YOURSAY | Rafidah is right - prioritise quality over quantity

YOURSAY | ‘If we set to hire the best, we will have good educators for our children.’

Rafidah to Radzi: We all pay price if teachers impart wrong lessons to students

Maya: Former minister Rafidah Aziz, it was during your era that the whole education system was destroyed - by that one man who helmed the Education Ministry and subsequently became the PM.

The core subjects of the education system remain the same in many countries. The basic principles do not change, but new teaching aids are used to get students to understand these subjects.

However, in Malaysia, we keep changing the education system and the delivery of the subjects as and when we feel like it based on political ideology rather than preparing our students for the future.

Just plucking 18,000 new teachers from the pool of people who came out from the already failed system is going to be disastrous. Worse still, at this juncture of online learning when everyone is grappling with a new learning environment.

In fact, we need to train the trainers first.

Education, after healthcare, is the backbone of a nation's progress. Sadly, nothing much can be said about them as most politicians send their children to international schools or overseas for their educational needs. The same goes for their healthcare needs.

If anything, positive change may take another 30 years. It will not come overnight. But I doubt this will happen.

Poppy: You think they (the government) care, Rafidah? If they did, our education system would not be in this situation.

This is a major vote bank to them - another 18,000 teachers to add to their support base. If possible, it will be given to faithful supporters, whether qualified or not.

Do not waste your time and energy. As long the whole system is politicised and not handled by professionals, the rot will deepen.

The world is moving forward with the latest knowledge in IT (information technology) and AI (artificial intelligence). It is not going to wait for us to catch up as it will get tougher in the future.

Our children must be brought up to learn and practise new ideas if they want to succeed in the future. Otherwise, they will end up finding employment in other nations - those that at one time sent their people to find employment here.

ScarletPanda9731: Recruitment of teachers could be stepped up by reverting to weekend training under the old normal class scheme which was successfully done in the olden days.

In the meantime, the shortage of teachers could be easily solved by employing temporary teachers.

In the 1950s, we were taught by some teachers who were still under training.

We should rethink the subjects taught. Five subjects relevant to job requirements are not only sensible but also reduce the workload of students. Why study so many subjects?

Apple product inventor Steve Jobs did not study so much. Since this is the age of the internet, why not focus on this?

Teach subjects that are marketable. Why make learning history compulsory which has no marketable value? Leave out pride and prejudice and get moving in the right direction, especially on technology. Why wallow in the small pond of history which has no relevance to modern living and livelihood?

Come down to earth, be realistic. We are in the new world of IT, Grab, Uber, SpaceX, and space travel to Mars. Do not be a frog in a pond.

PB: This will be a recipe for disaster. It isn't that we don't need more teachers, but that we must fear that the ranks will be filled with those who can't get jobs anywhere else. And that this might be an excuse to entrench even more of the religious-minded.

Nevertheless, I am bemused by the sentimentality expressed by other readers for the "good old days." They were never the good old days. Don't fool yourself. I went through the Malaysian school system in the 1970s through to the early 1980s. It was abysmal then.

Classes were overcrowded, there was an over-emphasis on science and mathematics and a systemic shaming of "arts" subjects - under which understanding included the social sciences and humanities along with traditional arts disciplines like language and literature.

Students were mismatched with subjects. If you did well at school, you were expected to go into the science stream - despite the fact that you might actually enjoy history and literature more.

Those who didn't do too well in public exams were shunted into the arts stream, even though some may have been good in biology but perhaps not in physics. The teaching of history was appalling because it was not considered an important subject like mathematics.

Pupils took their cue from their teachers, schools and the system. Few took the social sciences or language or humanities seriously - those subjects were the holding pen for the discarded who couldn't make the cut into the science stream.

The education system is far worse now than before; that is true. But it was never good to start off.

We needed to reform education many decades ago; instead, we subjected it to numerous rounds of changes that even more greatly entrenched mediocrity.

There was no halcyon period to look back to with fond sentimentality.

OrangePanther1466: I fully agree with Rafidah. Teachers are so very important to a student's education as they impart knowledge, values, character and discipline on impressionable young minds.

I am grateful to have had good teachers who left an indelible mark on me. They do not make teachers like those anymore. Of course, there were some teachers who were less outstanding but the good ones, you will remember for the rest of your lives.

Up to today, more than 50 years after we left school, we still honour our teachers who are still around with the occasional lunches and dinners every year.

Teachers not only impart knowledge but more importantly, they mould young minds into being good adults and members of the community they belong to. So, selecting and training teachers to be the best they can be is so crucial for the success of the education system.

Iphonezours: Education Minister Mohd Radzi Md Jidin, our national education’s decline is not only due to the fault of policymakers but also very much due to the quality of our teachers.

There is so much negative feedback on the quality of our teachers, some whose depth of teaching, subject skills, creativity, motivation, etc, are just not there.

Emphasis should be on quality rather than quantity so that our children can have a decent future as the best asset a nation can give to its citizens is good education.

Just A Malaysian: If we set ourselves to hire the best, then we have a good chance of getting good people to be trained as educators for our children. But in our country, politics, race and religion will get in the way.

By the time we balance all these, we ended up with a camel rather than a racehorse.

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