Education is the key to the future of Malaysia and Malaysians. It is the only long term answer to poverty and it has been sorely neglected from decades of being a political play thing.
The main thrust of 180’s change in governance will be to completely revamp the education system. 180 believes that this is necessary because the system as it exists promotes mediocrity, does not encourage Malaysians to learn and the educational philosophy is biassed and outdated, as is the curriculum. Facilities are primitive and unwelcoming.
FACILITIES. The five year goal is to have all schools convert to a one session timetable, so that each class will have its own space with which it can identify and which can be made ‘their’ space. More effort should be made to upgrade facilities to a level that attending school is a pleasant experience rather than a visit to purgatory. Future school buildings should be architecturally more imaginative and inspiring and designed to better serve the purpose for which they are built.
Schools should become community centres where the whole community can access computers, and libraries. They should be accessible by the community for meetings and for purposes of adult education. They should be the natural home for community environment and self help groups.
The concept of vernacular schools should be abandoned immediately with these schools either being absorbed into the overall education system or allowed to go private. The latter, no cost to the government
LANGUAGE. Over the next five years the language of education should change from BM to English with BM being a compulsory second language with special emphasis on its literary value. There are some brilliant, radical young poets in Malaysia and they should be incorporated in the BM curriculum to inspire and stimulate students.
Teachers who are capable of teaching in English should be paid a bonus of 25% of their salaries to encourage other teachers to adapt. To make up the shortfall in English speaking teachers retired teachers from English speaking countries should be invited to fill short term contracts in Malaysian schools. Exposure to teachers from different backgrounds can only benefit Malaysian students. The teaching of other languages within the State run system should be the province of secondary education
PHILOSOPHY. Primary. This is the stage that children develop their learning skills and their desire to learn. Classes should have a permanent class teacher so that students have one role model to work with and so the teacher can have greater empathy and better understand of each student. The emphasis should be on encouraging students to learn by themselves, to explore, to experiment, to analyse what they observe and to question everything around them. It is a time when children should learn about themselves and the environment in which they live.
By late Primary they should be starting to source their own information and they should be taught how to assess the information they access. To this end cutting edge cheap technology such as the Raspberry Pi, tablets and notebooks should be freely available for students to play and experiment with. This does not include devices for communication such as handphones
Any attempt at indoctrination should be completely eliminated from the curriculum and children do not yet have the analytical skills to assess what is right and what is wrong. The responsibility of teaching standards and morals is in the home, not in the classroom.
Competitiveness in the classroom should be eliminated and students should be encouraged to learn at their own pace. Exams should be completely discarded as they serve no useful purpose that a good teacher cannot fulfill. They impose a huge administrative burden on teachers. There is no role for homework in primary nor in early secondary school.
There is no role for uniforms in an environment like this... let the uniform be T shirt and jeans.
More emphasis should be placed on physical exercise, both competitive and non competitive for those students who are less competitive
Overall primary education should be fun. Children should look forward to going to school. Teachers should be seen as a guide, a councillor, an inspiration and a friend. Never as an authoritarian figure. Teachers should bring their lives into the classroom... for example if the teacher is buying a house or a car the problems and pleasures of that process should be discussed with students
In line with the highly significant and responsible role of teachers in the development of the nation, teachers should be paid an appropriate salary. Much higher than they are earning at the moment
PHILOSOPHY, Secondary. The comments regarding Primary School Facilities and Philosophy apply equally to Secondary Schools. Perhaps more so, because Secondary School students are more discerning consumers that their Primary School cousins.
However, there is considerably more closer management required at Secondary level because there is much more work to cover. This does not mean that fun and experimentation should suffer. Rather than learning by rote, more emphasis should be placed on understanding and encouraging the motivation to explore and seek information. This applies particularly in the area of IT.
There should be specialist schools set up in urban and major rural centres for students who excel in specific disciplines
Exams and homework should be limited to the later years of Secondary Education. This does not mean that examination should be eliminated, but that only major exams of one hour of more should go. The goal should be to Continuously Assess students.
Once students start to do exams they should provide themselves with a PIN number that only they and a central computer would be able to identify. This PIN number would be used for all future exams and later job applications
There should be one set of exams that are applicable to all students
TERTIARY.. Entry into Tertiary level courses should be solely on merit. 180 realises that its not always possible for students to be allotted a place in the course of their first choice and where this situation arises the students should expect to be interviewed to assess their suitability to function in their chosen profession. The interviewing tribunal should be composed of representatives of the three major races.
But having an intake of excellent students will not cure the rot that is tertiary education in Malaysia. Its hard to imagine how one sector of society could be so effectively destroyed in such a short time unless there was an active agenda to wreak as much havoc as possible.
Its is difficult to know what could be done to remedy the situation unless academics themselves decide to confront the problem and vastly improve the standards of tuition, assessment and research. Its certainly not a problem that can be solved overnight. Malaysia is widely regarded as an academic backwater. No aspiring young academics would see Malaysia as a stepping stone to the future and local post grads with any merit leave the country as soon as possible.
Increasing salaries on their own will no solve the problem, but that must be part of the solution
A 180 government would remove all legislation that restricts the freedom of tertiary institutions to define their own identity.
Institutions must accept that students have as much right to self determination as they themselves. They should have no disciplinary role over tertiary students. There are other government agencies to handle real problems.
Faculties would be encouraged to take a multi disciplinary approach to learning, especially in the early years of a course
180 would increase the level of oversight on private colleges churning out diplomates so that their standards were at a level acceptable to industry and not only to their bank accounts. 180 would make it much more difficult for private colleges to upgrade their status.
There needs to be greater emphasis on Vocational Courses to address the lack of skills and lack of innovation in the workforce
All institutions would be equally accessible to all students and 180 would drastically review the policy of siting tertiary institutions in isolated areas. Students need to be exposed to all sorts of experiences of which not all can be achieved through the internet.
180 would seriously consider discontinuing the funding overseas study at an undergraduate level. The money would be better spent developing elite universities in Malaysia
180 would encourage institutions to develop assessment strategies that would avoid the widespread problems arising from plagiarism and the purchase of assignments
Much of what 180 has to say about the Public Service will also apply to tertiary institutions funded by government.
Next day: The Public Service
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