Only the brave teach

Show of solidarity: Fellow teachers and unionists gathering at the Seremban magistrate court last month in support of Cikgu Azizan (centre in white).

ONE tight slap – I still vividly remember that hard, stinging smack across my cheek as my teacher flew into a fit of rage after I did something naughty as a primary school pupil at St Xavier’s Institution in Penang.

I can’t recall which teacher hit me, but there must have been more than one. They pinched my stomach and even my nipples. Many of my classmates can attest to that, even 40 years on.

There was also the occasional caning, which I felt was an act of gross injustice and, perhaps, even one of perversion on the part of our disciplinary teacher. To me, back then, he was an unfair individual, and my opinion still stands. To this day, I have no idea why I was caned and not given the chance to defend myself.

But, bless his soul, because he has passed on. Most students from back then would have forgiven him by now, for he probably knew not what he was doing.

However, one thing is certain – as far as I know, none of us returned home and complained about this disciplinary action to our parents.

Comedian Harith Iskandar always reminds his audience that if one complained to their parents, they can expect to get another tight slap that “would burn your face and send an electrifying chilling effect to all parts of your body,” and consequently, leave a lifetime’s reminder.

So, the smartest thing to do, as most older Malaysians can testify, was to keep quiet. Of course, we also warned our classmates, some of whom were our neighbors, to swear to keep things under wraps and not tell their parents about the drama at school.

The caning and slaps, by disciplinary standards, were the “final” punishments. We surely remember the use of rulers, feather dusters, belts, black board dusters and in my case, even a shoe that flew in my direction.

And I wasn’t even in the naughty boys’ category. I didn’t get into fights or was caught loitering with the bad hats after school.

As one writer, Adrian Lee Yuen Beng, wrote in Aliran: “The teachers were our ad hoc parents who taught with joy and passion, and like their predecessors, never demanded any recognition. They customarily stood at the back of the class, silently rejoicing as the students celebrated their exam success.

“We received an education steeped in tradition as mission schoolteachers took teaching seriously; it was not a mere job, but a vocation, nay, a calling.

“Our teachers were proud of their lessons and believed in their form of education. They shaped us into intellectuals, sportspersons, politicians, educators, religionists, physicians and other important societal figures.”

Fast forward to today – and it’s the total reverse. The guilty party – the student – runs home to complain to his parents.

Now, the father and mother fly into a rage and decide to confront the teacher at school the following day. What unnecessary drama!

Adding insult to injury, the parents then seek the help of a politician, who has likely been deprived of the media’s glare for a while. Then, all three confront the teacher.

Lodging a police report is, of course, the next thing they do, and to embarrass the teacher and school further, they call for a press conference.

This is modern Malaysia. Perhaps, today’s family is smaller. There are only one or two children in a family, and they are, invariably, pampered.

During my time, there were at least four or five siblings and even so, we were still regarded a small family. Dad was always too busy earning a living, trying to put food on the table, so, he was thankful that the teacher played surrogate father, at least during school hours. The lesser-educated father would have been equally respectful of teachers. After all, it’s accepted that teachers mould the character, calibre and prospects of their students.

However, the modern-day father thinks he’s smarter and earns more than the teacher, his condescending and confrontational attitude not boding well for the situation.

He probably thinks the teacher has a dead-end job or is too busy distributing business cards to pupils for after-school tuition.

But, for an old-school type like me, I find it difficult to accept news of teachers being hauled to court for purportedly hurting their students.

Honestly, don’t the police and prosecutors have better things to do than to charge these teachers who were merely trying to discipline the children – responsibilities which may have been neglected by their caregivers?

In December, a teacher facing the charge of hurting his student, was given a discharge not amounting to acquittal by the magistrate’s court.

Magistrate Mohd Zaki Abdul Rahim delivered judgement after the prosecution told the court that they wished to withdraw the case.

Azizan Manap, also known as Cikgu Azizan, claimed trial to the charge of slapping an 11-year-old male student on the left cheek in April for indiscipline, the misdemeanour including sniffing glue, bullying and playing truant.

He was charged under Section 323 of the Penal Code for voluntarily causing hurt and was left facing a jail term of up to a year, a fine of RM,2000, or both, upon conviction.

Leading up to his discharge, several hundred people, including fellow teachers, gathered at the court in a show of solidarity for Cikgu Azizan.

By all means, go ahead and Google it: there are numerous reports of teachers threatened or roughed up in schools, and surprisingly, we seldom hear of offensive parents charged in court for criminal intimidation or causing bodily harm.

We have now been made to understand that the old ways don’t work anymore. The children need counselling and their hair needs to be stroked to motivate them. Have these methods worked better? That remains to be conclusively proven.

One thing’s for sure, though, the tight slap was unbeatable in my time in instilling discipline. Now, when I enter a lift, the millennials are too busy looking at their handphones, so don’t expect them to address you as “sir” or even greet you.

You’d be lucky if they called you “bro” and gave you an enthusiastic high-five, instead.

