Letters
by Chopin

My concern is always the above. With five children at schools and rising cost of living I find it rather difficult to cope with today’s Malaysia education systems. I find it rather messy, complicated, grade-oriented and so on. Not to mention the teachers’ grumbles and tight red-tapes in its ministry level. Therefor, I would like to line up the followings if Uncle Lim could somehow bring it up or perhaps to YB Dr. Halimah Ali of S’gor Exco in charge of education.

1. Primary and Secondary Education

I would like the education system could emphasise on Child’s Creativity and character build-up rather that grades oriented. It’s a shame that teachers in our Primary education is a Maktab Perguruan graduates with little knowledge on Early Child Education. Even, I found out recently our children as young as 5-6 years old in Kindergarden are having tuitions now! Are we becoming something like S’pore now? Teachers should be a graduate with specialization in early child education or related to that. A master degree and PhD would be better. (There is always a gap between primary school teachers and secondary school teachers and the first is a bit low, so to say)

I strongly feel that with strong foundation in the early education our children would have better understanding of their future and their career path, in a crude word, they should know what they want to be. If a child says that he/she wants to be a lawyer, or a policeman, or an army personnel at least the path for that is always there for them to venture.

It is a common practice among the schools now to segregate the children based on their grades achievement. The bright one in the always the best classes while the “stupid” ones are in the last classes. Are these our children are stupid enough? Recently I watched this Nationa Geopraphy channel how a girl nearly totally abandoned her musical gifted talent and career after she was told by the teacher for “wasting the time” based on her musical ability. So as I can see, teachers’ words are so powerful to change children mind in a split second. Please change this old mentality methods for once and for all.

I also find it rather strange although year after year brillliant outstanding students graduates but still technology inventions and significant achievement always belong to these western countries? Why? Why today each and every children needs to buy Activity Books? Why not teachers give them excercise extracted from Text Books hence fully utilise the Excercise Books? And this why our children have to bring heavy bags to schools today? Why today our children are so lacking in excitement to go to schools? Why there is always no teacher attending the classes either going for meeting, or kursus or government functions etc? And yet we reach no better than Korea or Taiwan or Singapore and even China.

Early social intergration with all races would come as early as our children step into schools. This should continue when they go further to Secondary Education. By having too much Chinese Schools, Tamil Schools and Malay Schools plus Islamic Religeous Schools and so on, this racial intergration is very difficult to achieve when our children grow up. But at the same our ethical values and cultures along with its valuable heritage should remain in each of our children. Our children should be given their chance with our guidance how this beloved country should look in future.

Having boarding schools are good but poorly managed and mishandling with little or no understanding to youngsters problems would lead more complicated matters. Almost 50% of our SBP students are having either a boyfriend or girlfriend and they are having some kind of serious relationship! This worries me. It seems that schooling is no longer considered to be enjoyful. Some SBP’s are meant for Malays only which is bad in a long period of time. It means although on surface we are Malaysians but deep in our heart we tend to hate each other.

Too many women teachers and little men for teaching. Please do not brand me as biased towards our women contribution to this country. By saying this I mean women are having three jobs at one time, a teacher, a mother and a housewife which all are great and difficult jobs. Therefore, at the end of the day these extra jobs would limit their ideas and exhaust their energy to move forwards and “janji hujung bulan ada gaji”. The rest I don’t care attitude. With male teacher around the scenario would be different a bit, so instance may be to come during the weekends would be less problems and involving more in extracurriculum and fun. Therefore, teachers’ plights have to given attention too.

2. University

University fee in Malaysia offers almost same amount to foreign students while the latter has to pay a little bit higher (I might be wrong). I feel that education suppose to be minimal or affordable to our children not until they have to “loan” from any agencies and pay with interests. If our education is at world class level, which I doubt about it, then fee should be higher for foreign students. This is considered to be an industry by itself, like Australia or UK or US for that matter. Even Open University is not cheap let alone Monash University in M’sia or Nottingham Univ. in M’sia or whatever. Let us open a way for every one with a chance to study at higher level and affordably.

For matured students university should open more opportunity for them to enhance their educations. Provide more grants to potential students where more corporate involvement and semi-gorvenment agencies. Can we at least consider these mega projects which would benefits a handful of people and start giving back to rakyat especially education? What is the purpose of NEECR or so on but the rakyat there needs more talents and educations, can we just for once consider this?

I am sure I have no direct benefits while these mega projects are going on. If I were to go to KLCC now, again the food is expensive, the parking is expensive, the roads there are jammed I again have to pay if I were to go up there just to have a few “significant” views. It only benefits only already rich people who are trying to be extra richer.