Saturday, January 17, 2009

Our Education System

The recent incident in my school involving the form 1 student had left me wondering...

Our education system....is it still being effective?
Perhaps our children are being pampered and protected in the name of rights?
They always get away after doing things...hmm i am sure that not all the school children behave in this way. I was just wondering that somewhere something is wrong with our educ system.

On the other hand we have some really good students being produced from the same system...
(I am talking bout Sri Aman girls for example)...

Well may be it is too early for me to make a judgment bout this.....but people, hearing you opinion on this would be great k....

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

There is a theory that school is just an institution for social stratification where children first join the real world of competitiveness in gaining the most of the available knowledge in school to get the upper jobs (or white collar jobs). However, not all students can keep up to the 'stress' of this situation.

Some students succeeded, some lost and we both know there are many reasons why so. In some cases, students at the very beginning have lost hope in succeeding as they do not have the moral support and awareness to do so. Some slowly developed their moral support as they progress further in the postive clique. Some, like your sri aman students and maybe us, Cohort 2 have always had the support because of our environment.

However, every student and school is different. Comparing students will only create more tension for yourself and students as they came from different background, different hopes, different future. Sri Aman students may be heading to the United Kingdom to be professionals but your current students may be heading for Ulu Kelang to be workers. All the same, they will come out to get the jobs that pay the bills.

So as teachers, we need to teach them not to use the under table way to get these jobs. It's not the achieving factor in life but whether they are good citizen for the society; whether they will nod their head and smile at strangers, whether they will stop for strangers to pass by, whether they will say sorry for their mistakes, whether they will queue up in a line for service. We are having a deteriorating morale in the society now with people punching and fighting as your previous blog have written but is it all to be blame on the child when the support he get since young was that? Look at his parents and you may see what I mean. So it is now up to us to tell them that punching and kicking is wrong, talking back is wrong, killing and raping is wrong so that when we read the newspaper next time, there will hopefully be less of a social problem in the country.

This is not something taught through books but through communication. The method varies so you and I will need to find a suitable method for each group of students. However as you said, the current education system does not cater to these but then, it is more or less a norm in ASIAN countries to be behaving this way. Look at Singapore, Japan and Korea. They actually do massive prayers to get into uni. So there is no right and wrong in education sytem. It is individuals in the system to work it out. system is non-living, humans are. So just modify here and there to suit yourself in making sure you have done your part.

I know it sounds idealistic. I myself am not sure if I can succeed. In fact, I did get frustrated when I see how everything is working now. Paperworks, ideal motivational courses, but come to think of it, where is the aspect of humanistic approach? So, I have made it my own principle that with each student I teach, I hope to undersdtand them and listen to them so that I can guide them at least by knowing something about life; whether it is to say excuse me or sorry. We need more of individuals like this to create a better society.

Simple things like this may take miles in the future. Gambate together, Guna!!! You know you have a whole bunch of support with you.

Najib Azmi said...

the thing abt our education system is that it works, but not for everyone. its always been norm-referenced, so there will always be a group that is outside the norm, that needs a different kind of system more suited for them.

and its not just the system either. the people has a share in all of this too. Just my 5 cents