Monday 17 August 2009

Pythagorean Understandings

My sincerest apologies to education Supremo MY.

His decision to go back to the mother tongues in teaching Maths and Science was probably the right one after all.

MY must have realized to continue would mean sending our children down the road of oblivion for both Maths and Science as well as that of mastering the English language.

MY must have read the many, many questions (and possibly notes to students) from teachers teaching the two subjects which prompted him to make a quick U-Turn of the six year old policy.

Questions like these:

Diagram 8 shows the Pravina’s twelfth birthday. Her brother borns 3 years 6 months after Pravina borned. What is the age of her brother at 7th January 2014.

Diagram 10 shows the mass of a packet of flour. The flour is fill in three containers. First container fill in with 3.98 kg of flour. The rest of the flour in second and third container. Which of the flowing mass is for second and third container
?”

How can you continue with the policy when all it does is wreck the language even more?

How can you continue when it seems that you would need to teach both teachers again for them to teach the students?

Who in heaven’s name would be teaching who then?

Citizen Nades’ reasoning was that the questions were framed in Bahasa Melayu then translated.

His words seem to echo statesman Dr M’s contentions in his blog posting: “Malays just cannot learn and speak English.

We should stop teaching English so that the language would not drag down the Malays in their exams. We should see better results,” he said.

A wee bit racist I would say to these, but their comments are with merits.

You just cannot answer questions you don’t understand.

(Then again, you don’t need to be THAT very well versed in English to answer the above questions and students who are good in Maths and so so in Bahasa Inggeris could answer the above quite easily.

Six years of Bahasa Inggeris should give you a rough gist, shouldn't it?(Though the second is somewhat frighteningly thick in its composition. What the hell are you really saying?)

Maths shouldn’t be about Bahasa Inggeris Grammar.

So what if the question translators get some of them mixed up?)

Let all the” budak-budak Melayu, Cina, India dan lain lain” learn things their own respective tongue.

After all we haven’t even gotten pass identifying ourselves as Malays, Chinese, Indian, Dan Lain Lain despite our 50 or so years living under one single flag.

And if these students want to improve on the Bahasa Inggeris, there are tuition classes in abundance.

(I so don’t get teachers who spend their off work hours teaching children without charging them. I mean: What gives? You can be making much moollah here.

Why can’t they be like those who allegedly teach the minimal in school so that they can charge for teaching the rest elsewhen.)

The parents of these students should be more nationalistic (nay, patriotic) and fork out good money that would help the country’s economy.

It is a cutthroat world out there and last I heard we are no Socialists.

So anyone looking to gain competitive edge in the marketplace by mastering Bahasa Inggeris had better be slogging hard for it.

If you can’t, tough.

If the rich folks can send their children overseas to do this, why can’t you sacrifice your whole month’s meal for your children’s education?

Don’t you be expecting your government to give it to you, hear.

They have bigger things to do.

Calvin understands

No comments: