Education as a fundamental in transformation
Malaysia is ruled under the guidelines laid in the FC. Diverging from the right path has become more detrimental throughout these years under the past regime. We are helpless to see our country going backward when our leaders ruled our country not according to capabilities of our human resources but through our race and religion. No doubts Malays in our country are given special rights enshrined in the FC, the country is at a deficit when all the brains have been drained to other countries as a result of the misuse of the special rights. Special rights must be governed in a proper way so as not to cause our country a price when situation now is threatening our country. Vision 2020 should be a reality given that things are done correctly.
Education is the basic fundamental in a progressive nation. The responsibilities of our newly-minted Education Minister, Dr. Mazlee Malik is thus far very heavy. If revamping our education is not done in a proper manner, the effort of transforming our country to a greater height will be going down the drain. When Dr. Mazlee Malik was first appointed in the cabinet, without knowing him before but by looking at his background, I am in doubt whether this man can bring anything constructive to the country or he is just one of those right wing religious Malay where he is going to mix religion and education in a mess. I have a growing interest throughout a month-long observation , looking at his gesture, listening to his talks and astonishingly my view over him has changed. I am surprised by his eloquence of his languages(BM, BI, and BA with some minimal Mandarin and Hakka dialect). Give him a salute thus far. It is my sincere hope that he is going the right direction to do the revamp in our education system bringing about real paradigm shift for the betterment of our country..
Under the past regime, education has been under various scrutiny where the public are not satisfied with the system and the way it was run. Firstly, national curriculum is strongly criticized when PBS was implemented. A lot of Malaysians turned away from national schools and they chose international schools for the affordable, and Chinese private schools for the middle-classed. After less than two years with PBS minced with the complaints from parents, teachers and the communities, a modified version of PBS came into place. This PBS has no meaning at all with just the appearance of the name. Recording of the performance is done offline once annually and it is subjective to the teachers concerned to assess. Evidence stressed in the real PBS is not necessary. The whole PBS system is just a joke in our curriculum. it may be true the system is a success in some western countries given that they have different social values. Asian societies have different outlook and views which are deep-rooted in their bringing up from their families and not all education systems suit everyone.
School transformation programme TS25 is in its early stage with its 3rd cohort on the way. The programme stressed on students' involvement in classes, learning through communication, discussions, looking up information through digital tools and doing presentation with the teacher controlling the process, monitoring the time and facilitating the lessons. It is something which we need to transform as the process aims at producing individuals who are able to think proactively, learn based on problems and projects, enhancing us through soft skills in the making of an all-round citizen, satisfying national philosophy of education. It is an ideal approach. However human has a great resistance to change. It takes time for all of us to understand and to make a change step by step. I have great confidence this is a wise move to mould our younger generation into useful assets of our country.
Next, the intake to our public universities through quota system was in place since independence. Meritocracy is not able to materialize given the demographics and the racial issues in our country. Earlier years after independence with a quota of 45:55 even though was seen a certain element of unfairness but given the special rights in FC, majority of Malaysians can tolerate and at that time, there are very few universities in the country. Only the top scorers can enter our universities.One Malay friend who is doing 1st year electrical engineering failed, referred and passed. However she flopped her 2nd year through a series of failure, referring and repeating and finally being kicked out from the university. To my shock, she came back a month later and told us that she was given a scholarship by the Malaysian government to continue her study in the U.S!!!! It is a far away dream to all of us. Off to US and some more on government scholarship!!! I don't really feel uneasy with the quota system as long as it is carried out logically. The above case is enough to show to our people why our country is not face-paced enough to be in the list of developed country. Till today, the quota system has turned into the so called "meritocratic system". which I will explain further later.
The marking and grading system in the public exam evolved makes education worse since the last century. During the colonial times when we were under British supervision, we were excellent no matter whether it is in mastering English Language, in critical thinking, in the freedom of speech and in the free flowing of ideas.We sat for School Certificate(Senior Cambridge), Higher School Certificate(Senior Cambridge) which are recognized as the World most difficult O Levels and A Levels Exam. Not many excel in the examination but those who excel are the real outstanding students. Through the system we can sharply differentiate who the elites are according to their academic result. A clear example during my era, we have nobody scoring straight A1s for six subjects(at that time only 6 subjects were taken into consideration) in my district with the best result at 9 units (3A1s and 3A2s). The marking is strict and we can distinguish who are better and who are not and thus paving a choice of the courses followed accordingly through meritocracy among ourselves. On the other hand, look at our marking system now. There are 60-70 students scoring straight As in a school in my district for all 10 - 12 subjects. Comparing to nobody during colonial time to 60-70 in number now, don't you think there is something wrong? Or students now are cleverer than their parents? It is just ridiculous and everybody with the right mind will understand what has happened. A particular scenario can be given as follow. Student A is excellent in his study. He scored 90+ marks for all his exam consistently for every subject. He scored 10 A1s in SPM. In another case, Student B is consistent too. He scored 65 to 70 marks for all his subjects and he scored all A1s too in his SPM. There are many students scoring all A1s in the country every year. Let say there are 3000 students with such a result. There are only 300 places for medical course in our universities. When these 3000 students are put into a pool for selection and at random, we can see that some top scorers at the 90% categories will be left out and others at 65% categories will be taken in. Through probability and hypothesis concept which normally follows a normal curve, students who score above 90 marks are rare. if the above selection system is used, isn't it very unfair to the real elites in the country?
I suggest either the grading system or the marking system be more strict to enable the differentiation of the elites and the less elites. Accordingly the elites can go for medical, engineering, dentistry .... courses where those with results below par can go for technical category. Human are born with different capacities and capabilities. We are fit to perform our jobs according to our capabilities. If this is carried out meritoriously, cases of complaints about the standard of our doctors, the substandard of our engineers who do not dare to apply for the expertise field etc.... will be minimal. It is always easier to manage 250 straight A1s graduates who asked for medical courses to be put into 300 places available with another 50s filled up with 9A1s 1A2..
