It’s that time of the year again when public universities announce the placement of students in their various programs. As usual we here the good news of students getting their course of their choice in the university of their choice but at the same time we here stories about those who failed to get their place of choice or worse, those who failed to get a place at all. A couple of years ago the plight of the one hundred plus straight A STPM students who failed to get a place in medicine was brought to our attention.

My reason for writing is that I feel that it is pertinent for our universities to work harder to ensure our students get to the study the course of their choice. While it is understandable that universities try their best to take in the cream of the crop for each program it seems as if too many students are not getting into courses that they would like to pursue. While intelligence and academic excellence is certainly an important determinant in university placement, some emphasis needs to be put on the idea of passion and personal choice as well. Students pick certain courses because they feel that they excel best in that field, because they are passionate about that particular field of study, because they enjoy doing work in the related field. Certainly passion and interest count for something. If our students are not getting into courses that they enjoy pursuing then it is certainly going to affect their levels of productivity when they enter the workforce in the future.
Public universities are packed to the brim with students because they are affordable and to an extent offer quality education, yet more places need to be provided so that people get into courses that they are passionate about and interested in. If that is possible then maybe the government should raise the bar for entrance to Form Six and Matriculation and as an alternative provide more diploma courses in polytechnics and community colleges so that so many aren’t denied courses of their choice when applying to public universities.
While I am big on academic excellence as the main criteria for university entrance and placement, more and more I see that passion and inner desire can compel people to achieve great heights. When people are allowed to play to their strengths, they shine brightest. Let’s try harder to get our students into courses where they feel they can play most to their strengths.

Twice a week on RANDTS.. I have to say that is an uphill task for me but I will try... haha... Today my topic is Malaysian passive behavior. An interesting pattern I am becoming to notice from media sources like this one is that somehow our education system seems to be lacking the ability to create bold and competitive individuals.

As an economics major, I do have a certain leaning towards capitalism. I am still more of a skeptic than one would assume of an economics student, but I do not deny many of the strengths of the system, a major one being competitive markets. We all know competitive markets drive the price down, in general its a good thing, because competition breeds quality. The idea can be extended elsewhere, and everywhere. Competition is great. Look at the AirAsia-Malaysia Airlines rivalry and how it has driven prices down. Malaysia airlines can no longer slack off and hire people unnecessarily. Consumers are getting prices that almost equal the cost of production.

However, look elsewhere and we see that there isn't competition in plent of other markets in Malaysia, and even if there is, it isn't Malaysian driven competition. For example, the hypermarket market is dominated by Tesco, which is British, Jusco, which is Japanese, and Carrefour, which is French. The sole local successful representative is Giant. Others like Mydin and The Store are being swollen up by the intense competition. As for construction companies in Malaysia, almost all the big projects are carried out by UEM. Astro dominates the cable tv market and TMnet has a monopoly of high speed internet services, though that is a diminishing monopoly. The point being made is that Malaysians are not competitive enough. Even in politics, we all know who has the monopoly. The reason for their monopoly is not necessarily that they are the best government in the world and everyone is happy with the administration. The problem is there is no competition. Our political arena is not attracting the best of bests. and because of that, the government at times has the opportunity to short change the public. Even I am not imply that we quit voting for the weighing scale. All I am implying is we need a stronger opposition front, which can challenge, question and keep the government on its toes so that the people in power know they are not irreplaceable and maintain a sense of quality and integrity in delivery. There needs to be greater efforts to battle monopolies, a good governmnet would encourage competition; even competition with itself.

Refer to the article about the Commonwealth and you will see that no one, despite the qualifications is interested in a leading position in the Commonwealth. It shows that our Malaysian population is passive.

Are we producing competitive Malaysians. Are our young ones trained to compete, to challenge the status quo, to dream a better tomorrow? Or are we conditioning them to be good employees which regurgitate facts well?

Its about time I wrote a new post for RANDTS. Somehow, education has turned out to be my thing on this blog. It isn't intentional, but somehow, these kinda things seem to flow..

So, its about time the Education Ministry got it right. After all the crap over the past years, from PTS to the whole SPM A chasing phenomenon, to the deterioration of teacher quality and the STPM-Matriculation fiasco, I think it is about time they got ONE thing right.

The whole cluster school idea makes perfect sense. Why? For one, we all know that in every school, there are a certain number of parents who will get involved through the PTA. I don't want to over idealise the influence of parents, but I have to say, it will be good for them to play a role in shaping the school too. Most of them know, through their kids who the crappy teachers are. They also know, through their kids, what kind of crap goes on in schools. In other words, the PTAs role in schools will be to get their children's interests across. The PTA will keep teachers in line too. Seperation of powers is here a good thing. Giving parents a larger say means more checks and balances in schools

Ok, that whole PTA thing, isn't the main thing that makes the cluster school idea great, though it does guarantee a higher level of success during implementation. What makes it great it that finally excellent students wont be held back. The whole standardized test thing has obviously left many unchallenged, hence the tendency to take 17 subjects in SPM. The excellent kids have mastered the exam process so well that its no sweat for them anymore. Its about time we allowed them to move on to bigger things. With cluster schools, each school will be able to create a niche for themselves, be it through sports (hockey for Anderson and RPS) brass band (Victoria Institution and Keat Hwa) or debate (Damansara Jaya, RMC). These fields which are right now merely "cocurricular" can now be intergrated into the school system. In my university here, you get college credit for playing in the marching band, to my knowledge, when I was in SMI, all you got was a certificate, and maybe a darker skin colour.

Another way cluster schools could prove useful, is if teachers were allowed to teach classes outside the syllabus and for students to be awarded credit for that as well. Stuff like European History, Advanced Math, Psychology, Sociology, Theatre, Public Speaking, Music: both contemporary and classical, all should be taught to students who are capable of handling the subjects. They provide an opportunity for the excellent ones to test out the waters in these fields. Ever wondered why our local music scene is so "lemah"? Maybe because schools don't teach music. Why does local TV suck, maybe we don't encourage acting enough in schools. Lets not hold the good ones back with our current system. I'm all for these cluster schools.

Najib: No point building libraries if people don’t care to read

This article caught my eye. For once the DPM made a good point, or rather for once, he managed to point out the obvious. I'm going to get a little political here but I don't get why our politicians point out what we already know. Is it because they just figured it out coz they're a little slower, or because they only know so much and can't seem to dig deeper.

If I put you in office, it is certainly to do more than state the obvious. It is the responsibility of the media to tell me the condition and climate of the country. The politicians are supposed to be doing something about the reported condition of the country. I know we don't need to build libraries coz Malaysians read only two books a year. I know that it is because most books are in English and most Malaysians have such a poor grasp of the language that it takes too much effort to read an English book. I know that it is because teachers themselves suck at English and pass on the suck-iness to their students. What I want to know is why the Education Ministry doesn't do anything about it. What were you doing about the problem when you were Education Minister, Mister DPM? Because those teachers teaching English now went to school while you were in power? (Man, I could get so sued for this.. haha)

Anyway, what I'm really trying to say is that if we don't do anything to stop the cycle, it won't stop. How do we get better English teachers? How do we more effectively teach English to our kids? From an economic stand point, better teachers requires better salaries, from an education standpont, better teachers require better universities. Revamp our TESL syllabus in universities. Bring in foreign experts in TESL. Make our TESL undergraduates read good books in the first place. Raise the bar so people who can't speak English don't graduate with English degrees. So much that could be done, if we spent less time stating the obvious and more time doing what should be obvious.

I wrote here previously about the importance of attracting quality professors to our Malaysian shores, especially our local talent that is now abroad. What convinces me of the existence of many quality Malaysian academia in the foreign world is not solid statistics, because that I cannot find.

What I do constantly come across is, however, random information about Malaysian professors. First, there is a Monash University professor in the Computer Information System in my school who happens to be from Setapak, Kuala Lumpur. Another person I just came across was Mr Chan Yau Man of Kota Kinabalu who is now a castaway on Survivor: Fiji. He is the Director of Information Systems for the College of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley and an MIT graduate. I have to say MIT graduates would be of great service to Malaysian Universities. If we keep looking, I'm sure we'd find more. I am pretty convinced that there are Malaysians out there that we need to be working hard to lure back to our homeland.

Malaysia oh Malaysia.... When will we get it right....
Head of Malaysia's anti-corruption agency probed for corruption


KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia: Allegations that the head of the powerful Anti-Corruption Agency is corrupt and unscrupulous must be thoroughly investigated or Malaysia will become an international laughingstock, an opposition leader said Wednesday.

Former senior ACA officer Mohamad Ramli Manan has accused the agency's Director-General Zulkipli Mat Noor of being "a very corrupt senior police officer who had amassed substantial property and assets through corrupt practices," said Lim Kit Siang, who chairs the opposition Democratic Action Party.

Ramli made the allegations in a report to police in July last year before his retirement in December, said Lim, the opposition leader in parliament, in a statement.

Zulkipli was a special branch officer for more than two decades and rose to become police chief in two states, before becoming the first policeman to be appointed to the ACA's top post in 2001.
Zulkipli told the New Straits Times newspaper the allegations were baseless and that he had been vetted and cleared by both the agency and police before his appointment.

"Let the law take its course," he was quoted as saying. "The bottom line is justice must be done."
A parliamentary committee on integrity has fixed March 12 for Zulkipli and Ramli to appear to hear the case and decide if it is proper for Zulkipli to continue to helm the anti-corruption agency.

Lim called for a thorough investigation to restore confidence in the agency, which has been widely perceived as a "paper tiger" with Malaysia ranked 44 in Transparency International's corruption index last year, down from 37 in 2003.

"This matter must be cleared so that he is fit to continue," Lim said. "Malaysia will become an international laughingstock if the ACA has a director-general who has serious corruption allegations swirling over his head."

So I've been having a number of light bulb moments considering education lately. Maybe its the influence of the education majors I'm around, maybe its the influence of living 24/7 for 7 months in an institution of higher learning. Whatever it is, I seem to have a lot to say about education recently. Today, what is bothering me is the absence of music in education.

If you had Malaysian public education like I did, then the only music education you ever got was probably something like mine. 6 primary school years of being taught songs by my piano-playing music teacher; songs that talked about telephones, fruits, patents, playgrounds and the like. Also, a couple of lessons on how to hit different notes on a recorder. Other than that, I pretty much had to take all my music lessons privately.

What boggles me is that our country seems so indifferent and unenthusiastic about teaching kids music. Music was the 'waste' time period during my days at La Salle primary which often got replaced with English and Science come the weeks leading up to UPSR. Music is still seen by many as something we should know just in case we can't get a "real" job. Worse case senario: be a music teacher LAH.

What a load of crap man. If I were to ask, how many people don't listen to music, and I mean any kind of music, be it classical music like Bach or Mozart, or oldies like Sinatra and Nat King Cole, or cheesy pop music by Britney and Paris Hilton, or the talking thing, "rap" that they call music, or the bling bling crap that I never get, if I were to ask how many people didn't listen to music, no one would put up their hands. If I were to ask how many people were unmoved by music or had never found a song inspirational or emotionally heart robbing, again, no one would put up their hand. We all hate "My Heart will go on" from Titanic, but you have to admit, as sloppy and cheesy as it is, in the moment (the I jump, you jump moment and the Jack I'm flying moment) the song did move and stir up emotion.

Maybe I'm a romanticist and a greater proponent of the humanist and emotional side of life. But somehow, I think that there is no emotional depth or passion in our education system. All that is important seems to be our ability to memorize and puke. What has happened to the humanist side of it all. Where is the love for school, the thirst for education, the passion for life? Why aren't we teaching our kids about the things that move us. Things like music. Isn't emotional self expression just as important as the sciences. Or do we really think that it is a par below everything else. On a side note, no one has ever thought of music in math?!? Or math in music. There is a 'science' of music too. Why don't we explore all that.

So, my proposition is this: bring music back to schools. We don't need to make it compulsory or anything, at least not at first. I admit the cost of implementing music is pretty high taking into account the cost of instruments and all. However, if we start by offering it as an elective, allowing our kids the option of studying something that at least they have interest in, like pop culture, the basics of music, the wisdom of Bono, anything that involves and evokes the passion that comes forth from music, if we can do that, then I think we're are giving kids a REAL sense of education.

I've finally found the time and motivation to finish up my intended three part discussion on education, that began here and continued here.

Tertiary education should naturally be the most specialized educational institution out there. It is the final step before the 'real' world so it should seem natural that it provide the most detailed information about specific careers. The head knowledge and information I've been calling to be held off in both primary and secondary education should rightly take its place in institutions of higher learning. To critics who think that there is too much knowledge to be crammed into a 3 or 4 year institution, I say, after 10 years of learning processes of learning, rote learning in 4 years will not turn out too difficult. Plus, how much information cramming will we really need to do in college.? Probably not a lot. The reason why we have books and computers is so that we need not store all the unnecessary information in our brains.

Anyway, relating the above paragraph back to our Malaysian context, I think in general sense that our institutions of higher learning set out to accomplish these goals. I emphasize 'general sense' here because it is a known fact that out public universities love chasing pointless medals at university fairs in East Europe (*ahem* UiTM and USM *ahem*). But yea, in general, the purpose of our Malaysian universities is pretty much on the spot. Execution however, that is a whole new topic of its own.

The only way to save our public universities is to plough tons of money into it. I'm not saying their current shortcomings are a result of lack of funds, but with a handsome budget, I can think of a million and one things to do to improve our public universities. My suggestion for the source of that money: PSD scholarships. We spend so much sending thousands of PSD scholars abroad when really (no offence to PSD scholars, you guys are geniuses to be able to get a PSD scholarship in the first place) we should be investing our money at home. We should be using those millions of dollars to pull in great professors to teach in our local universities, starting with well qualified Malaysian professors who are teaching abroad. By sending one student abroad, we are making a difference in one life. By bringing one well-qualified professor into Malaysia, hundreds if not thousands will be changed. Instead of continuing to export our talent out for training, we should be working harder at improving our public universities at home.

I've been hearing stories of PSD scholars having their bonds waived because the government has no place for them in the PSD. Sounds dumb to me to give out scholarships when you don't need the manpower but what is worse is that these talents ultimately don't return. Once you take away the bond of a student who is very comfortably living in the US, Germany or the UK, what are the chances that they are gonna come home. Kinda close to ZERO, I think.

If we had excellent universities locally, then when these people graduated, we'd be able to keep the talent. Hopefully they'd find jobs locally and go on to bigger things in Malaysia and for Malaysia.

Invest at home. That's my call for tertiary education. Start with Malaysian professors teaching abroad, but ultimately hired anyone and everyone who is well qualified to teach in our public universities. If we bring in excellence, it will breed excellence.

All this has been sitting around, so I'm finally putting in the effort to upload it. :)

Liberalizing Education
People do best at the things they like and are good at. If we hold true to this principle then another facet of our education system should be to help students discover the talents they have and the fields they are best in. What is ironic is that our education system seems to take every effort to deny students this opportunity.

We give them 3 years of lower secondary education culminating in the PMR where we separate the "sheep from the goats." We put all those with straight As and anything close to straight As in the Science stream labeling them the cream of the crop and then we place all the rest in the Vocational and Technical stream and unofficially label them the goats of society. At least in my school, picking our own subjects is not an option. You take what packages are offered or get out and find another school that will suit your preference. No such thing as dropping one or two science subjects in exchange for geography,economics or art. We force our children into streams giving them no space to pursue dreams, passions and ideas they held when they were kids. I commend schools that allow a mix of science, arts, business and humanities classes providing students a chance to study topics and subjects they are interested in. People like Mr. Karu in SMI's form 6 program don't realise the potential succesful individuals they are destroying by disallowing them to pursue their fields of interest. The last time I checked, students wanting to study was a good thing. Why then do we deny them the opportunity by forcing all smart kids into the science stream diminishing the importance of humanities.

