Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Malaysian History on 10 Aug 2011.
Homeschooler Elliot who was a participant at the KemSMS (Kempen Sejarah Malaysia Sebenar) Youth History Syllabus Revision Project gives a first-person account of the recently concluded event (read the previous post).
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“I AM IMPRESSED” said Dato’ Haji Thasleem Mohd Ibrahim Al-Haj, looking at our faces across the tables. “Why? Because it is a Saturday.”
We laughed. He continued on to belabour the fact that few youths these days would be willing to give up their precious Saturdays to participate in an educational review board, much less for a subject like History.
My school-going friends have always given the perception that history was a class recognized for its sleep-inducing powers. I can’t really say how I learnt history – there were no textbooks, just an endless row of historical fiction and ‘Did You Know?’ style encyclopaedias. It was never boring. That being said, I’ll be the first to admit that my history is sketchy. It was only last month that I acknowledged, with great shame and embarrassment, that I had been confusing the Napoleonic Wars with World War One. How does that even happen!? But I digress.
We were reviewing the national history syllabus for Form 1 to Form 5. The opinions of the fourteen of us (five home-educated, eight or nine national school-goers, from age fifteen to twenty) would be heard by a panel, and then submitted to the government along with other recommendations. We each had a textbook to cover, and we were to describe each chapter, as well as to look for bias and skewed facts. Then we were to present our own ideals for each Form.
So we did that. The main problems we found were that the scopes of the textbooks were too narrow. They were not engagingly written, and sometimes dwelled too much on a certain race or religion. Herodotus, the father of history, was only mentioned as an aside. Data was lacking, for instance, on the Portuguese and Dutch colonies in Malaysia, but there were chapters on end devoted to the British. Not enough had been done to recognise the multiracial background of Malaysia. There was also a dearth of world history in the syllabus.
One of the panel members described how her niece could not recognise the name Marco Polo, with shocked murmurs of consolation from the audience. Another talked about how the syllabus has been politicized, attempting to push the spirit of patriotism down school children’s throats. No, we agreed, history is not meant to teach patriotism. Patriotism will happen naturally if one is happy with his or her country. Trying to force a person to love something only sows discontent. A person who chooses to be patriotic has so much greater the worth to a nation than that of a person told to be patriotic.
Yet another described how the syllabus has developed an ‘ethnocentric and theocentric’ view that doesn’t teach students how to think or engage. Shouldn’t we learn instead about the growth of human thought – the development of democracy and science? Throughout all this, I had the feeling that the problems we were discussing for this single subject applied towards the entire system.
There should always be a striving to constantly challenge, to question. The ability to think, like iron, can only be refined through constant pounding and a red-hot flame.
When we ended, much was said about how young we all were, how outstanding we were, and how they’d like to see more of us in the future. Joshua, who’s fifteen, was told that he had a great life awaiting him. Phrases like ‘maturity of thought’ were bandied about. We all grinned and nudged each other.
Photos:
Top (L-R): Dato’ Haji Thasleem Mohd Ibrahim Al-Haj, KemSMS Chairman; Dr Helen Ting, Committee Member; En Bakar Sulaiman, Committee Member
Bottom (From 3rd left): The 5 homeschoolers
To learn more about the Campaign for a Truly Malaysian History, go here.
To support KemSMS, add your name to the online petition here.
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About the writer: Elliot Tan who was educated at home practically all his life is currently doing his foundation year in Business in KDU.
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Malaysian History on 6 Aug 2011.
Just in case people still think homeschoolers are totally out of touch with the ‘real’ world, here’s a peek at what some of our own kids are doing to further the review of Malaysian history textbooks. Thanks Bee Leng and Swee Bin for the heads up!
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ON SATURDAY 6 AUGUST, our own former homeschoolers Elliot, Ron, Ii Ern, Joshua, Jian Eu, and Jian Lin were among youths represented in a review of Malaysian history books conducted before KemSMS committee members and chairman Dato’ Haji Thasleem Mohd Ibrahim Al-Haj.
