I almost find the government of MALAYsia and their nefarious sense of flip flopping on policies and especially so when it comes to Education policies sickening.
If you haven't heard the news then please come out from under your shell. We are yet again changing midstream the course of the dissemination of knowledge of Science and Math in English to Malay. The fact that my generation of school goers did learn our Bio, Chem and Physics and Math electives in Malay does not mean we excelled in it we just reverted to textbooks and reading material in ENGLISH to graps the fundamentals. Having said that I used English books for History and Geography too ahahah made it so much more interesting than grappling with the 'malay-nised' English terms which sounded out of this world ... like the first time I learnt tetikus was the Malay word for the mouse we use with our PCs eheheheh it was like errrrr ok ...
Anwar Ibrahim once Education Minister, now deposed DPM ... Opposition PM wannabe introduced words we never heard before, our teachers equally had no idea what they were either and this was in MALAY ...
Dr. M who mooted the idea is not impressed. Pak Lah who is likely one of the most forgetable of PMs says Way to go (secretly me thinks he don't understand English la that's why) ... Parents are screaming keep the English, lazy teachers are now rejoicing, more kursus to attend no need to teach classes ahahaha who gets burnt in the end? Our Children ... in the global challenges, our kids are regressing instead of progressing.
It seems that every Education Minister tries very hard to introduce really strange ideas into mainstream mass education policies in hope of I have come to believe creating a generation of non-thinkers they bank on will someday vote them into power.
So here we go again. In time for the Manik Urai by-election, government comes up with revert Maths and Science to Malay, and emphasise on the strengthening of English. Hmmmm right. results showed even rural school children were scoring better. The problem lay in the Malay educated lot of teachers who can't string a decent English sentence together who were struggling to cope with the knowledge transfer. The kids however have the Internet and other sources of information which was coming to them in English to perform better.
The government gleefully says they will be saving 40million per annum in special allowances for these teachers who have been sent to upskill them in English to teach these subjects. And in the same breath they say they have to spend 5 billion to retrain all these teachers to now teach the subject in Malay.
Errrrrrrr is it just me or does anyone realise the number of zeros behind both figures quoted? And how much do you think has already been spent on giving the Math and Science teachers English skills?
Aiya ... in the end ... out one pocket into someone else la ... pusing pusing someone gets the last laugh. Scores of children get lost in the education system because we will ALWAYS have half-baked ill prepared teachers. If teachers themselves cannot challenge themselves to overcome their phobia of teaching in English, and now we will have those saying they can't teach in Malay.
I wonder how then will students in our flip flopping education policies ever be prepared to take on the world when they cannot seem to have confidence instilled in them from their educators. Perhaps we will always be lagging behind. The ones with the finances will send their kids elsewhere to study and be challenged and empowered to keep open minds in the pursuit of learning.
There is only one conclusion I can come to, the education system in Malaysia teaches us to find excuses why we cannot go forward not educate us to be bold and go forward with a sense of adventure of the whole learning process.
So then I also suppose, parents will have to now find ways (am sure there are already even more tuition opportunities opening up) to keep their struggling children abreast with the flip floppers decisions.
Truly another Malaysia Boleh apa apa bila bila masa (Malaysia Can Anyhow Anytime) decision that leaves a very bitter taste in the mouth of millions of parents as they try to see what the future holds for their children.
Weekend joy no less in Malaysia ...
If you haven't heard the news then please come out from under your shell. We are yet again changing midstream the course of the dissemination of knowledge of Science and Math in English to Malay. The fact that my generation of school goers did learn our Bio, Chem and Physics and Math electives in Malay does not mean we excelled in it we just reverted to textbooks and reading material in ENGLISH to graps the fundamentals. Having said that I used English books for History and Geography too ahahah made it so much more interesting than grappling with the 'malay-nised' English terms which sounded out of this world ... like the first time I learnt tetikus was the Malay word for the mouse we use with our PCs eheheheh it was like errrrr ok ...
Anwar Ibrahim once Education Minister, now deposed DPM ... Opposition PM wannabe introduced words we never heard before, our teachers equally had no idea what they were either and this was in MALAY ...
Dr. M who mooted the idea is not impressed. Pak Lah who is likely one of the most forgetable of PMs says Way to go (secretly me thinks he don't understand English la that's why) ... Parents are screaming keep the English, lazy teachers are now rejoicing, more kursus to attend no need to teach classes ahahaha who gets burnt in the end? Our Children ... in the global challenges, our kids are regressing instead of progressing.
It seems that every Education Minister tries very hard to introduce really strange ideas into mainstream mass education policies in hope of I have come to believe creating a generation of non-thinkers they bank on will someday vote them into power.
So here we go again. In time for the Manik Urai by-election, government comes up with revert Maths and Science to Malay, and emphasise on the strengthening of English. Hmmmm right. results showed even rural school children were scoring better. The problem lay in the Malay educated lot of teachers who can't string a decent English sentence together who were struggling to cope with the knowledge transfer. The kids however have the Internet and other sources of information which was coming to them in English to perform better.
The government gleefully says they will be saving 40million per annum in special allowances for these teachers who have been sent to upskill them in English to teach these subjects. And in the same breath they say they have to spend 5 billion to retrain all these teachers to now teach the subject in Malay.
Errrrrrrr is it just me or does anyone realise the number of zeros behind both figures quoted? And how much do you think has already been spent on giving the Math and Science teachers English skills?
Aiya ... in the end ... out one pocket into someone else la ... pusing pusing someone gets the last laugh. Scores of children get lost in the education system because we will ALWAYS have half-baked ill prepared teachers. If teachers themselves cannot challenge themselves to overcome their phobia of teaching in English, and now we will have those saying they can't teach in Malay.
I wonder how then will students in our flip flopping education policies ever be prepared to take on the world when they cannot seem to have confidence instilled in them from their educators. Perhaps we will always be lagging behind. The ones with the finances will send their kids elsewhere to study and be challenged and empowered to keep open minds in the pursuit of learning.
There is only one conclusion I can come to, the education system in Malaysia teaches us to find excuses why we cannot go forward not educate us to be bold and go forward with a sense of adventure of the whole learning process.
So then I also suppose, parents will have to now find ways (am sure there are already even more tuition opportunities opening up) to keep their struggling children abreast with the flip floppers decisions.
Truly another Malaysia Boleh apa apa bila bila masa (Malaysia Can Anyhow Anytime) decision that leaves a very bitter taste in the mouth of millions of parents as they try to see what the future holds for their children.
Weekend joy no less in Malaysia ...
1 comment:
Aunti Ani: my opinion - The problem is, no one wants to be teachers anymore. Let me rephrase that - no one with caliber wants to be a teacher anymore. What's the point? Dead end job with peanuts as a salary. with that kind of spark and fire, i will do much better working in some other private organization.
what kind of people become teachers these days - people who don't want to work too hard and is ok with a mediacore lifestyle and enough gaji to get by... ie no high aspirations. Hence why the competency level of teaching has gone down the drain.
Govt should re-look at making this more attractive to attract high caliber people to join. What worked 30 years ago for our parents era, won't work anymore now.
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