Would the proverbial one tight slap work today in curing disciplinary ills? Hardly likely.

By Wong Chun Wai

Wong Chun Wai began his career as a journalist in Penang, and has served The Star for over 27 years in various capacities and roles. He is now the group's managing director/chief executive officer and formerly the group chief editor.

On The Beat made its debut on Feb 23 1997 and Chun Wai has penned the column weekly without a break, except for the occasional press holiday when the paper was not published. In May 2011, a compilation of selected articles of On The Beat was published as a book and launched in conjunction with his 50th birthday. Chun Wai also comments on current issues in The Star.

Penang Free School: Learning religiously - without religion !

 

Penang Free School: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penang_Free_School

Penang Free School, the first English school in the country, turns 200 in a week. It was, and remains, a school for the brave and the true. And for the Free.

WE’RE on the cusp of history. A week from today, the oldest English school in the country, Penang Free School, will turn 200. It’s a proud moment for the school. And for yours truly. I spent my formative years in that school.

It’s the kind of school that cliches are made off – you can take a student out of Free School but you can never take the Free out of the students. We will always be Old Frees.

The old boys are already celebrating. There have been golf tournaments, dinners and get-togethers lined up. There was a 73-day, 20,000km road convoy from Penang to Dittisham, Devon, in Britain, where the founder of PFS, Reverend Robert S. Hutchings, was born.

The six-vehicle convoy left on July 17 and arrived at its destination on Oct 3.

The huge school field is now covered with canopies waiting for the thousands of Old Frees who will gather there on Oct 21 to celebrate the grand old dame’s birthday.

The field is one of the things most Old Frees would remember. It was both a blessing and a bane. With two football fields, three hockey pitches and a cricket pitch, it was great for outdoor activities.

The track around the field was good training ground for long-distance runners. But for the errant ones in school, it was a pain. The teachers made you run around the field as punishment. If you were not athletically inclined, that was punishing indeed.

But it was the teachers who made the school wonderful. We had some of the best and most dedicated teachers – not just in the subjects they taught but also in sports.

There was Wilson Doss, the cricket-mad teacher. He played for Selangor, Penang and even in international matches and he would try to get every lad in the school to give the sport a try-out.

I have to admit to being an absolute flop at it. With only the experience of playing “rounders” with the neighbourhood gang, I would hurl the cricket bat away as I ran. And Mr Wilson would growl.

There was N. Vallupillay, the hockey coach with the kindest of souls. He, too, would try to get everyone to play hockey and among the top players he nurtured was former national captain Ow Soon Kooi.

With Vallupillay at the helm, PFS was the state’s school hockey champion for 20 years from 1964 to 1984. The rivalry with St Xavier’s Institution and the Bukit Mertajam High School was intense, sometimes even rowdy.

Vallupillay then moved to George Town Secondary School and voila, that school became another hockey powerhouse in the state.

Then, there was Johnny Ooi, yet another teacher who was very much into hockey and who took over when Mr Vallupillay left.

Ooi Bee Seng was the basketball man. Under his watch, more basketball courts were built and more of the students turned to the game.

Nai Bej Sararaks was the athletics guy. Every now and then, he would bundle a gang of us into his beat-up jalopy and drive us off to training. The one I vividly remember was when we ran up Penang Hill from what Penangites know as Moongate.

The man waited at the bottom of the hill as the bunch of us ran up to the top of the hill and later scrambled all the way down. He was there with some juice before taking us all back to the school.

There was no need then for sports schools or schools of excellence. The teachers delivered. It’s been some years but I believe the teachers in the school are still a dedicated bunch.

But the real wonder of the school is the belief on which it is built – that it should be free from religion and open to all.

It’s a very strange thing. At a time when almost all education was under the care of priests (or brothers), there was one Rev Hutchings who did not want to impose his religious beliefs on the local populace.

When Hutchings first petitioned for a “free school”, his aim was to provide a school to educate, feed, and clothe orphans and poor children. It wasn’t about religion – only about education.

Yes, there was a bit of “free” in the financial sense. Only those who could afford it were asked to pay $3, $2, and $1 per year. Poor children were exempted.

The country has come a long, long way from then. Education standards have slumped. We have been dithering over the direction we want to take. Sports in schools is no longer a big thing. Few teachers believe in the power of sports.

Instead, religion has come into schools in a big way. There is a lot of emphasis on religious education and rituals, causing our children to drift apart from one another.

There really is a need for more new “free” schools – schools where education and sports are where the emphasis is.

 
Why Not? By Dorairaj Nadason is The Star’s Executive Editor.

The writer, who can be reached at raj@thestar.com.my, still salutes the gates of the school when he drives by. She is, after all, alma mater – the mother who nurtured him.

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Malaysia's vernacular schools not the problem

Those who oppose vernacular schools ... are driven by their desire to produce a society moulded in a way that they desire. Please keep element of choice for both parents and students.

AMONG those opposing vernacular schools, you can detect one umbrella argument that is continuously used by many parties. They say that the existence of vernacular schools is a threat to national identity and a hindrance to unity. Their fear is that this student segregation will lead to a fracturing of our society.

I disagree with this view. I think they confuse the purpose of education and there is also a lot of hypo­crisy going on.

Let us firstly look at the concept of schooling. Historically, the entity known as a school has its origin in Prussia in the early 1800s.

At that time, Prussians were looking at methods to produce citizens who would loyally work and fight for causes determined by their rulers. So they devised a system where, from a very young age, their citizens were trained to live a regimented life.

It did not matter what your abilities and interests were. As long as you were of the same age, you would be grouped together and forced to learn subjects determined by the elites.

Like the military, there was heavy emphasis on leadership by head teachers and teachers, while students were mere recipients of what was taught to them. That regimentation remains as the nature of modern schools.

After two centuries of bureaucratic evolution, schools these days are not about providing holistic education to support the child’s individual growth anymore. Instead it is about producing cohorts of citizens who can be easily grouped and compartmentalised.

Every one of us who went through the modern school system has been compartmentalised into groups based on our exam results.

And that is also why it has become the norm for those in power to use the school as a tool for social engineering. From day one, since Prussian times, the purpose of a school has always been about social engineering. Yet the vast majority of people today confuse schools with education.

In reality, you can still get an education without going to what have become our traditional schools. Education can be obtained from home, or in informal groups that come together for what is today known as “home-schooling”.

More interestingly, there is also a global interest in concepts such as unschooling, Sudbury schools, and democratic schools.

Those who oppose vernacular schools usually do not argue about the quality of education received by the students. They are not driven by the desire to catalyse social mobility by ensuring everyone has access to quality education. But they are driven by their desire to produce a society moulded in a way that they approve of.

The elites have a concept of what they feel society should be like and they want to use the Prussian factory-like model of schools to produce underlings who behave according to their pre-determined mould. To legitimise their mould, they label it as unity.

Note that their desire for unity has nothing to do with education. Their focus is on schooling. And this is where the hypocrisy creeps in.

Many of the people who want to promote their mould of unity have never attended any of our government schools. They don’t even send their own kids to our schools.

They step into our schools perhaps for a few hours a year for hyped-up visits, yet they speak as if they really know. More amazingly, they speak as if they actually have faith in our school system when their actions show otherwise.

In reality, these elites campaign for something that will never affect them. When it comes to their own families, they send their children for a “better” education elsewhere.

They want to limit our choices on schools because they know that they can always pay their way out and send their own children to a school of their choice.

This is the tragedy of some of the privileged. Instead of looking for ways to make sure everyone can afford school choices like them, they want to kill choice for everyone who cannot afford to pay.

Let me pose a rhetorical question.

If unity can only be achieved by making students from different backgrounds come together in one school, then why do they just want to close vernacular schools?

To be specific, data shows that Chinese schools have higher ethnic diversity than other schools. I can think of many non-Chinese schools that are completely mono-ethnic. If we are objective, it is not the Chinese schools that need to be closed down.

This is why I say that there is a lot of hypocrisy in the debate. Worse, that hypocrisy is clouded by confusion about whether we want to educate or we just want to have factory-like schooling.

The vernacular school debate is a debate of the elite. For us common people, our sole desire is to be able to provide our kids with quality education.

It is possible to provide school choices for the commoners, such as by using school vouchers so that choice is provided but schools are still free for the students.

Of course, it will take time to move towards this choice-based system. Until we get there, I beg the elites to stop trying to kill what few choices remain for us poorer citizens of this country.

By Wan Saiful Wan Jan The Star

Thinking Liberally

Wan Saiful Wan Jan is chief executive of the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (www.ideas.org.my). The views expressed here are entirely
the writer’s own.

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Government refusal to recognize the UEC due to 'national sovereignty', Kamalanthan said

 

School activity: Liow (right) with Eco World Foundation chairman Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye (with cap) and its CEO Capt (R) Datuk Liew Siong Sing (on Lee’s right) with students from SJK(C) Bukit Tinggi after Eco World handed over its donation of new canteen tables and benches to the school.

Liow: Retract UEC statement

BENTONG: MCA president Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai wants Deputy Education Minister Datuk P. Kamalanathan to retract his remarks about the Unified Examination Certificate (UEC).

He said Kamalanathan’s statement in Parliament that the Government’s refusal to recognise the UEC was due to issues of “national sovereignty” was never discussed in Cabinet meetings.

Kamalanathan and Muhyiddin“I urge Kamalanathan to retract his statement. This has nothing to do with the sovereignty of the country.

“This is his (Kamalanathan) personal view and not the Government’s. He may not have had the necessary information when he commented on the matter and this might mislead the public,” he said at SJK(C) Bukit Tinggi here after witnessing the handover of new canteen tables and benches yesterday.

Liow said if Kamalanathan did not understand the issue, he should have let Deputy Education Minister Chong Sin Woon explain it, adding that the statement might hurt the Chinese education system and the nation.

