Dear Minister of Education,
Congrats,Education changes lives so as an educationist of over 3 decades,I speak from experiencing the educational process myself to one delivering it to young Malaysians.
As stakeholders in the nation building process,let me give my two cents worth of opinion.The education system in the past did some things right-it produced Malaysian professionals who were eloquent in English and critical thinkers as well as well informed about the global perspective as we studied the geography of the whole world ,its topography,population and etc and we studied the General Paper which trained us to be critical and logical in argumentative skills.
Along the way,a lot of interference by non educationists with different agendas messed things up and now we have ended with students who are trained to regurgitate everything the teacher taught (non critical memorisers of facts) ,hardly able to defend and argue out their stance on any issues with weak speaking skills,and taught to attend tuition classes to study past year questions to attain top grades of A which attests to inability to handle unexpected questions or think out of the box.So the no. of As scored doesn't measure the success of the system if it fails to prepare them for the careers of the future or compete an international levels as gauged by PISA ranking.
Please start a forum to listen to suggestions and feedback from stakeholders like the PAGE chairwoman ,teachers' unions and the principals association for we are the PEOPLE who have direct contact with students at the grassroot level and we keep track of our students as they enter the professional fields on what they lack or how they benefit.Top down directives don't succeed as much as bottom up changes as we are directly involved with the classroom management.
It's not a matter of giving teachers computers but how we can reorientate the way students learn.Listen to Sir Ken Robinson on why creativity matters in the future as Albert Einstein said as imagination is more important than knowledge for knowledge is limited but imagination embraces the entire world,stimulating progress and giving birth to evolution -imagination is a real factor in scientific research .
Education should be looking into the future not the next 5-6 years.Thank you for starting the visionary Multimedia SuperCorridor,you have brought us to have electronics manufacturing ,and heavy industries to diversify from relying on non renewable resources like fossil fuel which is depletable but the human resources is invaluable to be harnessed for creating new industries for the future.
Skills for our students should be to prepare them to be self motivated,independent learners not waiting to be spoon fed ready made answers.
They should be well read not to rely on unreliable sources of information so media literacy should be taught in schools to teach them to evaluate reliability and relevance of information.Teach them to think for themselves and not think for them so free the press instead of censoring it.
To reduce the digital divide between rich and poor students,the placing of computers in slum areas,an experiment by Sugata Mitra revolutionised education for poor students as self accessed learning empowered them to gain knowledge without paying for expensive tuition fees.Free learning resources like those set up by the Khan Academy opened up opportunities to any learner worldwide.
I've just viewed an open talk by two top intelletuals Yuval Harari and Thomas Friedman and their ideas for the future.Two important survival skills for humans in the future would be adaptability and propulsion.Learning from mother nature tell us that we have to change to survive and not to look back at the past but move forward.
The commendable nation that they said had forward looking leaders is in China in which they look generations ahead and not just a step forward.They are pushing for environmental sustainability by using progressive methods like the environment tax to change individuals purchasing habits for green technology,the use of solar and hydro renewable sources of energy ,redesign of smart transport that uses electricity and even solar surfaced roads or buses that are elevated to reduce traffic jams.
The other skill we should instill is cross cultural awareness as they need to work in a globalized world and democratic skills of civic awareness through participation in voluntary work at grasswork level and skills at researching and debating instead of the way they debased the meaning of free speech with crude and vulgar language.
The changes in the educational process would not be immediate but in a few generations time,we would HOPEfully have a new generation of Malaysians who are truly well educated in every sense of the word.We can hopefully only plant the seeds and see them grow and bloom after a decade or so.
Change,Ubah Hopefully for a Better Tomorrow
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