Education is the basic fundamental in a progressive nation. The responsibilities of our newly-minted Education Minister, Dr. Mazlee Malik is thus far very heavy. If revamping our education is not done in a proper manner, the effort of transforming our country to a greater height will be going down the drain. When Dr. Mazlee Malik was first appointed in the cabinet, without knowing him before but by looking at his background, I am in doubt whether this man can bring anything constructive to the country or he is just one of those right wing religious Malay where he is going to mix religion and education in a mess. I have a growing interest throughout a month-long observation , looking at his gesture, listening to his talks and astonishingly my view over him has changed. I am surprised by his eloquence of his languages(BM, BI, and BA with some minimal Mandarin and Hakka dialect). Give him a salute thus far. It is my sincere hope that he is going the right direction to do the revamp in our education system bringing about real paradigm shift for the betterment of our country..
Under the past regime, education has been under various scrutiny where the public are not satisfied with the system and the way it was run. Firstly, national curriculum is strongly criticized when PBS was implemented. A lot of Malaysians turned away from national schools and they chose international schools for the affordable, and Chinese private schools for the middle-classed. After less than two years with PBS minced with the complaints from parents, teachers and the communities, a modified version of PBS came into place. This PBS has no meaning at all with just the appearance of the name. Recording of the performance is done offline once annually and it is subjective to the teachers concerned to assess. Evidence stressed in the real PBS is not necessary. The whole PBS system is just a joke in our curriculum. it may be true the system is a success in some western countries given that they have different social values. Asian societies have different outlook and views which are deep-rooted in their bringing up from their families and not all education systems suit everyone.
School transformation programme TS25 is in its early stage with its 3rd cohort on the way. The programme stressed on students' involvement in classes, learning through communication, discussions, looking up information through digital tools and doing presentation with the teacher controlling the process, monitoring the time and facilitating the lessons. It is something which we need to transform as the process aims at producing individuals who are able to think proactively, learn based on problems and projects, enhancing us through soft skills in the making of an all-round citizen, satisfying national philosophy of education. It is an ideal approach. However human has a great resistance to change. It takes time for all of us to understand and to make a change step by step. I have great confidence this is a wise move to mould our younger generation into useful assets of our country.
Next, the intake to our public universities through quota system was in place since independence. Meritocracy is not able to materialize given the demographics and the racial issues in our country. Earlier years after independence with a quota of 45:55 even though was seen a certain element of unfairness but given the special rights in FC, majority of Malaysians can tolerate and at that time, there are very few universities in the country. Only the top scorers can enter our universities.One Malay friend who is doing 1st year electrical engineering failed, referred and passed. However she flopped her 2nd year through a series of failure, referring and repeating and finally being kicked out from the university. To my shock, she came back a month later and told us that she was given a scholarship by the Malaysian government to continue her study in the U.S!!!! It is a far away dream to all of us. Off to US and some more on government scholarship!!! I don't really feel uneasy with the quota system as long as it is carried out logically. The above case is enough to show to our people why our country is not face-paced enough to be in the list of developed country. Till today, the quota system has turned into the so called "meritocratic system". which I will explain further later.
The marking and grading system in the public exam evolved makes education worse since the last century. During the colonial times when we were under British supervision, we were excellent no matter whether it is in mastering English Language, in critical thinking, in the freedom of speech and in the free flowing of ideas.We sat for School Certificate(Senior Cambridge), Higher School Certificate(Senior Cambridge) which are recognized as the World most difficult O Levels and A Levels Exam. Not many excel in the examination but those who excel are the real outstanding students. Through the system we can sharply differentiate who the elites are according to their academic result. A clear example during my era, we have nobody scoring straight A1s for six subjects(at that time only 6 subjects were taken into consideration) in my district with the best result at 9 units (3A1s and 3A2s). The marking is strict and we can distinguish who are better and who are not and thus paving a choice of the courses followed accordingly through meritocracy among ourselves. On the other hand, look at our marking system now. There are 60-70 students scoring straight As in a school in my district for all 10 - 12 subjects. Comparing to nobody during colonial time to 60-70 in number now, don't you think there is something wrong? Or students now are cleverer than their parents? It is just ridiculous and everybody with the right mind will understand what has happened. A particular scenario can be given as follow. Student A is excellent in his study. He scored 90+ marks for all his exam consistently for every subject. He scored 10 A1s in SPM. In another case, Student B is consistent too. He scored 65 to 70 marks for all his subjects and he scored all A1s too in his SPM. There are many students scoring all A1s in the country every year. Let say there are 3000 students with such a result. There are only 300 places for medical course in our universities. When these 3000 students are put into a pool for selection and at random, we can see that some top scorers at the 90% categories will be left out and others at 65% categories will be taken in. Through probability and hypothesis concept which normally follows a normal curve, students who score above 90 marks are rare. if the above selection system is used, isn't it very unfair to the real elites in the country?
I suggest either the grading system or the marking system be more strict to enable the differentiation of the elites and the less elites. Accordingly the elites can go for medical, engineering, dentistry .... courses where those with results below par can go for technical category. Human are born with different capacities and capabilities. We are fit to perform our jobs according to our capabilities. If this is carried out meritoriously, cases of complaints about the standard of our doctors, the substandard of our engineers who do not dare to apply for the expertise field etc.... will be minimal. It is always easier to manage 250 straight A1s graduates who asked for medical courses to be put into 300 places available with another 50s filled up with 9A1s 1A2..
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