Budget Cuts Eats In

In my "political life", one of my key themes is the fact that the Government is out of cash, and is desperately trying to raise funds via various forms of taxes, as well as sales of assets. However, the clearest indication of the shortfall of funds has to be the ridiculous nature of some of the budget tightening process at our Ministries.

It raises the question as to whether the Government knows what it is doing and whether it is just being penny wise and pound foolish. Officials appear to be concentrating on minor cost cuts eating into essential expenditure, instead of the big ticket items which are often wasteful, and are the real culprits to wasteful expenditure.

The opinion by former chief news editor of NTV7 and 8TV with regards to the cuts in our local boarding schools highlights the ridiculousness of the situation. Excerpts of his article are as follows.

Of schools, hostels and tight budget

...After the few early callers, a lady who was put on air. But instead of commenting on the topic she went on to say that her children who were studying in a boarding school have been told to go home every weekend. Reason being, the school (which she did not name) could no longer provide meals for the students during weekends.

Apparently, the days of giving hostel students meals seven days a week are gone. Why? Well the lady claimed she was told that the school’s annual budget had been slashed. Meaning the school is running on less money.

[...]

But it did not stop there. Several calls later, another listener called in to say that at the hostel his son was staying, students now had to do group study sessions in the canteen. They used to study in classrooms but not anymore. The lights in the classrooms are now switched off. Reason? Apparently to save on electricity bills, i.e., cut costs, i.e., austerity drive.

[...]

Over the weekend I bumped into an acquaintance who happened to be a hostel warden. He is a school teacher but, as warden, he is additionally tasked with looking after the well-being and security of students staying in his school’s hostel.

I asked him if it was true that students are now required to go home on weekends.

“Yes,” he said. Initially, all students were instructed to leave for home on weekends, he added, but the ministry then decided the go-home move could not be made mandatory. So students are “advised’ to go home on weekends. Most students do so, he said. Wonder why?

“Why this ‘nasihat’?” I asked. Why has it come to this?

“No money” was his reply. Well, not exactly “no money” but, rather, limited funds. Put simply schools are operating on tight budget.

[...]

Parents, coaches, teachers, students – many people are angry. Rightly so. The consequences of the budget cut are dire and many. We all know it, all too well. There’s no need to repeat ourselves. Suffice for me to ask again: “How come?” Why no money?

Then, there’s the 2008 Auditor General’s report highlighted by The Malay Mail recently. The AG report said the Education Ministry paid RM250 for each of six peacock flowers for a school. The market price for the plant is RM30.

The report went on to reveal the ministry had spent RM57,493 for the supply, sowing, gardening and maintenance of flowers and trees for the same school – 880 per cent higher than the most expensive quote available from local nurseries.

And it was reported also that the ministry had replaced doors in two schools at prices 56 per cent to 64 per cent higher than figures quoted by the Works Ministry.

Then there was the RM480 paid for a door when the Works Ministry quoted RM272.70.

There are more examples, of course. But enough said, lest our hearts ache further.

But I ask – why the big spending? How come there’s money to spend?

[...]

The tragic tale of Malaysian education

by Lee Wei Lian

(This article is first published in The Malaysian Insider)

What do Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, Malaysia’s founding father Tunku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia’s second richest man T. Ananda Krishnan and YTL chairman Tan Sri Francis Yeoh have in common?

The answer: all four studied at once famous schools that are now glaringly absent from the list of 20 high performance schools recently announced by the government.

Victoria Institution (Ananda, Yeoh), St John’s Institution (Najib), Penang Free School (Tunku Abdul Rahman) and others like Malacca High School and St Michael’s Institution are all storied schools that have been allowed to fall behind until they are no longer counted as among the elite educational institutions in the country.

Just imagine if Eton College in the UK or Raffles Institution in Singapore was not recognised as one of the top schools in their respective countries.

That is the equivalent of what has befallen what were once the most respected schools in Malaysia. Today, they do not even rate a mention on a list of the top 20 high performance schools.

It is a crying shame as these schools produced many leaders that were influential in the development of Malaysia and to a lesser extent even in Singapore.

But what happened to these academic icons? Was it merely a case of these venerable institutions being surpassed by more ambitious upstarts? Was it merely oversight that they were left off the list? Or was it a result of deliberate attempts over the years to sideline these institutions because they were founded by the British and/or missionaries?