KemSMS stands for Kempen Sejarah Malaysia Sebenar, or Campaign for A Truly Malaysian History. The interviews which began on June 28 saw youths offering views and suggestions on history textbooks for Malaysian secondary school, and what they thought should be taught. Students were divided into teams to review textbooks presently used in Forms 1 to 5.
KemSMS was launched on May 15 in Petaling Jaya, comprising concerned parents, retired educators, scholars and representatives of several non-governmental organisations (NGOs) including Sisters in Islam founder Zainah Anwar; Universiti Malaya law lecturer Assoc. Prof. Dr Azmi Sharom; and history textbook writer Dr Ranjit Singh Malhi. Representatives from ALIRAN, Tamil Foundation Malaysia, KOMAS, National Interlok Action Team (NIAT), Centre for Policy Initiatives (CPI), Pertubuhan Jamaah Islah Malaysia (JIM) and Malaysia Hindu Sangam are also represented in the 22-member group.
“KemSMS is planning to undertake detailed studies of the major problems and shortcomings in the existing syllabus and text books,” said Dr Lim Teck Ghee who is also KemSMS campaign spokesperson. “Our efforts in the long run are not only aimed at policy reform, but also to raise public awareness of the importance of fair, just and honest history that is inclusive of the contributions of all races and cultures in the country,” said Lim.
Photos:
Top L – KemSMS committee members; Top C – KemSMS Chairman Dato’ Haji Thasleem Mohd Ibrahim Al-Haj in yellow; Top R – Ii-Ern; Bottom L – Elliot; Bottom C – Joshua; Bottom R – Ron and Jian Eu (with mike)
To support KemSMS, add your name to the online petition here.
More about the Campaign here.
More photos from the review session, go to Swee Bin’s Facebook here.
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: schooling on 4 Aug 2011.
Writer – Director Kam Raslan’s latest piece in Talking Edge is out. If you are a reader of The Edge business weekly, you will be familiar with Kam’s column (Options pullout) which purports to be replies to real letters in his mailbox. It’s consistently clever and always tongue-in-cheek, and this time he trains his wit on homeschooling while taking yet another swipe at the country’s education system.
Dear Kam,
Who do I need to talk to if I want to home-school my children?
Full-on Mum
As far as I know, I don’t think you have to talk to anyone if you want to home-school your children. I might well be wrong but I think nobody will notice if your children don’t ever go to school. All you probably have to do is not send them to school.
I’m not really sure if home schooling is a good or bad thing. On the one hand, you will probably give your children a better education at home than they would get at a local school, but on the other, going to school is about more than just studying. It’s also about a child becoming independent and learning how to interact with other people. You probably can’t teach “people skills”; it’s something children need to find out for themselves. School is also about learning how to deal with authority. I’ve met so many people who first sensed that something was not quite right with the country when they realised that what they were being told at school was utter rubbish.
Perhaps I’m not entitled to venture an opinion because I did not go to school in Malaysia. I went to school in Britain and although I had the best education that money could buy, I still failed all my exams. Somehow I managed to learn how to read and write and I also learnt how to finish the sentence, “I cannot hand in my homework because …” in many exciting and creative ways. I did my A Levels in a tutorial college where classrooms only had five students. If any style of education could have squeezed a result out of me, it should have been this. I took two years to study for my A Levels and I still managed to fail them all, and by very convincing margins.
(You can read the rest on his website)
I thought it might be good to read what you have to say about Kam’s comment that school is also “about a child becoming independent and learning how to interact with other people. You probably can’t teach “people skills”; it’s something children need to find out for themselves. School is also about learning how to deal with authority.” He’s got his tongue firmly planted in cheek as usual, but the bit on interaction and authority should make for an interesting discussion.
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Book Review on 2 Aug 2011.
Laurence Steinberg’s Beyond the Classroom offers a very disturbing look at the state of education in US schools. I think we can agree with the author that before we start fixing school, we ought to think about forces outside the classroom that’s contributing to the decline of student achievement. He lists three, but we’ll look at the first.
