Although Barisan Nasonal Ministers continue to claim, without batting an eyelid, that Malaysia has one of the best educational systems in the world which is comparable if not better than the best in the world, there is no lack of example of the poor comprehension levels and declining educational standards in Malaysia.

These are not just from the results of international assessment tests like PISA (Programme for International Students Assessments) or TIMSS (Trends in Mathematics and Science Studies) where Malaysian students scored consistently in the world’s lowest one-third bracket, four or even five years behind their peers in the world’s top achieving countries like Shanghai, Singapore, South Korea and Japan or the various world top university rankings where Malaysia seemed to have slipped into the zone of oblivion.

Malaysian are often regaled by frequent bloopers like the recent case of the Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar, who sent the police into a frenzy of action because he thought that a tweet by an Opposition Member of Parliament “Royal my foot” was a blatant and seditious attack on the institution of constitutional monarchy or the Home Minister, Datuk Seri Zahid Hamidi who believed that his infamous letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) in the United States vouching for the character and integrity of an international gambling kingpin was merely to confirm that the “14K triad” did not exist in the country.

Of course these bloopers were nothing compared to the one made collectively by Najib’s 35-member Cabinet which created history and a record of sorts when they completely misunderstood the call by the Minister for Agriculture and Agro-based Industries, Datuk Ismail Sabri Yaakob to Malay consumers to boycott Chinese businesses as not targetting Chinese traders alone but aimed at all traders.

But the biggest howler must be those who cannot differentiate the complexities of three entirely different concepts – “Save Malaysia”, “Save UMNO” and “Save Najib”, thinking that they are one and the same. Read the rest of this entry »