Or was it sheer mismanagement on the part of the government that these once most prestigious names in Malayan/Malaysian education were allowed to fade along with the general perception of the quality of education in the country? Did, like so much else that is wrong with Malaysia, politics get in the way of academic stewardship?

Just consider the contributions these schools have made to society and business. Besides Tunku, the Penang Free School also nurtured the likes of Tan Sri P. Ramlee, actor and director extraordinaire, Danny Quah, a prominent economist and head of the department of economics at the London School of Economics who also sits on the National Economic Advisory Council which is formulating Malaysia’s new economic model, and Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development in the United Nations’ Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

Apart from the prime minister, St John’s groomed one of Asia’s top bankers, CIMB CEO Datuk Seri Nazir Razak, one of the world’s top central bankers Tan Sri Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz and the former vice-chancellor of the National University of Singapore, B.R. Sreenivasan.

Methodist Boy’s School produced the chairman of the Genting group, Tan Sri Lim Kok Thay, the chairman of the OCBC Bank and former CEO of Singapore Airlines, Dr Cheong Choong Kong, the vice chancellor of UKM, Professor Tan Sri Dr Sharifah Hapsah Syed Hasan Shahabudin, Tan Sri Tay Ah Lek, managing director of Public Bank, and Singapore’s former Minister of Education Ong Bang Poon.

Besides Ananda and Yeoh, Victoria Institution also educated the one of the world’s richest men, the Sultan of Brunei, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, former Singapore Deputy Prime Minister S. Rajaratnam, as well as some of Malaysia’s most legendary sportsmen, footballer Mokhtar Dahari and all four Sidek brothers.

Even if there was no list of top 20 “high performance schools” there would be little disagreement that these schools are now just a shadow of their former selves and can no longer command the respect they once did.

What does it then say about a government that allowed such historic and educational gems, some that date back nearly 200 years, to slip down the ranks in less than 50?

A closer look at the list also reveals something of the government’s apparently negligent attitude towards heritage conservation. Seri Bintang Utara made it to the list as a high performance school despite having to survive the demolition of its premises in Jalan Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur where the “ginormous” Pavilion mall now stands and what appears to be attempts to wipe out its identity as it was formerly known as the Bukit Bintang Girls School, or more popularly BBGS.

To this day, while I like and enjoy the high quality of the Pavilion mall, I still feel a wave of disgust every time I set foot in it that seemingly nothing of BBGS, Kuala Lumpur’s oldest and one of its most prestigious schools, was preserved in the construction of the mall and that the government did not see fit to mandate any preservation either.

And all this is more than an academic shame as these schools are reminders of a time when students of all races grew up in school together and were taught to discard their racial lenses and be Johannians and Victorians, a truly depressing contrast to the current situation where Malays grow up in national schools, Chinese in Chinese schools and Indians in Tamil schools.

Can the Najib administration reverse the decline of these once prestigious schools? Anything can be achieved if there is sufficient will so the bigger question is, do they even want to?

* Lee Wei Lian attended the Bukit Bintang Boys School in Petaling Jaya. Nisi Dominus Frustra.

Addendum: The list of Malaysia’s 20 high performance schools are: Sekolah Tun Fatimah (Johor Baru), Sekolah Dato’ Abdul Razak (Seremban), Malay College Kuala Kangsar, Sekolah Seri Puteri (Cyberjaya), Sekolah Menengah Sultan Abdul Halim (Jitra), Kolej Tunku Kurshiah (Seremban), Kolej Islam Sultan Alam Shah (Klang), Sekolah Menengah Sains (SMS) Tuanku Syed Putra (Perlis), Sekolah Sultan Alam Shah (Putrajaya) and SMS Muzaffar Syah (Malacca), Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan (SMK) (P) Sri Aman(Petaling Jaya), SMK Aminuddin Baki (Kuala Lumpur), SMK Sultanah Asma (Alor Star) and SMK (P) St George (Penang), Sekolah Kebangsaan (SK) Seri Bintang Utara (KL), SK Taman Tun Dr Ismail 1 (KL), SK Bukit Damansara (KL), SK Zainab (2) (Kota Baru), SK Convent Kota (Taiping), SK Bandar Baru Uda 2 (Johor Baru).

A Student's Perspective on Semesters for Form 6

One of my friends, Rajan Rishyakaran, has written a response to the lower six student's letter which Tony recently posted. Rajan, himself an alumnus of form six, said most of what I want to say about the issue, and I recommend reading it—this is perhaps the most incisive part of the piece:

If the Ministry of Education really wanted to move to a semester-based, coursework-heavy system, the better policy is to increase enrolment of non-Bumiputras in matriculation programs (though matriculation and Form Six are under different ministries). The cynic in me points out that would defeat the purpose of the dual-track system in Malaysia: as a tool of stealthish discrimination.

I want to tackle something else instead: the issue of time management.

As Rajan says himself, a lot of the people criticising the writer for their ostensible lousy time management probably didn't do STPM. I didn't do it either, but everything I know about it suggests that it is absolutely not a walk in the park.

In the first place, how does the school environment the writer describes train you to manage your time better? The writer is in school from 7.30am to 4pm, which is longer than the typical 9-to-5 workday. Even assuming most Malaysians work longer hours than that, it is unusual for people to bring work home with them and work at home.

Because our schools are so inferior, a lot of Malaysians now attend tuition classes outside school. Most lower six students will have even less time to attend tuition now. And even assuming there isn't tuition, most students will be studying in their spare time, especially for an exam like the STPM.

If you work it out, students operating under this new scheme will have basically little to no free time. What time is there to manage then, if you have to devote all of it to your studies?

A lot of the issues the writer mentions don't exist for pre-university students in other streams, because you tend to get a choice of what (if any) extracurricular activities to participate in, and have more spare time during the day. That's where time management is actually relevant.

Now, the writer obviously is rolling out a laundry list of problems with the school that to other people probably seem a bit ludicrous. Complaints about skin cancer and mamak food are relatively trivial compared to the other points the writer raises. But as Tony said, he or she is a 17-year-old, and in my experience, these complaints are almost ubiquitous amongst students of this age in school. Let's not focus on the trivialities of the writer's complaint: the real issue is that the Education Ministry is rolling out a poorly-thought-out plan, using the entire nation as its guinea pig — and on the face of it, the idea is ridiculous, because it means students are in school for longer than many adult workers.

New "Semester" Scheme For Form 6?

I've received the following complaint from a Form 6 student. I don't agree with the bits which said some of the activities are a "waste of time", but the concern over long school hours is very valid. When commenting, please remember that the writer is a 17-year-old.

I am a lower 6 student. A new system has recently been implemented in all schools with Form Six classes throughout the country. All Lower Six classes from 2009 will have to stay back until 4pm. This new system started in my school in early July.
I found out from the teachers that this batch (2009/2010) was used to try out the suitability of the semester-based system to be implemented in schools in the future. Unfortunately for us, our exams are still not semester-based.

Staying back till 4pm means we, Lower Six students will not have a chance to participate in the extra-curricular activities as all the club and uniformed body meetings are held after 1pm. What about our co-curriculum marks? We were told that 10% of the overall criteria to enter local universities is from our involvement in co-curricular activities.

Before this new system was implemented, we all could go for our co-curricular activities. With the new system in place, we are forced to stay back and could not involve ourself in such activities as the timing will clash with us as most activities are held after school. While co-curricular activities make up 10% of our total STPM grades, I strongly believe there must be other alternatives. I don’t think a person who has four distinctions, but without any co-curricular achievements will be selected to enter a local university.

So, why should we stay until 4 o’clock seen that such things we are doing now are no contribute any marks to our STPM?

The new system is a complete waste of time. The new system requires students to stay back after school until 4pm for activities. But the activities organised by the school to keep students until 4pm is not a good idea. The extra time that we are required to put in in school is used for nonsensical activities such as making posters, doing sketches, preparing for presentations and proposals and doing research and development (R&D).

Besides this , some activities are really of no use to us. For example, during cocuriculum , we even told to prepare food, play on the field under the hot sun from 2.40pm - 4pm and planning how to decorate this school. I do not see the teaching and learning value here as these activities are a waste of time! In addition, some students hate it so much that they decided to skip school altogether.

I understand that this system is a part of the Education Ministry’s initiative in boosting the level of confidence and enhancing communicative ability among school students while doing presentation. But please be rational and reasonable. Ministry need to take cognizance that we are humans too. All of us need more time to study and staying back till 4pm is just too much on our plates. The moment we reach home, most of us will be dead tired. By the time we get home, we will be exhausted because we have been in school since 7.30am. Many of us would be too tired after coming back from school and just hop on to the bed into dreamland even if they wish to study.

Furthermore, not to forget the amount of assignments given by our teachers and we have to complete everything on time. By then we would be too tired to study. Preparing for presentations and projects requires a lot of our attention and time, so we will struggle to cope with our studies. Our main priority is still our studies! Without time to revise, how are we supposed to live our dreams of attaining a 4.0 score?

But forcing us to stay back after school will deprive us of the chance to revise our lessons. An ample amount of time is needed for us to carry out constant revision. However with the time constraints, there is certainly no time for us to study at home! Even if we do have the time, we would suffer from fatigue. The ministry fails to see the light that whatever there doing is in fact making our lives even more miserable, stressful and very depressing. Will this result in good achievement in the STPM exams? Definitely NO!!!

Many parents decided to send their children to Form Six as it is the cheapest route to universities. But now not any more. We have to fork out our own money for our lunch expenses. By right, if the Education Ministry wants to carry this out, they should at least think about giving lunch allowances to us. Now, parents will need to fork out additional expenses for their child’s lunch. Not everyone is well-to-do. In these times where money does not come easy, forking out extra money will be a burden to them as the overall house expenditure would have increased as well.

Another woe is that we are only given an hour for our lunch break before we begin our presentation; it is impossible for students to head home to have a home-cooked meal, take a bath and have a short break and then rush back to school before 2 o’clock. Most of us will not be able to eat at home as we are not living nearby. Therefore, students are left with no other alternatives but to patronise nearby mamak stalls for their lunch. Needless to say, food sold at mamak stalls can be unhealthy and unhygienic. And since the mamak stalls usually serves oily and non-nutritious food, the students are not benefiting at all as it make us feel lethargic. With the lack of nutritious food, how are we to maintain a healthy body to study hard and achieve good result in STPM?

On the other hand, transportation is a major problem for most of us. Our parents are not free to send us home. Left with no other immediate solutions in sight, we have to rely on public transport like buses. Taking the school bus at odd hours costs extra as it is inconvenient for the drivers. Some of us are not living nearby and thus, walking back home will be out of the question and too dangerous for us students considering the disturbingly high number of snatch theft cases across the country.

Besides that, prolonged exposure to the afternoon sun could lead to skin cancer. Do we want to wait till years later to find out that many of our future generation who took Form Six were to suffer from skin cancer because of this new system? It is undeniable that life in the sixth form can be pretty daunting and challenging.

Not only are the students disatisfied with this new system, the teachers are unhappy. They could not express their feeling as they could risk losing their jobs. Almost every teacher I have spoken to, too, did not agree with this new system.They feel that the time spent in school is way too long! Forget about the students, even the teachers are grumbling! Teachers and students alike are exhausted by the end of the day.So, how do we expect teachers to perform their best when they are tired? Needless to say, students too have a hard time concentrating in the hot and stuffy afternoon classes.It is not fair for the teachers who teach the Form Six classes for they have to stay back for longer hours compared to their other colleagues. Wake up! The new system brings nothing but stress and red tape.

I acknowledged that some authorities would advice us to quit form six if we despise or hate the system. However, as far as I concerned, we are totally not being informed about this 4pm-stay-back system until a few week after we enrolled. We are the victims and we got no other better options than form six but as a student, we have the right to protect our right and express our feeling. The system will continue to be part of our lives for next years. So, we need to change. There is no point “testing” as the Malaysian education system is not a playground or lab where future leaders were “tested” with new policies. We as the students are not “guinea pigs”. If we were to continue to “test” policies on our children, our education system will be seen as a joke in the international arena.

Last but not least, I only hope next year we can revert back to the old system where everyone can go home like normal or 1pm. I sincerely hope you will help us. Thank you.

