YOURSAY ‘Until now, the education minister had his head buried in the sand.’
Poor performance by students shocks DPM
CQ Muar:
DPM and Education Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, it's shocking that you were shocked at the findings of our students' poor performance (which is known fact).
Spending exorbitantly on education allocations won't turn our students into scholars and geniuses comparable to standards of nearby countries, let alone those from Western advanced nations.
Recently I was tasked with this sad state of affair to assist some allegedly ‘top’ students from different schools who were preparing for their exams. I was aghast at their writing and communication skills (not being in the education field myself).
However, in my short stint I discovered their teachers (from different schools) were no better, which was the reason they were desperately driven to seek help elsewhere.
Thus, this precisely is the deplorable state of our education system. How could students be expected to excel when teachers are no better?
What went wrong? For answers, recall and recollect today's education policy to those of yesteryear.
In the old days, teachers of all races were trained from various professional institutions, including United Kingdom. There was no racial barrier as long as they possess the basic and necessary qualification.
Sadly, today's high percentage of ‘teachers’, heads of schools are young male and female Malays. The teaching profession pays well today, plus lots of holidays, and this account for the great influx regardless of their qualifications and skills.
In this respect, do you expect Malaysia to be world class, Mr ‘Education’ Minister? If no change is made towards this end, you can expect our rating will remain third from the end.
Slumdog: All this while, the education minister had his head buried in the sand to the extent that he claimed that the education system was among the best in the world.
He refused to acknowledge that the education system was in shambles and staffed by incompetent and lazy teachers and principals who are more concerned with race and religion.
His answer? Pour in hundreds of millions of ringgit to engage consultants to improve a system that was beyond repair.
And now he has the thick hide to express concern and shock at the standard of students’ performance when every parent and citizen in the country could have told him of the dire state of the education system.
Apa Ini?: Laugh-out-loud funny that the penny has 'finally' dropped on Muhyiddin. Didn't former PM Dr Mahathir Mohamad groan about how all ministers and big shots in the country send their kids/grand-kids abroad for an education?
Actually, any decent parent would if they could afford to do so.
Pemerhati: The education standards both at the school and tertiary level have fallen because of Umno’s racist policies.
Muhyiddin and Umno know this and they are unlikely to do anything about it because they feel that the third rate and low quality Malay teachers, headmasters, lecturers and professors they employ (even though much better non-Malays are available), are an important vote bank and they help them to remain in power and thus enable them to plunder the country through various scams such as Scorpenes, 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), independent power producers (IPPs), etc.
The biggest losers of Umno’s racist policy are the majority Malays as they get a lousy education from lousy teachers.
The Chinese and others who have money avoid these government-run schools but instead send their children to Chinese or other privately-run schools.
Anon1: Is this minister for real? Education policy was systematically changed for the sole purpose of indoctrinating students to support BN and to sow seeds of racism and segregation.
The entire ministry, department and sector, including its budget, are used as the minister's war chest to reward his loyalists and supporters. No regard was had for the deteriorating quality of teachers, syllabus, methods, etc. Why lament now?
Commentable: The real shocker may yet to come. That’s when we hit the rock bottom and we see our school leavers and later their kids being sent overseas as maids and labourers.
Of course, the elite Umnoputras have already positioned themselves well, for their kids and grand-kids were sent overseas to get a good education.
It's time to stop the rot. It is time to reclaim back your own future as well as the future of your kids. Why let a bunch of crooks determine that for you?
The joke is education received the biggest allocation in the national budget for this year, a cool RM56 billion. Where did all the money go?
With this kind of money spent, it is a national tragedy that we get only half-baked students with a string of 'A's.
Vgeorgemy: In the mid-70s, South Korea and Taiwan were agrarian economies, while we were in the midst of setting up electronic factories in our free trade zones in Penang and Selangor.
In the beginning of 80s, South Korea and Taiwan started investing heavily in quality education thus enabling them to enter heavy industries in 90s.
The careful investment in quality education in these two countries has made it possible for them to become high-income countries by 2000s while we have done the exact opposite of investing in very poor quality education.
This type of poor quality education from 80s has made 88 percent of pensioners having to live below poverty line for next 20 years.
KayL: Mr DPM, just pay some attention to G Thiyaggurudeen’s case . That's one way how teachers screw up the education system we have now. If you think that was an isolated case, then prepare for bigger shocks in future.
Education's about quality, not how much spent
The above is a selection of comments posted by Malaysiakini subscribers. Only paying subscribers can post comments. Over the past one year, Malaysiakinians have posted over 100,000 comments. Join the Malaysiakini community and help set the news agenda. Subscribe now .
These comments are compiled to reflect the views of Malaysiakini subscribers on matters of public interest. Malaysiakini does not intend to represent these views as fact.
