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.