Thoughts on the university admissions process

A friend of mine, Rajan Rishyakaran, has written a good blog post critiquing the Malaysian university admissions process. While I don't know enough about local universities to comment on many things he raises, there are a couple of points which I think are worth emphasising: the difference between policy in theory and policy in reality, and the importance of decentralising some decisions.

There are many illustrations of the difference between something in theory and something in practice, but Rajan's example of coursework is as good as any. In principle, adding coursework to the evaluation process for university admissions would be a good thing.

After all, a major problem with our education system is that it focuses a lot on examinations which only assess students at one point in time, and often encourage rote memorisation instead of actual learning. If you fall sick during exam period, it can dramatically change your life's course, because you might not get into the university you otherwise could, or not pursue the degree you otherwise would attain. And because the format and style of exams is so predictable, all you need to do is practice with enough exam papers from previous years to be prepared -- you don't necessarily need to understand anything on the exam (I have found that understanding too much can actually be detrimental to your marks in some Malaysian exams).

If we emphasised coursework more, then one-off incidents which might negatively impact your exam performance would matter less: you have a substantial amount of time to do your coursework. Because the key element of your coursework is usually a report on something you have researched, you actually learn something useful: you learn how to write academically, and you learn some basic research or factfinding skills.

That's the theory; the practical reality is something else altogether. When I was in school, nobody took coursework seriously. Or rather, they took it the same way they took an exam: they figured out the best way to game the system, and they did it. Everyone would Google their topic, and instead of writing up a report about it, they would plagarise the most relevant websites. If they were too lazy to do this, they would plagiarise from one another very openly -- there was no stigma to copying or cheating off someone else's work.

It's not that they were lazy; it's that they knew this was the most efficient way to get things done. Teachers don't really care if the material is obviously plagiarised -- to them the coursework system is often a burdensome imposition on them because they have to read through dozens, if not hundreds of reports. Students know this, so they intentionally put a lot of work into making their reports more burdensome on teachers. One teacher's son told me that he intentionally put lots of irrelevant diagrams and photos in his coursework because this would discourage the teacher from looking too hard at his work -- she would see he had obviously worked hard on the report, and give him high marks.

The problem with coursework is that it is an arbitrary, artificial system of evaluation imposed by the central government with little thought as to what the schools and teachers can do, and little thought for what universities want to see. As Rajan notes, our university admissions process is extremely centralised -- everything is boiled down to a couple of numbers, which are then fed into the government's system. The government then tells you what university you will attend, and what degree you will pursue.

Likewise, with coursework, the government tells schools how to grade students' work, and it tells universities how these grades must translate into admissions decisions. There is no room for a teacher to assess students in his or her own way, to try something different. Neither is there room for a university to assess students in a different way, such as through tailored interviews or personal statements.

Obviously, there are pitfalls to granting educators more autonomy. But I don't think there is any question that at the moment we err far too heavily on the side of ridiculous centralisation. The government has attempted to standardise the education system to an extreme, and the result is something easily gamed by the pretence of ability, instead of actual demonstrable results. The government needs to grant universities more leeway in making their admissions decisions, and at the same time experiment with giving schools more freedom in coming up with alternative methods of assessment.

A New Education Minister: More of the Same?

So our Prime Minister has reshuffled his Cabinet, and our new Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin is now also our new Education Minister. Unfortunately, my sense of things is that this probably will not mark a significant change in direction for Malaysian education.

Datuk Hishammuddin Hussein didn't really turn things around, if you ask me; Kian Ming is impressed by his administrative competency and I would agree that he probably kept things from getting worse. But I think it is very hard to say that things improved under Hisham. The government took some very tentative steps towards tinkering with the school system, but nearly every complaint that held water five years ago is still valid today.

I am not optimistic about Muhyiddin because the Education Ministry seems to have become a political football; you often become Education Minister because you're expected to eventually become Prime Minister, and this certainly seems to be true in this case. There is still little sign that the government recognises what's wrong with our school system, let alone how to fix these problems.

The number one issue which Muhyiddin must address is that of teachers: they are overworked, underpaid, poorly trained, and mostly powerless. There is no incentive for bright people to enter the teaching profession, and even those who are selfless enough to serve barely earn enough to cope, especially in urban areas. Teachers are often expected to not only teach, but handle paperwork and take on administrative duties. Yet, they barely get much training, and they are so shackled by the system that they are assigned to posts that make no sense; it is unusually common for a science teacher to wind up teaching history, for example. Fortunately, this is beside the point, because teachers have no power to determine the curriculum; what they teach has already been decided by a handful of bureaucrats and Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka textbook authors, and they are just responsible for vomiting up whatever these people want them to say, so their pupils can dutifully do the same on their exams.