“The Education Ministry and the Higher Education Ministry have been in discussion over the recognition of the UEC,” he added.

Liow said the matter was discussed by the Malaysian Chinese Education Consultative Council Committee, comprising the United Chinese School Committees Association (Dong Zong), United Chinese School Teachers’ Association (Jia Zong) and Federation of Chinese Associations (Hua Zong), among others.

Responding yesterday, Kamalanathan maintained that his answer in Parliament was based on a Cabinet decision and not his personal view. His parliamentary reply was “verbatim” as per the Cabinet meeting on the matter on Nov 6 last year, he added.

However, he said it did not mean that it was impossible for UEC to be recognised.

“We (Education Ministry) have never closed the door on discussing (such) matters with any organisation because it is the ministry’s and everyone’s hope to see an improvement in the quality of our national education,” he said.

In KOTA KINABALU, Liberal Democratic Party president Datuk Teo Chee Kang said he was puzzled by Kamalanathan’s remarks in Parliament linking recognition of the UEC to national sovereignty.

“I regret that in answering a question in Parliament, the Deputy Minister said that the Government will not recognise the UEC for reasons of national interest and sovereignty.

“I wonder whether he knew what he was talking about. I cannot understand how it is related to national sovereignty,” he added.

- The Star/Asia News Network



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Barking up the wrong tree !!

Malaysia's problem isn't Bahasa Malaysia but English, and it is incredible that so many of us have refused to acknowledge this or even want to address it.

THERE have been so many silly remarks and statements by some Malaysian politicians and one-man show non-governmental organisations that it is becoming impossible to keep track of their comedy acts.

There is a saying: “There are people who are only good at making the news but cannot make a difference to the wellbeing of society.”

Well, in Malaysia, there are certainly many of them.

Last week, Johor state assemblyman Datuk Dr Shahruddin Salleh suggested that students who fail to master the national language be stripped of their citizen­ship. Yes, revoke, lucut, tarik balik, batal!

The Barisan Nasional representative for Jorak alleged that many students were not able to master the language, and this was even prevalent among the Malays. He didn’t say how many. Like one, 10, 20, hundreds or thousands, but was quoted as saying “many”.

“Even my own neighbour, whose father and mother are Malays, but because their child goes to international school, the child is unable to converse in Malay,” he said, adding that students were now more interested in mastering English and do not take the learning of Malay seriously.

The situation was prevalent in the vernacular schools, he added, because the use of Mandarin and Tamil made the students weak in the Malay language, which was further compounded by the fact that many of the teachers there are also not well-versed in Malay.

We’d like to think that Dr Shahruddin has a sense of humour but, seriously, what does he really mean when he said students who do not master the Malay language should be stripped of their citizenship?

How does one define mastery at the school level? Is it by the grades they score at the public examinations, like the UPSR, PMR or SPM? We know that these are just examination grades. A student can score a distinction or even fail miserably, but that in itself does not reflect his language proficiency in the real world.

To take an extreme example, some foreign workers who are in the country for just a few months can speak like a Malay, but do you think they will be able to pass the BM paper at SPM level? Or that they should therefore be accorded citizenship because they have mastered our national language?

We are not sure if Dr Shahruddin is having a bad patch with his neighbours because I do not think that his neighbours, who would have read his remarks by now, would be amused.

The reality is that there are many Malay households where English is prominently used because of a variety of reasons.

The children of diplomats, for example, because they are schooled in international schools, will definitely be more comfortable in English.

What about the children of politicians, especially those who send their children for better education overseas and then make a lot of noise about our local education system?

The assemblyman may want to project his nationalistic credentials ahead of his party general assembly, and he has conveniently used his whip at English and, of course, vernacular schools, the current flavour of the month.

There are enough statistics to show that many of our students and teachers are struggling with English in schools, especially those in the rural areas. Just Google.

The Malaysian Employers Federation secretary Datuk Shamsudin Bardan reportedly said that a survey a few years ago among its members found that 60% of them identified low English proficiency as the main problem with young recruits.

A similar survey in September last year by online recruitment agency

JobStreet.com found that 55% of senior managers and companies considered poor command of the English language among graduates to be the main reason for their difficulty in finding employment.

Sabah Tourism, Environment and Culture Minister Datuk Masidi Manjun had said that 70% of Malaysian graduates are having a hard time finding jobs in the private sector due to poor command of English.

Citing his past work experience with a multinational company in peninsular Malaysia, Masidi said 70% of those interviewed did not make it through to the second round as they could not converse well in English.

Second Education Minister Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh had said that about two-thirds of English Language teachers in the country have been classified as “incapable” or “unfit” to teach the subject in schools. These teachers, he said, have been sent for courses to improve their proficiency in the language.

It has also been reported that about 70% of the 60,000 English Language teachers who sat for the English Language Cambridge Placement Test performed poorly.

Granted that there are students who fare badly in Bahasa Malaysia, but we do not think the numbers are big. Instead of making such a generalisation, we expect the Jorak assemblyman to back up his claim with more substantial findings and figures.

