YOURSAY | Politics killing our education system

YOURSAY | ‘You better earn enough money to get private tutors for your children.’

COMMENT | How our education system polarises, promotes disunity

Existential Turd: As the columnist (who was also a former teacher) P Gunasegaram admitted that vernacular schools are better run than national schools.

Even their detractors send their children to vernacular schools. This "parallel" school system became a lifeline to many parents who find national and tahfiz schools suffocating.

Was it hope that created this lifeline?

No. It was paid for by generations of school children asking for donations, teachers overburdened by administrative work and bloated class sizes, and educators who fought for their existence at the cost of their citizenship.

Sure, it is much easier to imagine a saviour minister or prime minister coming to your rescue, but that is fantasy.

It puts all the burden and responsibilities on a single person or a small group of people.

You can wait for someone like Lee Kuan Yew to be born, but while you are waiting, better devote your energy to nurturing a backup plan.

The Chinese educators probably do not have foresight about today's state of education in Malaysia. They probably want to preserve vernacular education based on selfish reasons.

As economist Adam Smith observed, the self-interest of individuals is what made the free-market economy go round and round.

As long as your product is better than your competitor, you will thrive.

In Malaysia, due to the “ketuanan” ideology, a disproportionate amount of benefits are heaped on the majority, based on race rather than needs.

To help the majority get ahead of the minorities, the government went even further by putting obstacles in front of the minorities to slow them down.

Their internal justification is that "if we don't do it to them, they will do it to us".

Some of the tactics they use are familiar to us, like language requirements, programmes and university admission restrictions, quota systems and so on.

In a modern economy, this is monopolistic behaviour, and we all know, that companies that behave in such a way are seldom innovative.

Cynic: Post-Independence, most schools used English as the medium of instruction with Bahasa Malaysia as a compulsory subject that must be passed with credit.

Students then associated with each other without considering that they were Malay, Chinese, Indian, Punjab or others.

In those days, when there were only libraries to turn to for information, we used to ask all sorts of questions to our teachers.

If the teacher doesn't know the answer offhand, he would say, "Well, that's a good question. I don't remember it now, but I'll let you know tomorrow" and he would have the answer for us the next day.

Nowadays, if you ask a question that the teacher doesn't know, he/she would snap "That's not in the syllabus. You don't have to know it!"

The internet is an information superhighway providing information in a matter of seconds. Alas, most people use the Internet for other things that have nothing to do with furthering their knowledge.

Sebuk: Reading Gunasegaram’s article certainly brings back memories of when I was a student in the 1970s. I experienced the decoupling of the English medium of instruction.

It was a waste as we then had such a great grasp of the English language. Schools now indeed become polarised due to systemic policies in the education system.

The best universities in the world have admission policies that only take in the best.

Ipin Upin: First UPSR and PMR were scrapped. When is SPM going to be scrapped?

Policymakers always take the easy way out. Teachers are not teaching, and there are endless meetings.

Schoolchildren do nothing with a month to go for a year-end break.

You better earn enough money to get private tutors for your children. The system has already collapsed.

Ranjit Singh Malhi: We are paying the price for sacrificing quality with mediocrity and meritocracy with excessive affirmative action.

As stated by the late academician Arshad Ayub, we have about 2,500 professors of poor quality in our public universities.

Anonymous_3f4b: In short, the education system and national schools are rot and condemned to disaster.

All because of politics and a dysfunctional and clueless government that thrives on the politics of race, religion and never-ending policies.

Parents are smarter than the government and education ministry.

They send their children to better educational facilities and, if possible, overseas for better prospects, including employment and a journey of no return to the country of their birth.

Education in Malaysia has been politicised. The quality has dropped all because of those who think of short-term political interests instead of the future good.

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