What we need to be do is liberalize our education system. The administrators and teachers have way too much a say as to what we can and cannot do, what subjects we can and cannot study. Assuming we can successfully teach our students the medium of learning in primary school, we should from there on aim to help them discover the area that they are passionate in and talented in. Variety should be a good thing. Each student should have an individual curriculum that best suits their needs and likes and abilities. There should be nothing wrong with a student studying psychology, biology and mathematics all at the same time just as how it is perfectly fine for a student to study pure science or pure humanities. What we are aiming at during secondary education is to help them find the areas they are best in and begin teaching them the process of learning through the classes they are interested in. Information and head knowledge can come later.

I'm kicking of my RANDTS debut with a couple of thoughts on education...

Introduction
My Econ professor mentioned in class a couple of weeks ago that the purpose of College isn't to equip students with knowledge, but to help students learn the process of learning so they can go out into the workforce and fit in wherever there is a need simply because they are quick learners. Maybe in establishing a goal for our education system that should be our goal. Not to provide the most information but to teach kids to learn the process of learning.

Starting off on the language foot
I think our education system produces jacks of all trades but masters of none. With the Math and Science in English project, we are now teaching 7 year-olds in Standard One English, Malay, Math, Science, Moral and for some Mandarin or Tamil. Seems to me to be a little intensive if compared with places like America and England. Their kids get a designated period of naptime. We drill ours like military soldiers. Maybe we should cut down on the math and science, and possibly even moral because this many different subjects system ain't working. I remember entering Form 1 to meet kids who couldn't speak English at all. 6 years in primary school and they couldn't speak English. Why? Too great an emphasis on knowledge. Primary school needs to emphasise language, be it Malay, English, Mandarin or Tamil. Why? Language is the basis for knowledge. If we aren't producing competent communicators then how are we going to communicate any knowledge to them? If we attempt to feed them knowledge even before they learn the medium of knowledge, we are basically teaching them nuts. The key objective of primary education needs to be to teach children the medium of learning: language.

Initially I ended this section with the previous sentence but have come back to add on just a little bit more. I expect people to ask, "How do we teach people language? We've been trying to teach English for generations with no success." We are pretty successful in teaching Malay, Chinese and Tamil. The subject we are really failing in teaching is English. And English is not being taught, not just to the Malays but to the Chinese and Indians as well. I am going to give what is going to sound like an oversimplified answer to this problem. We don't make our kids read enough. Maybe I should restate that as, we don't make our kids read enough of the right stuff. Books are ridiculously expensive in Malaysia because no one buys them and too few good local writers are out there to provide us with meaty local children stories. We end up giving our kids cheap local junk which tell stories of rambutans, elephants, chickens and the kancil which are shallow and uninspiring. There are a million and one good childrens books that will help kids from The Giving Tree to Roald Dahl to The Chronicals of Narnia.

These books need to be made readily available in schools; incorporated into the school syllabus; made cheaply available in bookstores, and freely available in libraries. I read recently in The Star about a Brit complaining about the lack of libraries in Malaysia. I grinned when I saw that article, because I work in a library now and countless parents come in each day to get books for their kids. That would definitely be a culture shock for foreigners in Malaysia. "Malaysians don't read?!?!" Haha.. And if kids are anything like me and had no interest in reading fiction at primary school age, then interestingly, your problem is a lot easier. If they don't dig fiction, chances are they dig non-fiction. With the elementary depth and style of writing in our newspapers these days, just give them a copy of The Star or even better, a FREE copy of The Sun from McDonald's and, if they were anything like me, they'd stay glued to the sports section all day long.

The key thrust of education is to teach people the process of learning. How do we do that? Well, we start by teaching them the medium of education: language. If we can't even get that right, then nothing that we teach them after that will be of any use.