Neither has he been able to support this pathetic claim that “the use of Mandarin and Tamil by teachers in vernacular schools is another reason for students being weak in Malay, adding that the teachers are also not well-versed in Malay.”

Our real problem isn’t Bahasa Malaysia but English. It is incredible that so many of us have refused to acknowledge this problem or even want to address it, lacking the political will, unfortunately.

There is no point in deceiving ourselves by allowing our children to easily pass the English tests in schools and in public examinations.

There may be a huge number of students scoring distinctions in English at the SPM level but their real ability is revealed when they enter tertiary education and, later, the working world.

The MEF’s Shamsudin told a news portal in April that there are those with As and Bs in English at the SPM level who cannot even hold a conversation in English.

“Which is why we were excited when the government decided to teach Mathematics and Science in English (PPSMI), as we felt this could boost their command of English. Unfortunately, it was cancelled after seven years when we should have allowed it to continue for 14 to 15 years to see the results.

“The inability to converse and understand English (among young school-leavers) is a constant complaint among our members,” said Shamsudin. The MEF has 4,800 direct members and 21 affiliated trade associations.

In the end, it will be the rural students who will suffer the most. These are the very people that our elected representatives claim to represent and fight for their rights and interests.

Do we need to check how many of our Honourable Members are sending their children to private and international schools even as they wax eloquence about the importance of the national schools?

Actually, we should all be concerned about proficiency in English, an issue that has also been recently taken up by Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad and Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, who can see the value of the English language without undermining the stature of the national language.

As Dr Mahathir rightly pointed out, the rich go to private schools while the poor go to national schools at home, adding that “I must confess that although my children all went to national schools, my grandchildren all go to private schools in the country and abroad. They do speak the national language but their kind of schooling widens the gap between races as well as between the rich and the poor.”

Well, it looks like the only thing that we have fared consistently well in is the comic relief provided by some of our politicians. And we can be sure the curtains will never come down on these comedians as they continue to seek out non-issues to put themselves in the spotlight.

The views expressed are entirely the writer’s own.

By Wong Chun Wai on the beat focus

Wong Chun Wai began his career as a journalist in Penang, and has served The Star for over 27 years in various capacities and roles. He is now the group's managing director/chief executive officer and formerly the group chief editor.

On The Beat made its debut on Feb 23 1997 and Chun Wai has penned the column weekly without a break, except for the occasional press holiday when the paper was not published. In May 2011, a compilation of selected articles of On The Beat was published as a book and launched in conjunction with his 50th birthday. Chun Wai also comments on current issues in The Star.


Malaysian Chinese National-type Schools

DON’T bark up the wrong tree. That is the message many would like to convey to Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Razali Ibrahim who has opposed the approval for building new Chinese national-type schools (SJKC).

The deputy minister was quoted as saying, “As long as approval is given, the relationship between the different races shall be further deteriorate, and shall be like throwing a spanner into the works of nurturing national harmony.”

This is clearly a statement made without having researched the functions of SJKCs in fostering mutual understanding between the races. For the record, Chinese national-type primary schools (SRJK) have more non-Chinese students than boarding schools and religious schools have non-Malay students.

There are at present approximately 80,000 Malay students in the so-called “unity-harming” SJKCs. Thus, I humbly ask Datuk Razali if the opinions of parents of these Malay students have been sought.

These parents appear to be sending their children to Chinese national-type schools not to “de-Malaysian-ise” them but to Malaysian-ise them.

In Malaysia, it common knowledge that most Malays are fluent in just two languages, namely English and Bahasa Malaysia while, most Chinese and Indians know at least three languages. Knowing one more language certainly gives children a cutting edge.

There is also, at present, growing pessimism over the way education in national schools is handled. Teaching science and mathematics in English which reverted to the teaching science and mathematics in Bahasa Malaysia as well as the ever-changing format of national level examinations are just a few areas of concern.

There is also the perception that certain races are favoured by the national school system. It is due to this perception that many, who want a level-playing field, choose the Chinese national-type school system.

Furthermore, perhaps China’s emergence as a world political and economic power has persuaded pragmatic Malay and Indian parents to try to get their children to learn Mandarin, the second most widely spoken language in the world after English.

How exactly do Chinese national-type schools affect national unity?

Children in Chinese schools still sing Negaraku. Bahasa Malaysia is still being taught there. There is no difference in syllabus taught in national schools. In fact, all children in Chinese schools are taught to love and respect Malaysia.

So Datuk Razali, I humbly ask just what are the problems which affect national unity?

SJKCs schools have been around for decades, so why is the question of unity being brought up?

In my opinion, educators who use words like “pendatang” and tell students to “balik Cina” and “balik India’ are the real threats racial harmony.

I believe that racial harmony has actually been disrupted due to political figures who’ve made use of race as propaganda to score political points and win votes. The exaggeration of petty issues and the manipulation of these issues via social media have made these politicians heroes in the eyes of supporters. However, what it has really done is instil hatred among the races.