There are a lot of other wrong things with our education system, but all my experiences in the school system point to teaching as the main problem: we aren't treating our teachers right. And when we don't properly treat these mature adults who we actually pay to be in school, is it really surprising that we often treat our students and youth even worse? We have good teachers, but we don't trust them to teach. We have good students, but we don't trust them to learn. Is it then surprising that so few people in our schools want to teach or learn?

When you empower the good teachers, you also empower the good students. I just finished watching this fantastic lecture on molecular biology which illustrates this perfectly; the speaker is a Princeton University biologist who not only loves her field, but lectures clearly and explains obscure concepts in a simple way. And if you watch the whole way through, she gives credit to all the students who work in her lab, because everything she presented was first discovered by one of them: "when you learn things like about how the natural world works ... it was done by a child. Science is done by that demographic."

It is hard to imagine a Malaysian academic saying something like that, and that says a lot about the way we think about education. We have trouble with giving academics freedom, and we have trouble with giving students freedom. This is unquestionably true in primary and secondary school, where the curriculum is completely dictated by the state and federal governments, but almost as true in our universities, where faculty and students are less free to speak their minds than any ordinary member of the public.

When you get to the heart of it, the problem with Malaysian education is that we are afraid of setting our people free, to explore our world. The attitude of our modern education system and our modern education policymakers is that minds are something to be controlled, not freed. And for all the talk of reform on the part of our new Prime Minister — and even his two predecessors, both of whom promised scores of reforms in their own times — none have dared address this problem which cuts to the core of the rotten apple that is our education system. Certainly, the new Education Minister is no exception to this rule. Until someone in government recognises this, I will have a very tough time believing there will be any kind of meaningful change in our school system.

Lulu's Concerned About Our Schools

The following post is taken in its entirety from Lulu's blog. I don't have to add much else really. But we know that it's nothing new. Those interested in reading up other examples of the deteriorating state of our national schools - check out my post here.

I do think however, that the recent developments are absolutely shocking and certainly runs in the face of the objective of making our national schools the school of choice for all Malaysians as per the much-hyped National Education Blueprint.

This school, and trust Lulu, it's not the only one, "disqualified" kids who were wearing shorts from winning with flimsy excuses such as failing to get the ribbons at the designated spots and that the numbers pinned on the shirts were torn.

This school pula, insisted that the children shave off their moustaches and beards and used harsh words when they tried to explain. The reason behind their un-shavenness was that they had taken a Thaipusam vow, and at least one of their parents had written in to the school informing them of their vow and the date when they would shave it off.

And we have here a case of kids who do not attend religious class [and you know la, in schools, which religion is allowed to hold "religious class"] who were asked to wash the toilet. Nothing bad/evil in washing school toilets, Lulu has had a fair share, but making it non-muhibbah? that's not right...

KJ John, who has a regular column in Malaysiakini also had problems with the zealots in his son's school.

He writes,

"The second case was when a new Ustaz in my son’s primary school insisted that all Primary 6 prefects wear long pants; not one teacher stood up to ask why or challenged this arbitrary decision. Therefore, when I went in to write a complaint, the non-Malay deputy principal was truly appreciative of my “public protest” as he could use “my parent complaint” to raise and address this issue with the principal regarding the “new policy” which was not discussed by the teachers, but merely implemented by the new Ustaz.

The third instance was when I was on a PIBG committee at my son’s school when we heard that the principal had issued a verbal directive to all non-Muslim clubs and societies to “refrain from undertaking their religious activities within the school compound.”

At the next PIBG committee meeting, I enquired of the principal where and why there was such a policy. She replied that it was a directive from the PPD or the Pegawai Pendidikan Daerah. I asked for a copy of the written directive, as I knew the implications of such a directive. The principal confirmed that it was an unwritten one. I advised her against following such “non-policies” and requested for her to rescind the policy before the annual PIGB meeting.

She did not and the matter was raised at the next PIBG meeting and was resolved when another senior ex-government servant and a Malay parent argued that it was against the Federal Constitution."

If you are a parent, Lulu hopes that you are sensitive and aware of what's happening in your children's school. Also, some children may choose to abide and suffer in silence. Take an active role in your children's school. Also, remember that right for your school Christian, Buddhist and Hindu activities are given in the Federal Constitution. Challenge your school principal if he does not allow it. When/If you are not sure if they are right or wrong, use your schooldays as the benchmark.

Join the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA/PIBG). You cannot afford to let zealots narrow your children's mind and perspective of life.

The question of discipline

Politics aside, I think the recent 'teacher slapping' incident and the Deputy Minister's reaction to it which Tony has blogged about, highlights an important issue in Malaysian schools especially at the secondary level - which is the issue of discipline.

My impression of most Malaysian secondary school classrooms is not a good one - rowdy students who don't pay attention in class, teachers who are disinterested and unmotivated, vandalized toilets and chairs and tables - and this was from my days in La Salle PJ 20 years ago! (I have a confession to make - I was probably one of the students contributing to the general mayhem in school)

I don't think the situation in our classrooms have gotten any better. I still regularly go back to La Salle PJ when I'm back in Malaysia to play basketball. I still see young Form 1 and 2 kids who speak to one another in expletive filled language (especially the Chinese kids). The facilities in school (such as the basketball and tennis courts) are poorly maintained and / or broken. I can imagine that the level of learning in our classrooms has probably gotten worse. Perhaps some of our younger readers can confirm / clarify this point.

One of the consequences of failing discipline (as well as other factors such as perceived Islamization, quality of teaching, facilities etc...) is that many members of the middle classes have 'abandoned' these schools. I see more and more parents, especially non-Malay parents, sending their kids to private schools such as Sri Cempaka and Sri Inai. This trend will probably continue as more private secondary schools are established. Many smart Malays have already left the national school system at the secondary level - they are sent residential schools where the facilities, teachers and arguably discipline levels are better than the average national secondary school.

What I'm describing is perhaps more symptomatic of secondary schools in urban areas where certain factors work against secondary schools - the fact that many families are dual income families and many parents don't have the time to 'take care' of their children (esp. from a nurturing standpoint), the greater pervasiveness of gangs who can and will exploit many of these kids, the greater accessibility of 'distractions' such as internet cafes and shopping malls. I'd be interested to find out of schools in semi-rural or rural areas are any better.

I'm guessing that the situation in many semi-urban / semi-rural schools might be better because the communities are more close knit and there are fewer distractions in these places compared to big cities. For example, I visited a friend in Sekinchan last month while I was back home and found out that the only secondary school in the Sekinchan town area produced many JPA scholars as well as state and national level sportsmen and sportswomen. If one examines the ranks of the best performing schools a the PMR level, many schools in these semi-urban or even rural areas consistently top the charts!

Trying to bring back a sense of discipline and order to our secondary schools, in the urban areas especially, is no easy task. I think bringing back corporal punishment in the form of public caning should be considered. I know that many people think that this form of punishment is outdated but I think there's still a place for the cane as a form of punishment in our schools. I remember how much I was afraid of Cikgu Iskandar who would roam the corridors in school with a cane and was well-known for his penchant for caning students. Slapping a student probably goes too far, in my book, but I'm sure there's a way to ensure that the process of caning a student, in a public arena, to shame this student as well as to warn others can be done in a way which is acceptable to both parents and administrators.

Perhaps something can be said of a 'no tolerance' policy such that students who are caught vandalizing school property can be punished heavily so that a signal is sent out to the other students.

Or volunteer mentor programs can be established with trusted members of the community to befriend some of the more problematic students and help them along the way.

At the end of the day, those who suffer disproportionately from poor discipline in our secondary schools are students in the lower and lower middle classes. Those in the middle class who still send their kids to the national secondary schools can also afford to send their kids for after school tuition, a luxury that many of those in the lower and lower middle classes cannot afford. With a better learning environment, better motivated teachers and better facilities, perhaps some of these kids, who in 'normal' circumstances, would not have learned much in school and probably would not continue to receive education at the college / university level, could find a path towards higher education and a better life for themselves and their families.