Malaysian Education System: Too Good To Be True?

Today, while surfing through Malaysia Today website, I've come across this particular blog entry http://www.mpkapar.com/manikavasagam/posts/msian-edu-systemnot-good-enough/ . Here's your first task (if you're Malaysian), browse through it.

Now that you have read it, good! The next one will be, read mine.

What I am going to write hereafter (I promise), is nothing like political debates as of the blog I've given you link to. I had gone through 11 years of Malaysian Education System (MES) and I'm sure there's good toss of pros and cons there. I'm not, at all, against parents opting for their children to pursue education of different language medium, even different environment studies. I believe it shows how caring and hardworking are parents in giving their children the best they could. Excellent education is their top priority, no question asked.

Almost a decade ago, our far-sighted PM Tun Mahathir see the need to revamp and re-brand our education accordingly to the world's need. Teach Science and Maths in English, we're told. Heaps of effort had gone to improve and optimize not only of teaching materials, but also attracting teachers' time and 'extra-mile' duty. Later last year, then there's this hoo-ha about REVISING this idea of English-instruction medium proposed by our very own Education Minister. By end of this year, the ministry will DECIDE on whether to go on with it, or not. The reason? The rural kids can't catch up with the urban youngs. Not only of lame excuse, but also impertinent to nation development, hampering us to compete with the rest of the world. Sure, some may say countries like Japan, South Korea, China (within our neighborhood) thrived and proved themselves despite their education being taught in their respective mother tongues. But may I add, hard-work had nothing to do with our instruction medium. These countries advance fast forward because they don't compromise with their plans, and what about us? We staggered in the middle of journey.

As Prof. Khoo Khay Kim of University Malaya expressed in one of his articles that I've come across, today Malaysian universities are expected to 'produce' employable graduates for the country work force, not so much of gaining and making use of the knowledge taught in real life. Universities had lost their respectable titles, of place to obtain ongoing knowledge and undepleting resource of human minds advancement, and most departments are geared towards conferring certificates to shoot up candidates employment possibility. My favorite columnist in The Star, Azmi Sharom in his forth nightly columns agree with Khoo in his article 'Producing First Class Human Capital'. In this view of blaming education in universities as reason for their graduates unemployable, I'm not in favor of it. University is there for you to further your studies on something that should strike the most to you as mysteries. It is not there for popular demands on job-tickets. Dazzling as it could be, we could graduate from top university in the world, but we cannot pretend to be knowledgeable. A piece of paper from any university in the world can't really fool anyone of our intelligence, and obviously we cannot fake maturity and smartness when our actions indicate otherwise. So actions speak louder than certificates in-terms of securing our future job.

Our schools had had achieved something at international plateau. We've had our talented youngs, educated locally, won prestigious awards such as Promising Young Scientist by Intel couple of years back, and many other that I'm not aware of. We've bright scholars spread all over the country, all we need is just some collecting job and polishing these talents to maximise outputs. I personally known a bright girl who's a National Silver Medal Award holder for Physics, at 15 years old, came from sekolah pondok far up in Kelantan. We're not short of geniuses (contrary to some top ministers said in newspaper over dinner galas), but we're handicapped in finding them and that's sad.

In my humble opinion, the saddest thing about our education is that it's too exam oriented. A's are all mattered, below those grades simply un-acceptable. Who had not heard of a 12 years old girl hanged herself to death after discovering she'd scored 4A and an E in UPSR last year? Every year, we've top SPM scholars getting more and more A's, by folds from the previous year. With limited number of universities, we can't accommodate all students ranging from different areas of interest. What happened is then, they only select a quota of A's students (mostly of science or business edu background) to enter uni, leaving most of the Arts students behind. To add to injury, much these A's students also don't have much of choice of what they want to pursue, they're simply given the choice between the devil and the deep blue sea:take what we give you, or leave it. What kind of diabolical attitude is that, I wonder if that's almost violating human rights!

Now, my vote is against the ministry to revert back to Bahasa Malaysia teaching of Science and Maths. If for any reason, government whole-heartedly accept the notions that English-medium is obstructing learning advancement, I would not hesitate in pursuing education of my children in the future to English schools (Singapore is the closest I could think of), because I have lost confidence in MES, just as the 2 ministers aforementioned had done to their kids.

I will now start reading biographies of famous and talented scientists of the world, to seek nature of their education backgrounds. Einstein's proved to be able to just manage to pass through a polytechnic, secured a patents clerk job, while writing 4 monumental papers that revolutionized space and time dimensions in Physics, galvanizing his name in Science, resounding his ingenious notions in the community for centuries to come.