If, and it’s a big if, Chinese national-type schools do contribute to disharmony, the better option would be for the Education Ministry to form a special taskforce, and conduct periodic audits of the schools and their syllabuses. That would be better than denying parents an option with regard where they wish to educate their children.


 Eye of the Tiger by by Mike Chong Yew Chuan The Star/Asia News Network

Mike Chong Yew Chuan is Press Secretary to Minister in the Prime Minister's Department YB Datuk Dr. Ir. Wee Ka Siong. He is also currently MCA National Youth BN Youth Affairs Bureau Deputy Chairman.

Malaysian education: UPSR Exam leaks, okay to cheat our kids!

Testing times indeed!

The UPSR leak fiasco seems to suggest we are in a real state of crisis and we are sending out a wrong messages to our kids - it is okay to cheat!

IT’S really incredible how so many of us have reacted over the leaked examination papers of the UPSR, which is merely an assessment examination for Year Six pupils. Yes, for 12-year-old pupils who are taking their first public examination.

The UPSR, to put it bluntly, has no serious bearing on how these kids will perform in future examinations nor will it have any impact on their careers.

But I guess not many would agree with my somewhat frivolous perception of the UPSR, judging from the kind of reaction that seems to suggest we are in a real state of crisis.

Education Ministry officials have been suspended, there are allegations of sabotage, possibly even political ones, and the police have been called in.

We hope the Inspector-General of Police won’t have to personally head a task force to nab the culprits.

I am not sure whether parents are upset that the papers were leaked, which in itself is incredulous, and a resit would mean the children having to go through another round of pressure, or is it because their holiday plans are now ruined?

The sad reality is that this is a country where parents and students are obsessed with the number of distinctions that one gets in public examinations.

Nowhere in the world, except perhaps in some other East Asian countries, do examination results hit the front page of the newspapers, or lead off the prime time news on national television.

And each year, we compare results like the way public companies compare their profit margins. The pressure is always to trend upwards. So, the focus will invariably be about how many more students have the perfect string of As as compared to the year before, giving the impression that we are in the business of producing super achievers.

Although the majority of students do not belong in this category, the perception is created that super-duper results are the passport for our children to become doctors, lawyers and engineers, and nothing less.

And every year, we have the same problem where the demand for places in universities for these courses far outstrips supply simply because there are so many students with the “right grades”.

Yet, many employers and top-notch foreign universities do question whether their grades actually match their abilities, and have their own ways to sieve out the real talents.

There are suspicions that we have lowered the passing marks and compromised our standards and in the process allowed more students to get these distinctions.

Of course, there are many who truly deserve the As, but it is most unfortunate that there are also those whose As can be questioned.

Forgive me if I sound dismissive and cynical because I come from the old school where we took our first public examination at Standard Five. That was the assessment examination and most parents would not get excited over the outcome of our performance.

It was kid’s stuff and they knew there was little bearing on our future, except perhaps to be enrolled into better classes or schools at the secondary level.

But when we took the Form Three Lower Certificate of Education, which is today’s equivalent of the PMR, it was real serious. You got kicked out from school if you failed.

That’s how it worked at that time with no free ride to the Fifth Form. The LCE required compulsory passes in Bahasa Malaysia, English and Mathematics.

The maximum number of As one could get was eight. If you got 5As, your name would probably show up in the newspapers.

But the standards were such that the grades truly reflected your real ability. An A in English for the LCE meant that you were speaking and writing the Queen’s English at that age already.

Today, most of our Form 3 students cannot even string a sentence together in English correctly. The fact that we are now considering including a compulsory pass in English at university level indicates that an A in that subject, whether at the UPSR, PMR or SPM level, is no longer an accurate reflection of one’s English proficiency.

After the LCE, we sat for the Malaysian Certificate of Education (MCE) where the maximum number of As was nine. It was a time when many Malaysians found places, on scholarships, to Ivy League universities in the United States and to Oxford or Cambridge in the United Kingdom. Yes, our MCE grades were deemed equal to the internationally-acknowledged O-Levels.

Now, despite the proliferation of the super achievers, we are told that fewer Malaysians are being admitted into these top universities.

And our students now have to prove their English proficiency to handle tertiary education overseas by taking the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) paper.

Let’s get our priorities right. The fact that the English paper was leaked even at Year Six level suggests that students are looking for help to pass a subject which they know is important.

What a contrast from those days when we had English-medium schools and getting a pass in English was not all that difficult.

And it is not just about the students. Two years ago, it was revealed that two-thirds of the 70,000 teachers who teach English in the country failed to meet the proficiency level in English for the Cambridge Placement Test.

The findings were revealed by the then Education Ministry deputy director-general Datuk Dr Khair Mohamad Yusof.

“When we did the initial profiling of the English teachers in Malaysia, we found that two-thirds of the teachers did not meet the proficiency level,” Dr Khair, who is now the director-general, was quoted as saying.

We really should be worried about how we can improve the standard of our education. There are many who love to score political points out of issues that affect our children’s education, including the UPSR leak fiasco.

