Our education standard is shamefully low


by Lok Wing Kong
The Malaysian Insider
December 11, 2013

I have predicted long ago that the Education Blueprint 2013-2025 by the Education Minister will not be able to raise the standard of the education.

My prediction is spot on when we were ranked 52nd out of 62 countries for TIMSS and is firmly entrenched at the bottom third place of the Pisa survey, worse than Vietnam.

Singapore is in second place. The young students aged 11 and 12 years from Singapore are better than our 15 years old students in reading, speaking and general knowledge, etc.

I therefore totally agree with former NST editor-in-chief Datuk A. Kadir Jassin that Muyiddin be replaced by the PM’s wife Rosmah Mansor who is more cable and efficient.

Muhyiddin does not fit to be the Education Minister and in fact not fit to be in the cabinet.

The Education portfolio is the most important one to any country and it has been placed in the hands of this man. Worse, education policies since independence have been flip-flopping many times. As the government practises neo-apartheid policies since the introduction of the New Economic Policies (NEP), non-Malays have been grossly marginalised. Since then everything is race-based and “kulitfication” is the name of the game.

Non-Malay students are out of bounce of many things such as public universities of their choice, scholarships, quotas, and so on. Banking licenses and profit making companies etc of the non-Malays have been “robbed” away by the government and handed over to Umno cronies, purportedly empowering the Malays economically.

However, there are many millions of non-Malays who are not financially well off but Umno-BN pretends not to know. Again Umno also ignores the truth that majority huge businesses are already in the hands of their Malay cronies and yet they still ask for more.

NEP is already more than 40 years old, but Najib thinks that the Malays are not already spoonfed enough. Shortly after GE13, he introduced the Bumiputera Economic Empowerment Agenda. He ensures that the Malays are overfed to strengthen his grip of power in Umno.

Both mission schools and English medium schools should be quickly brought back to arrest the spiral declining standard of the English language. But the Education Minister and the PM refuse to do so.

The whole education system must be revamped in that the non-performing teachers and university teaching staff must be retired or sacked. This will serve as eye-opener for the rest to pull up their socks.

Don’t waste tax payer’s money to spoil our kids. It takes more than 50 years to reach this appalling state and it will take just as long or may be longer to rectify it. That’s provided Malaysia has produced some impeccable credible leaders who have strong political will to reverse this trend. This type of leaders may never be born in this Bolehland at all.

It is because the BN government only practises race-based and mediocre policies in all fields that Malaysia has become extremely uncompetitive. The public universities are producing rubbish graduates not employable by the private sectors. Government and GLCs are grossly overstaffed, and therefore, the efficiency is very low. Many GLCs are losing money like hell. Why?

Most of the teachers, lecturers, associate and full professors are of mediocre standard producing worse than mediocre graduates. Those helming the GLCs are half-past-six graduates.

Malaysian Airlines has never made money since its inception, instead it continuously bleeds heavily. The government continues to inject huge sum of taxpayers’ money to keep it afloat. Similarly, Proton has been hemorrhaging for more than 30 years. Again taxpayers’ money is used to keep it alive. This list goes on.

It certainly is a pipe dream to expect our graduates to be able to run and manage the GLCs well to produce profits. This is because of our lousy education system and the government’s mediocre race-based policies.

Former de-facto law minister Zaid Ibrahim is perfectly right in saying that without Umno, the Malays will be more advanced and civilised. I cannot agree with him more.

An Indian friend of mine was teaching English, Mathematics and Science in national-type secondary schools for many years. When he was transferred to a national secondary school in which 99% students are Malays, he was called up by the headmaster because the passing rate of his class was low.

So he fictitiously passed those who failed by adding extra marks here and there and he received no more shelling thereafter. He never faced this problem while teaching in the national-type schools. Every year there are 1000–1200 Malay students scoring CGPA of 4.0 (via matriculation) vs. only about 400–450 non-Malay students scording CGPA 4.0 (via STPM). – December 11, 2013.

  1. #1 by sheriff singh on Wednesday, 11 December 2013 - 1:47 pm

    ‘ … Muyiddin be replaced by the PM’s wife Rosmah Mansor who is more cable and efficient. …’

    Perhaps the rot starts at the basic level, at kindergarten upwards. We need to look at Rosmah’s PERMATA to she whether she is already doing something to address this 3-4 years backwards issue. She could be doing something already behind Muhyiddin’s back.

  2. #2 by sheriff singh on Wednesday, 11 December 2013 - 1:57 pm

    ‘ .. Every year there are 1000–1200 Malay students scoring CGPA of 4.0 (via matriculation) vs. only about 400–450 non-Malay students scording CGPA 4.0 (via STPM). .. ‘

    Holy shiite !!! So many brilliant students and yet we are ranked bottom third in the world. PISA and TIMSS must both be wrong.

    • #3 by cemerlang on Thursday, 12 December 2013 - 9:56 pm

      Hypothesis. The CGPA in Malaysia is different from the other countries. Now, let’s research.

