Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Malaysian education - from rot to risk!

In a home school, the kid does 95% of the work. But in a school system, since it's an indoctrination system, a teacher has to do 95% of the work.


- John Taylor Gatto



Three days ago, TMI published Fed up with policy flip-flops, brainwashing, parents turn to home-schooling, extracts as follows:


TMI photo 

An outdated school system, education policy flip-flops and religious indoctrination are among the reasons cited by parents who choose to home-school their children.

This is despite the fact that primary education is compulsory in Malaysia and permission from the Education Ministry is required if parents want to keep their children out of school, which is usually only granted if a child has severe health problems. [...]

Author Chong Wai Leng, who runs a support network blog for parents of home-schoolers called Learning Beyond Schooling, says there is enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that the “unschooling” concept, as she prefers to call it, is growing and not limited to the main cities but smaller towns, such as Port Dickson and even in Kota Baru.

Another indication that home-schooling has more followers since it started in Malaysia more than 20 years ago is that there are more and more new faces, especially young parents of all races, spotted at events organised for home-schooled children.

Chong said there were many reasons parents opted to home-school their children, but one of the more recent factors was disillusionment with the schooling system, which she described as “messed up” and subject to policy flip-flops.


So, now not only Chinese parents are fed up with the UMNO-led government's continuing mess-up of our education system but some Malay parents have as well. 

In May 2011 I had written (yet again) on vernacular education in a post titled Being fair (1), in which I agreed with gasp gawd omigosh with Utusan's Awang Selamat, wakakaka, in his article (Malay Mail Online) No ‘1 Malaysia’ without unified school system, Utusan says

However, in my post I gave my take on why our f*-up education has come to run on three separate tracks in primary education 
(National stream, Chinese and Tamil), (extracts as follows):

Because successive UMNO Education Ministers turned the national education system into the lamentable political football it became, and consequentially with its inevitable abysmal standards, the Chinese gave up completely on that system and quietly sought alternative means, leading them to Chinese vernacular education. In pre-Merdeka days and even some years after that, the gold standard in education was English medium schools, not Chinese medium.

Thanks to the selfish actions of successive UMNO Education Ministers pushing Chinese parents into the eager waiting arms of the vernacular educationalists as a result of the country's worsening national education system, they caused the two Cinapek sides to ‘fall in love’ with each other. And the rest is history.

Ironically the Chinese vernacular schools in the late '50s and early '60s were almost driven into extinction by the lack of Chinese support.

That, the diminishing need by the pragmatic Chinese community for vernacular Chinese education and its eventual extinction or at least, near extinction, would undoubtedly have occurred except for the unpleasant fact of successive UMNO Education ministers and wannabe Education ministers turning Malaya/Malaysia's once-famed education system into the shit that Ku Li lamented over yesterday in a FMT article Our education system has failed.

Just for another use of the word 'ironical' wakakaka, I cannot resist reiterating that ironically it had been UMNO Education ministers who ‘saved’ Chinese vernacular education from extinction - do read my letter to Malaysiakini titled Chinese educationists must thank UMNO. Wakakaka.

I concluded that letter to Malaysiakini with the statement “The truth has been out there all this while”, by which I meant today's Chinese Malaysian obsession with Chinese vernacular education had its Genesis not so much in ethnocentric cultural parochialism but more in ensuring good solid educational standards for their children which was screwed up kau kau by those wonders who have been our education ministers.

And now a quote from the USA:


There were only two other Chinese families in this town of 25,000, but to our parents, the determining factor was the quality of the public school system.

- Steven Chu (American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics)

As if our notorious education per se has not been sufficiently messed up already, we now hear of insidious radical elements amidst our higher education system where poisonous racist indoctrinations have been taking place.

MM Online reports in Idris Jusoh must go, ex-minister says after exposing link to ‘brainwashing’ trainer  (extracts):

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 18 — Datuk Zaid Ibrahim today urged Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak to remove Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh as the higher education minister, claiming the latter’s alleged link to an education programme trainer with supposedly extremist views was tarnishing the “moderate” image of the federal Cabinet.

The former de facto law minister added that the trainer whose name was given as Mat Taib is known to run neuro-linguistic programmes for university lecturers, vice-chancellors and also teachers but often appeared to hold extremist views on social media.

He questioned if Idris condoned the views of Mat Taib.

“When I suggested that a documentary be filmed to explain the Indira Gandhi issue, and that it can be funded by raising money from the public, he said I should collect money from ‘DAP pigs and those NGOs who are anti-Islam and anti-Malay’,” Zaid wrote in his latest blog entry today, referring to Mat Taib.

“This is the quality of Malays that are roaming our universities. This is the type of Malay who is brainwashing younger Malays into having a dangerously skewed view of the world,” he added.

He said that such individuals would not have the platform to sell their “sick ideas” if it was not for an approval by the minister himself.

“Idris needs to answer for his relationship with Mat Taib. He needs to explain what he expects from the motivational courses that people like Mat Taib give and how our educationists will benefit from them,” he added.


This is frightening!

But when will we the voters stop these UMNO Education ministers from continuing with their rotten work?