We should start by doing a survey on how many of these politicians actually send their children to the government schools. Or are their own children not part of the system, but are instead in private or international schools, or even boarding schools overseas?

Let’s not play around with our children’s future. Year Six students shouldn’t be subjected to pressure cooker conditions in preparing for the examinations. And with this leak, we are now sending out a message that it is okay to cheat, even at this tender age.

Contributed by Wong Chun Wai on the beat The Star/Asia News Network

Wong Chun Wai began his career as a journalist in Penang, and has served The Star for over 27 years in various capacities and roles. He is now the group's managing director/chief executive officer and formerly the group chief editor.
http://www.wongchunwai.com/
On The Beat made its debut on Feb 23 1997 and Chun Wai has penned the column weekly without a break, except for the occasional press holiday when the paper was not published. In May 2011, a compilation of selected articles of On The Beat was published as a book and launched in conjunction with his 50th birthday. Chun Wai also comments on current issues in The Star.


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SHAH ALAM: About a third of English Language teachers in the country have been classified as “incapable” or “unfit” to teach the subject in schools.

Education Minister II Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh said such teachers had been sent for courses to improve their proficiency in the language.

“The ministry will also consider sending them overseas for exchange programmes to take up TESL (Teaching of English as a Second Language) courses,” he said during a dialogue session on the National Education Blueprint 2013-2025 held at the Karangkraf headquarters here yesterday.

Idris, who did not state the number of such teachers, assured that a good portion of them had enrolled in English courses locally.

Recently, it was revealed that about 70% out of the 60,000 English Language teachers, who sat for the English Language Cambridge Placement Test, performed poorly.

On allegations that the Government was sidelining vernacular schools through the blueprint, Idris denied this, saying “all schools were treated equally”.

“We do not sideline any party. In fact, the ministry encourages everyone to learn more languages. Be it Chinese, Tamil, French or Spanish, the government will be proud if a Malaysian can master these languages,” he stressed.

The United Chinese School Committees’ Association of Malaysia (Dong Zong) protested against the blueprint, saying that increasing teaching time for Bahasa Malaysia from 270 minutes to 300 minutes for lower primary and 180 minutes to 270 minutes for upper primary pupils was a move by the Government to eradicate mother tongue education.

- The Star/Asia News Network

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Right ways to boost teaching of English in Malaysia

In part two of his article, Tan Sri Yong Poh Kon puts forward a multi-pronged approach that can be adopted to reach the goal of improved English literacy among Malaysians. Reintroduction of English-medium schools along the lines of private and international schools but affordable to a larger segment of the population is one of the options. 

WITH the Education Blueprint currently being finalised, there remains an excellent window of opportunity to re-chart our course for the future. At the primary school level where parental choice is significant, it appears that the dream of a national school where students of different races come together at age seven is more unattainable than it was in 1970.

In 1970, almost a third of the students were enrolled in English-medium schools which were ethnically mixed and growing in significance in terms of share vis a vis other language medium schools before the policy was abruptly changed.

Fast forward to present day and it is patently obvious that after four decades of implementation of the policy, our primary schools have become more ethnically separated – statistics on student enrolment in national schools reveal that 94% of the students are Malay and 96% of Chinese parents now enrol their children in Chinese schools, up from 50% in 1970.

Mother tongue

Ironically, it is the Chinese vernacular schools which are now the most ethnically mixed, with a good 9% from the Malay community and 3% from Indians and others.

For a large and growing proportion of Malaysian families, English has and remains the effective language of communication to the extent that it has become a mother tongue. Such families no longer speak their ethnic tongue.

Much has been said about the pursuit of national unity through the study and use of a common language, Bahasa Malaysia (BM).

However, this does not and cannot mean that learning and pursuing knowledge in languages other than BM will erode national integration efforts, patriotism or make us less Malaysian.

Virtually all our past and present prime ministers were educated in English-medium schools. In fact, the current Minister of Education I and II went through English-medium schools and universities. They are certainly not less nationalistic on account of that experience. On the contrary, they are more confident and accomplished on the Malaysian and international stage because of it.

By bringing back the option of English-medium schools, teaching not only science and maths but other subjects like geography and literature in English will allow us to tap into world-class curricula, textbooks and, more importantly in this Internet age, enhance access to virtually unlimited storehouses of up-to-date knowledge which are predominantly in the English language.

In such schools, BM should be taught intensively as a compulsory subject to enable students from English-medium schools to take and pass the same Form Five BM paper as their counterparts in the national schools. This ensures all attain the same competency in the national language while allowing students to be more proficient in English and able to engage fully with the world.

An independent survey undertaken in April 2012 by Introspek Asia revealed that 26% of Malaysians “always, most of the time and sometimes” speak English to their children. For this large group of people, English is effectively their mother tongue.

The argument therefore is that this English-speaking multiracial group comprising 23% to 26% of the population should be allowed the option of sending their children to English-medium schools.

