the box, dare to be different (!), etc. Someone wrote that if you process kids through such a system, what you get are McKids, and not well-educated, resourceful, innovative adults suited to the competitive world of the 21st century.
Secondly, it overlooks the fact that similar sights do not produce similar thoughts. A case in point: 2 persons viewing say, the KL Twin Towers, do not necessarily ‘see’ the same thing nor form similar conclusions. One says, “Mammon!” while the other, “Mammoth!”
But there is certainly one thing that standardised mandatory public education will do: it will make our kids compliant conformists and therefore, more easily manipulated.If it seems like a moot point today, ask Hitler what he thought way back in 1933 when he seized kindergartens and schools, rewrote textbooks to emphasise Germanism “Blut und Boden” (Blood and Soil) and made membership in Hitler Youth compulsory:
“When an opponent says, I will not come over to your side. I calmly say, ‘Your child belongs to us already’. What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.”
How chillingly prescient theologian J. Gresham Machen was when in 1925 he wrote that, uniformity in education should be avoided as one of the ‘very greatest calamities into which any nation can fall’ (Reforming the Government Schools).
I am not convinced when politicians tell us they have only the best intentions in mind. I appreciate that running a country is difficult business involving complex and sensitive political realities. That is why governments around the world are easily seduced by the ideology of uniformity. But we should all be for more educational access, more diverse schooling choice, and not just improved (least of all, standardised) curriculum for all. Since that won’t come any time soon, count me out of the system. I’m taking ownership of my children’s education, and their future. Right now, my vote’s on homeschool.