Visionary Templates

Off and on, the Sun provides some really thought-provoking pieces such as this latest nugget from Halimah Mohd Said on reviving the Vision School concept.

 

Among others, she said: “We are too far gone into vernacular education to realise after more than half a century that it has not served national unity and integration well.”   

Halimah (Datin?) is worried over growing divisiveness of a national education system trying to accommodate three different streams replete with their very own linguistic and cultural exclusiveness.

(Digressing a bit but perhaps she should also include a fourth stream which has come out strongly over the last few years in the form of the sekolah pondok type of schools, some of which feature integrated syllabus, and offering far more exclusivity than even the vernacular schools can profess to offer.)

I echo Halimah’s thoughts in the urgent need to bring the diverging schools system together and for the time being, it does look that the Vision School concept is the most viable solution we have.

It is important for the children to be allowed to open up and learn the hotch potch in race, religion and culture “real time” rather than what they could theoretically gain from books.

In book form, such differences can come out very cold and technical. Boring is an apt phrase to be used.

Worse still, things come out all black and white with no grayscale allowed perpetuating an “Us and Them” mentality right from the start.

You’d have to wonder why the concept never did gain the kind of wide acceptance and strong political support it should rightly garner given the national unity objective that it carries.

I would venture that the main problem lie with our inability to do away with the racial distinctions of being Chinese, Ibans, Indians, Malays, Muruts, Sikhs etc etc etc instead of identifying ourselves first and foremost as Malaysians.

50 plus years of independence and we still identify our schools on the basis of their purported main language of use: Malay, Chinese and Tamil.

Throw into the mix with the newer streams in Sekolah Tahfiz – with its predominant Islamic-based syllabus – and the elitist community based International schools – predominant English speaking - and we have a potent divisive foundation on racial, linguistic and class lines all set up for the future.

Is this the kind of future we are offering our kids?

It is time that the education reformists take the Vision School concept a step further than the mere sharing of grounds, facilities and resources.

No: the Vision School should be a sharing of ideals and principles.

Not “You”, not “Me”, but “We” as in “We” are in this together.

And the government should not be put off by the wholly Malaysians’ Malaysia philosophy behind this.

For God’s sakes, can we chuck racial politics out the window for once?

God knows the haste in the need to set up the correct foundation before we all go down six feet under and leaving our legacy of a divisive education system for decades to come.

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.