Furthermore, this option already exists for the higher income families who can afford the English-medium private and international schools in the country.

However, this option is not available to the vast majority of parents of all races who would like their children to benefit from an English-medium school education as a means to enhancing their upward social mobility just because they could not afford it.

Closing the divide

This has contributed to widening the performance divide between students in the rural-urban areas and household income categories and the government should step in to provide this option to level the playing field.

Any attempt to improve English proficiency must take cognisance of the fact that international research has shown that at least 60% immersion in English and subjects is necessary for full English proficiency to take root, and this can best be done in an English-medium school.

Teaching English as a subject and devoting only 10% to 15% of the teaching hours to English may be inadequate in building English operational proficiency (as acknowledged in the 2012 Blueprint p. 4 to 9).

At least 60% immersion is necessary to raise the level of English proficiency among students, and ensure that children from the lower income households are not deprived of the opportunities enjoyed by students schooled in private and/or international schools.

Expand opportunities 

Obviously, a programme to increase English immersion cannot be identical for each of the 10,000 schools in the country, given varying capabilities to implement the programme.

What is clear is the country’s wish to reclaim lost ground in English language proficiency.

Milestones have been identified to measure outcomes, for example, the official target of making English a compulsory must pass subject by 2016 and the announced goal of achieving 70% pass with credit in the Cambridge 1119 English language examination paper by 2025.

We need to do things radically different if we are to attain these goals.

There has to be a multi-pronged approach to reach the goal of improved English literacy amongst Malaysians.

Towards the end of last year, the Ministry ascertained that the majority of the 70,000 English language teachers do not have the necessary skills level to teach in English and have set in place a series of programmes to upskill them. This is a basic requirement that has to be done but this process will take time.

In the meantime, while the upskilling process is going on, to increase the pool of teachers we need to call upon retirees who can teach in English – there are 400,000 teachers and 3% of them retire every year – i.e 12,000 a year.

If we consider that teachers between the ages of 55 and 70 can still teach effectively, the total number of retired teachers would be 180,000 in that age group and if only 10% were capable of teaching in English, there is a pool of 18,000 to call back to active duty.

We should offer them full pay and at the same time, they would continue to draw their pension (approximately 60%), and this would mean that they would take home a total of about 160% of their last drawn salary.

This is very different from the pre-2005 days when teachers were offered to work beyond retirement at the same pay as then they would be working for only 40% of their salary since their pension would be paid anyway, and that is the reason why not many would want to extend beyond their retirement age.

There are also thousands of other retirees who are fluent in English but were not teachers. On a short course basis, it must be possible to call upon some of them to be teachers in English in this national effort.

In addition, flexible working arrangements like part-time work can also attract mid-career mothers who have left the workplace because they could not do a full-time job.

Having dramatically increased the supply and pool of English teachers using the above, we need to apply the immersion method of English learning through three channels:

1. National Schools: Increase the contact time in English from the current 15% to 40% or more in stages over the next few years.

Projects and activities to be conducted in English in addition to Bahasa Malaysia. Progressively add subjects to be taught in English to raise the contact time in English

Using textbooks, if necessary from other English-speaking countries, we can quickly add subjects to be taught in English progressively until we reach 40%.

The time spent in English in national schools to be dramatically raised, and to work out the resources to be applied to reach those targets and not the other way round.

2. Some national schools are, however, more ready to take off in the English language than others. For example, high-performing schools and some mission schools, which have quicker access to retired teachers who can come back to teach in English.

Model schools

These schools are to be given increased autonomy to adopt international curriculum and assessments. Bahasa Malaysia will continue to be a compulsory subject and taught intensively. Given their capacity to implement faster, they could become model schools in a pilot project that could be extended to other schools later.

3. Re-introduce English-medium schools as an option along the lines of private and international schools but affordable to a larger segment of the population. These schools teach in English for most subjects but offer Bahasa Malaysia as a compulsory subject.

Using a multi-pronged approach, we have a chance to achieve the goal of having 70% of our schoolchildren attain a credit pass in Cambridge 1119 English by 2025.

More importantly, it allows for our students to quickly tap into all the knowledge available in the Internet, which is primarily in English.

It is proposed that a detailed programme of engagement be worked out, starting with a survey both in the urban and rural areas among parents of students in existing schools as well as parents of children about to enter the schooling system. This survey should gather data by postcode location on whether parents would send their children to English-medium education if given the choice.

With the survey results, the government can assess the size of the demand for English schools and make the necessary plans to satisfy it at least through a pilot implementation.

The results of the pilot study will provide government with better policy-making inputs on the potential outcomes that can be expected from such schools in terms of ethnic integration, achievement rates and
proficiency in English moving forward.

In addition, the results, if positive, will also serve to soften the hard stance of those opposed to a change in the policy that may be long overdue. We owe it to our children and grandchildren of all races to see this through.

> Tan Sri Yong Poh Kon is managing director of Royal Selangor and President of the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers. He also serves on the boards of EPF, MIDA and Matrade.


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