Top on the list is what is termed the glorification of stupidity. We’re living in an age where foolishness is the defining characteristic trait of our heroes and it’s having a profound but unhealthy impact on our kids. Think Wayne’s World, Dumb and Dumber, Beavis and Butt-head, TV’s long-running series The Simpsons, to name a few. What is it about stupidity that fascinates us and our adolescent children in particular?
Dr Steinberg does not say that students have become less intelligent, but that they have become less interested in being educated than they were in previous generations. While he does not offer hard data, he believes the widespread popularity of these characters at a time when intellectual achievement is especially low does not appear to be a mere coincidence. “Never before have so many lead characters been defined by their lack of knowledge, their disdain for education, and their limited intellectual abilities. And never before have characters like this served as role models for so many young people,” he adds.
Bart Simpson’s dysfunctional family and lazy, ignorant dad Homer may be a bag of laughs, but the joke’s on us when we ignore the message these characters send, that stupidity is, uhm, kewl? You can say the same for the animated series South Park (which the author does not name), with its crude language and dark humour. South Park was written for adults, but it has a massive following among teens who are outside its intended audience , and you’ll be hard pressed to find a teen who doesn’t know Kenny and his maladjusted antisocial friends.
Perhaps you might be wondering if I’m making too much of an American issue (“Hey, Malaysian students doing well, what. Look at the number of straight A students in our SPM!”) It’s very simple – I believe there is a great commonality to human ill. With wealth and a growing middle-class, come the same kind of problems confronting the first world and pretty soon we too will have to pay the social cost of unrestrained capitalism, rapid urbanization, and the loss of a moral centre. Sure, go ahead and reform school, but it will go nowhere if everything outside the classroom undermines it.
Dr Steinberg’s book is a view from the frontlines. The broader issue of schooling has lessons for those of us who want to do better at homeschooling our own kids, so it’s important to understand what we are up against. Please note that homeschooling is not about isolating our kids. It’s insulating them with habits of heart and mind so they can tell the difference between what’s good, and what’s crude and rude. And isn’t that one of the things education seeks to accomplish?
Next post:
The socialization of indifference.
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Social awareness on 25 Jul 2011.
On 9 July, 19-year old Elliot marched at the Bersih 2.0 rally together with us his parents, along with thousands of like-minded Malaysians. It was an eventful and dramatic experience that will stay with us for a long time. I asked Elliot to rush out a brief account for a publication, but since it wasn’t used, I’m posting it here instead.
I HAVE NEVER FELT PROUDER OF MY COUNTRY than I did on the 9th of July, 2011. It was together with my family, and thousands of people of different races, religions, ages, and languages that I realized how much Malaysia means to me. A democratic government is a representation of its people, placed there by the people’s choice. Voting is an important right for any person – it is how they influence the country they live in. It is how they choose leaders who want what is best for the people. Why shouldn’t there then be clean and fair elections?
A demonstration happens because people love their country – because there is no better way for them to express their feelings. If other avenues of expression have been curtailed, the easiest way to show solidarity with an ideal is out there on the streets, shoulder to shoulder with their fellow man.
There were tens of thousands of people, showing their displeasure against injustice, standing on common ground. The Bersih rally was epic. I shouted, I marched. I felt an almost profound love for my neighbours. I held my head high. People sang and smiled. When the water cannons sprayed and the tear gas fired, it didn’t matter so much, really, because we were together. The noise was tremendous, and the air was filled with a riotous joy. We were all in the same boat. When it rained, we laughed, and marched and walked.
I have been alive for less than half of this country’s existence – I’m not even twenty. I’m a Chinese who doesn’t speak Chinese, a Malaysian who knows little Malay. But this is my country, and I love it.
I love it because I have hope, because I have faith that this country can become a better place. Change does not come easily, but I think that Bersih has shown that there are people who want it, and I believe that change will happen. That is why I stood in the rain on the 9th of July, and I would gladly do so again.
Photo: Ex-homeschooler and college student Elliot in un-Bersih blue with a friend from our church (in cap and shades), in front of Menara Maybank
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Book Review on 20 Jul 2011.
A lot of discussion regarding the state of education in the country tend to focus inordinately on systems, curricula, methods, standardized tests, teacher training, etc – which is well and good if we’re talking about trying to prop up an institution. Hence pronouncements like the one recently made by our DPM and Education Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin. A massive overhaul is in the works we’re told, aimed at promoting a global mindset: “We need to review the entire system in line with the changing times to promote world-class thinking and in-depth learning,” he said.
Reading what the DPM also said – “(S)ome people are also not aware of where our education system is heading, as we have the national system, the vernacular schools and international schools” - I feel a sense of dread at what’s implicit in that off-the-cuff statement. Pity the school kids (and their family) who’ll have to put up with all these too frequent and painful revamps.
I’ve been reading a book called Beyond the Classroom by Dr Laurence Steinberg which examines the results of an extensive research on American education conducted over a period of ten years. 20,000 teenagers from nine high schools were surveyed and hundreds of parents and dozens of their teachers and school administrators were interviewed. Although the book came out in 1996, I suspect most of the findings are just as valid today. Indeed there’s much that speaks to our bog standard Malaysian education, and why an overhaul however well-intentioned, may not be enough.
A single article won’t do it justice so I am planning a couple of posts in the coming days. But if you want an elevator pitch of the book, its subhead says it all: Why school reform has failed and what parents need to do.
Surveying the numerous studies and attempts at reforms in the US, Dr Steinberg has this to say:
“Our findings suggest that the sorry state of American student achievement is due more to the conditions of students’ lives outside of school than it is to what takes place within school walls. In my view, the failure of the school reform movement to reverse the decline in achievement is due to its emphasis on reforming schools and classrooms, and its general disregard of the contributing forces that, while outside the boundaries of the school, are probably more influential.”
In short, school reform is not the solution. Dr Steinberg is not suggesting that schools should be abandoned; he believes we’re spending money fixing the wrong things and overlooking the one place that matters most, which is the home. Not a forehead slapping revelation, I know. Note that the book isn’t at all about homeschooling and neither does it advocate homeschooling in the least. But you can guess why such a book appeals to the homeschooling advocate in me.
For sure, the book has its detractors and some reviewers say the author isn’t saying anything new. Nevertheless, if schools have lost the plot and if attempts at reform are destined to fail, an education at home is a no-brainer and a perfectly viable option for our kids. Now if the thought of homeschooling your own children scares you, imagine entrusting your children into the hands of our Education Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin.
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Announcement on 14 Jul 2011.
CYBERWELLNESS WORKSHOP
23 JULY 2011, 10 am – 3 pm
No 2, Jalan Rajawali 3, Bandar Puchong Jaya,
47100 Puchong, Selangor, Malaysia
Children spend half their waking hours in cyberspace, while parents unfamiliar with the internet do not know what their children are up to, and cannot understand why they seem so disconnected from the family. Together with Generasi Gemilang, Community At Heart brings you this practical workshop to help parents and educators learn how to to engage their children and the internet.
Go to our NOTICES pages for info and registration.
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Public Schooling on 31 May 2011.
SCHOOL TEACHERS do an amazing job each day but it’s an unenviable one. Sure, it is a ‘noble’ profession shaping and nurturing young minds, but no matter how well-equipped or resourceful, there’s only this much a person can do.
If raising a child or two at home is as ‘stressful’ as it is often made out to be, imagine the extraordinary demands made on a teacher who is expected to deal with 40 attention-deficit kids in a classroom.
Funnily enough, a lot of parents think nothing about leaving their own darling children in the care of overtaxed and overworked teachers in underperforming and over-politicized schools. Why then do parents who balk at the idea of teaching one or two children at home because they are ”not qualified” or lacking in patience assume that these same poor teachers are super-equipped and eminently qualified to teach a classroom of 40 or more at one time?