14 comments:

  1. There is a strong element of ethnic parochialism as well as attitudes of racial superiority in the Chinese preference for "their own" vernacular schools , and the related , but really separate issue of their rejection of the National School system.

    In the 1960's, the Chinese accepted, somewhat reluctantly among some, a preference for English-medium schools , because English was seen as the language of the future , as well as the language of the then-ascendant Anglo-American economic system.

    They strongly reject their Children being instructed in Malay, the language of the ethnic group they dislike, despise and probably swindle on a daily basis.

    Educational standards, per se, have little to do with such xenophobic attitudes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. what TMI reported just a mere 3 days ago contradicted your argument as well as indicated that it's all about educational standards

      Delete
  2. Well,the one to really fucked up the standard of education first is well,Mr Manmanlai.He fucked up big time when he was education minister,with his ketuahnan Melayu bigotry ways.And not only fucking up the education standards,he brought race and religious tensions to it's height.And if all these fuckups were not enough for his ego,along the way he fucked male asses too.And what the fuck he is the only potential asshole for the opposition's PM wannabe.All these assholes should just line up ,bend over and let the camels fuck them in the ass kau kau.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If this were compared to the US, it would be equivalent to someone saying America's problems today are squarely caused by Ronald Reagan (President 1978 - 1990).

      You mean the other Presidents since then don't get to carry the blame ?

      As a New Yorker would put it , "That is Fucking Bull Shit"

      Delete
  3. The first education minister to really fucked up the education system is Anwar.The last education minister to fucked up the education system is Muhyiddin.And both these clowns want to be PM?What the fuck is happening to the country and it's inhabitants.Do they not have a say?

    Anyway,Muhyiddin's successor is beginning to look like an asshole too.He is real damn stupid too.So,I guess,Muhyiddin will not be the last education minister to fucked up our education system.There will be many more clowns after him.Go figure.

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    Replies
    1. I have an idea. Why don't we make Ali Tinju the new education minister. He is very honest, intelligent n hardworking. He has many ideas on how to improve the system. At the same time, Najib should give the finance minister's job to Jamal ikan bakar. Now no job n business is very bad. Hidup Ismail Sabri!

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  4. Nasharuddin Mat Isa will be the leading candidate to be Education Minister under an UMNO/PAS coalition government

    Najib considers him a grate Moderate.
    After all, he is Naib's choice appointment to replace Saifuddin Abdullah to lead the Global Movement of Moderates, after the latter quit UMNO.

    The Non-Muslims in Malaysia better get ready to deal with an UMNO/PAS super coalition government. Its becoming a reality in the blink of an eye.
    Its part of Najibullah's plan to stay in power.

    DAP can only scream Ah Chee , Ah Chor.
    PKR won't even dare to scream.
    MCA and MIC will just nod their heads, maybe even support it as positive as long as they get to keep their Ministerial posts.

    ReplyDelete
  5. http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/malaysias-higher-education-world-class-says-minister-bernama

    Najib's Higher Education Minister says Malaysian Education System is World Class...
    Believe it ....Or Not....

    ReplyDelete
  6. my niece who is 35 stopped working 8 years ago. she hold a first class honours and a masters degree from a top-notch uk uni. all her children are home-schooling. the way her kids speak, work and play are so different. they are about 5-8 years advance of their biological age.

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  7. In the long term, it is impossible for the Malaysian government to fund and manage 3-4 parallel education systems. The National Schools, Chinese Schools, Tamil Schools and Muslim Religious Schools.
    The systems will inevitably collapse.

    No other country in the world attempts that, including far wealthier economies.
    In the USA , each state funds only 1 state school system. The government does not stop private schools with their own curriculum from being set up, but apart from some level of state aid, they are privately funded by student fees , community contributions and private endowments.
    Home schooling is allowed, but the teachers have to be certified teachers and the operators have to be licensed.

    Singapore has only 1 national school system, though mother tongue language studies are compulsory.

    Australian states run only 1 state school system, though there are many private schools for the wealthy.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ozzie Government provides funding to non-government schools to assist with the recurrent costs of school education.

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    2. incidentally both federal and state governments in Oz fund Islamic schools, some as much as 75% of their total income

      Delete
    3. Re: funding of national type schools, collapse

      For discussion sake let's say it is decided that all national type schools will be converted to national schools by end of this year.

      Where will the students of these schools go? They still have to go to school.

      This is what the govt. will do. It will take over all the school buildings, facilities etc. It will change the name to national school. It will continue employing as much of the teachers, staff as possible and retrain the rest if necessary.

      So at the end of this move, the govt. will have added to its current fully-funded schools those that were previously govt.-aided schools.

      The costs will then be higher than now.

      I wonder whether this discussion will also be moot, if Wikipedia's info is correct:
      "Between 1995 and 2000, the Seventh Malaysia Plan allocation for primary education development allocated 96.5% to National Schools which had 75% of total enrolment. Chinese National-type Schools (21% enrolment) received 2.4% of the allocation while Tamil National-type Schools (3.6% enrolment) received 1% of the allocation"

      Delete