  3. #4 by Bigjoe on Wednesday, 11 December 2013 - 2:01 pm

    The fact is that when they handed over the education portfolio to Muhiyiddin, NO ONE in UMNO ponted out that Muhiyiddin is HIGHLY UNQUALIFIED for the portfolio. IF they know that Education is the most important issue facing the Malay Agenda, IT AUTOMATICALLY CONDEMNS UMNO’S right to claim of championing the Malay cause.

    Muhiyiddin long career – is that of a traditional UMNO Feudal war lord. He rose by building party insiders to support him – through favours of powers (and likely we know what).. Education is a highly difficult to scale effort – itself very difficult to democratize. Feudal skills and mindset are anti-thesis to skills and mindset needed for it and to make a leap, require a revolutionary mindset and skills – ALL of which Muhiyiddin and pretty much most of UMNO is very unqualified for.

    Its really why UMNO can never get it right – they can’t break out of the feudal minds and interest. Without it, all the high-falluting talk they talk is just talk. They are just simply not set up and unqualified.

  4. #5 by sheriff singh on Wednesday, 11 December 2013 - 2:29 pm

    Fact is, ALL our Ministers, UMNO or otherwise, are ALL UNQUALIFIED to head their respective Ministries. Think about it. And our civil service, well, mediocrity everywhere. So what can we expect?

    While a country like Singapore looks for talent for all levels, and the result is that they do very well on all fronts, we look for mediocrity, and therefore we fail on all fronts.

    But you can hear Najib and his Gang speaks about ‘soaring to greater heights’, every day on national radio. Tokok and wild dreams aplenty. Like an empty tin or vessel making just alot of empty noises.

  5. #6 by waterfrontcoolie on Wednesday, 11 December 2013 - 2:48 pm

    It took us over a generation to hit the bottom of the pit, and I fear it may take us twice the time to reach the standard we had achieved in the 60s! Even 20 years ago, I had Malay woman graduates seeking to work as clerks because they feared the demand placed upon executives! Yes they preferred the standard routine work given by someone above so that they need not explain should anything went wrong! With such mind-set, created by people in the BTN and professors who just vomit what is demanded of them without the need to through between-the-ears; what else is news? By 2020, maybe we should start a labour export agency.

  6. #7 by ENDANGERED HORNBILL on Wednesday, 11 December 2013 - 2:58 pm

    Well, since you want to ‘promote’ Rosmah to be Minister of Education, why don’t you also promote her to be Pro-Chancellor of all public and private universities in Malaysia.

    Only Rosmah can save Malaysia from all the B.S and the rot.

  7. #8 by ENDANGERED HORNBILL on Wednesday, 11 December 2013 - 3:00 pm

    She would be there in all her glorious splendour at all the convocations – diamonds, Hermes, shoes, scarves and all things that glitter. Najib would be pleased.

    Students would be delighted to shake her hands.
    Lecturers would beam for the photo-shoot.
    All would seem well in Malaysia again.

  8. #9 by boh-liao on Wednesday, 11 December 2013 - 6:48 pm

    HOLY COW, mooooooooo, how dare LWK’s Indian friend told him abt “adding extra marks here and there”!?
    How dare LWK wrote abt it here!?
    Blasphemy! Dis is under OSA n also intentionally belittling d academic capabilities of CGPA 4.0 Malay students
    U better watch out

  9. #10 by boh-liao on Wednesday, 11 December 2013 - 8:33 pm

    Dis is Y UmnoB bravely declared dat entry 2 public universities is based on meritocracy
    UmnoB very confident high calibre Malay students with perfect academic scores can b manufactured, created 4 admission in2 professional courses of our public univ
    Semua can b kow tim 1 what

  10. #11 by sheriff singh on Wednesday, 11 December 2013 - 8:40 pm

    Did you hear of matric students who got CGPAs of 4.1 ?

  11. #12 by cutedevilnabil on Wednesday, 11 December 2013 - 9:27 pm

    I had said before ,and i say it again that is,MoooOOOOOOO Cow Din was only qualify to be minister to ministry the Pig,Cow,Dog,Monkey…..education Mooooooooooooooo what’s that???

  12. #13 by tuahpekkong on Wednesday, 11 December 2013 - 11:06 pm

    You have hit the nail on the head but sorry, UMNO is not going to give up on these muddled, racist and divisive policies easily. UMNO needs these policies to secure the Malay votes to stay in power. UMNO is getting too powerful. Instead of doing what is right for the well being for our education system, some UMNO radicals may just condemn your discourse. Just last week at the UMNO AGM, UMNO youth leader chided the private sector for discriminating against and not giving the Bumiputras a fair chance. A delegate also cast doubt on none Bumiputra first class honors achievers.

  13. #14 by lee tai king (previously dagen) on Thursday, 12 December 2013 - 1:40 pm

    Lee Kuan Yew once said if you pump low grade petrol into a racing car, the car would still purr and if you pump high grade petrol into a normal car that car would not purr.

    But jib recently said that malaysia is a country of endless possibilities. So jib and gang can surely make create miracles.

  14. #15 by pulau_sibu on Friday, 13 December 2013 - 3:32 pm

    More malay holding Phd compared to non-Malay. How do you explain about this statistics? I am sure Malays are more clever than non-Malays

You must be logged in to post a comment.