Here’s something I picked up which is unfunnily true and tragic, which illustrates my point:
Being interviewed by the school administration, the eager teaching prospect said: “Let me see if I’ve got this right. You want me to go into that room with all those kids, fill their every waking moment with a love for learning; and I’m supposed to instill a sense of pride in their ethnicity, modify their disruptive behavior, observe them for signs of abuse; and even censor their T-shirt messages and dress habits.
“You want me to wage a war on drugs and sexually transmitted diseases, check their backpacks for weapons of mass destruction, and raise their self-esteem.
“You want me to teach them patriotism, good citizenship, sportsmanship, fair play, how to register to vote, how to balance a checkbook and how to apply for a job.
“I am to check their heads for lice, maintain a safe environment, recognize signs of anti-social behavior, make sure all students pass the mandatory state exams, even those who don’t come to school regularly or complete any of their assignments.
“Plus, I am to make sure all the students with handicaps get an equal education regardless of the extent of their mental or physical handicap. I am to communicate regularly with the parents by letter, telephone, newsletter and report card.
“All of this I am to do with just a piece of chalk, a computer, a few books, a bulletin board, a big smile and on a starting salary that qualifies my family for food stamps. You want me to do all of this, yet you expect me not to pray?”
Now you know why it didn’t take much to convince my wife and I to keep our kids at home and homeschool them ourselves.
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Announcement on 14 May 2011.
Ex-diplomat, corporate consultant, amateur historian and writer Andrew Barber has another book out called, Penang At War (A History of Penang during and between the First and Second World Wars 1914-1945). If you have enjoyed Barber’s previous books, you will be pleased to know he will be giving a lecture at the launch of his new book at Alice Smith School (Primary Campus) this coming Thursday, 19th May. The writer who read my online review kindly alerted me to the event which I’m sure would interest those of us who love history. My wife and I will be there, so I hope to see you too.
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Announcement on 7 Apr 2011.
MEGAN KOH IS A 13-YEAR OLD HOMESCHOOLER AND SHE LOVES HISTORY. Like a lot of homeschoolers who’s crazy about anything, Megan has translated her passion for history into a magazine that she hopes to publish every 3 months. Called The History Magazine, it will have lots of “cool and interesting things you probably didn’t know about,” says Megan. The magazine will have quizzes and fun things for kids to do, and also feature contributions from subscribers too.
Now, this seems like a very ambitious project for a young girl who isn’t embarrassed to tell you that she hated history once. But that was back when she had to study it in a conventional school, and before Mom and Dad decided to pull her out and educate her at home.
Well, the first issue of The History Magazine is out, and what a remarkable effort it is – 26 pages in all! I’ve got a few snapshots of Megan’s magazine here, but if you want to read it you’ll have to visit her blogsite to get a subscription. And you should, too. I’m sure Megan’s fantastic work will inspire other homeschoolers to turn on their creative juices and embark on their own projects as well.
Here’s how the inaugural issue of the magazine looks like.
Page 3 of the History Magazine asks “What did you learn in history today?” and another question that’s not often asked, “What did you do for history today?”
Page 12 is on little known facts about Egypt (which is the theme of the magazine)
Megan’s collaborator Chloe gives us an overview of creatures that have been depicted in Ancient Egyptian art and artifacts.
What a cool way to learn history. Way to go, Megan!
If you want to find out more, please visit The History Magazine blog. To subscribe, click on the SUBSCRIBE tab on the blogsite. The History Magazine is written by kids for kids, but I’m sure Megan will be glad to have among her subscribers moms and dads who are kids at heart.
We were reviewing the national history syllabus for Form 1 to Form 5. The opinions of the fourteen of us (five home-educated, eight or nine national school-goers, from age fifteen to twenty) would be heard by a panel, and then submitted to the government along with other recommendations. We each had a textbook to cover, and we were to describe each chapter, as well as to look for bias and skewed facts. Then we were to present our own ideals for each Form.
