5 Wishes for Education in Malaysia For 2013

As we enter a new year, we reflect back on a year full of trials and tribulations. From the pending abolishment of PMR to the flitting about of PPSMI, from the Rawang school of terror to the plight of Orang Asli education, Malaysians have had their fair share of drama in the education scene. 

Which is why, we have to look forward and strive to do much much better this year. Here's a list of 5 things  everybody from the government to the ordinary citizen should look into for the sake of our children.

1. A revamp of the History syllabus
The issue: The History syllabus as it is, is too myopic in its scope. The Russian revolution, Ottoman Empire, Alexander the Great, Kublai Khan all used to be part of Malaysian history syllabus. It is little wonder that a complaint against fresh Malaysian graduates is that they lack general knowledge. Important figures of history like Yap Ah Loy have also been reduced to a mere footnote. The History Syllabus is also incredibly rigid: the textbook lists a few factors causing an event, and anything out of the book is usually considered wrong. History becomes an exercise of pure memorization. I highlighted many of these failings in greater detail in another article here.

The proposal: We need to broaden the syllabus to reflect an increasingly globalized world. It is ironic that while the rest of the world has become more inclusive of other cultures and histories, Malaysia the melting pot of cultures, better positioned than many others to take advantage of globalization has gone the other way.

The increasingly insular nature of our education is most apparent in Geography. In-depth learning is restricted to Malaysia and superficial discussions of weather across vast swathes of land in Europe and Asia. Again, the lack of general knowledge is disconcerting. I probably learnt more about the world through TV than Geography!

2. A less rigid, more flexible style of education
The issue: This was mentioned briefly regarding History, but I think perhaps Moral Education is a far better example of the sheer frustration of the system. Moral Education is an exam-based subject, where students memorize the definitions of various values such as responsibility and tolerance, and regurgitate them word for word. Should there be a mistake in terms of the specific words used, even if they carry largely the same gist, marks are deducted. By doing this, Moral Education becomes the one thing it should never be: a theoretical exercise in futility that has no practical applications.

The proposal: The problem is widespread in the education system. Rigid mark schemes and teachers fearing to make their own decisions make the safer choice the premier choice. Certain syllabuses need to be restructured: Moral Education being one of them. For example, Moral Education should include community service and discussion of current ethical issues such as the crime rate in Malaysia. And for crying out loud, don't make it a SPM exam subject.

3. More opportunities for all
The issue: There is the perennial problem of scholarships for tertiary education. While those are important and certainly should be maintained, we should also recognize that university-going students are a minority in Malaysia and that it will likely remain so. We need to offer opportunities for vocational education and improve the capabilities of our skilled workforce. To offer an anecdotal example, my father's mechanic finds it increasingly difficult to hire good mechanics. The reason being that many graduates are given little practical experience, or have a poor command of language that rules them out from reading car manuals.

Students at Benz Training School.

The proposal: In Germany, a rich and relatively egalitarian society, only 16% of the population has university degrees. Bear in mind also the fact that university education in Germany is virtually free ( for the average German) at 500 euros per term with easy loan terms and scholarships abound. Their secret, and the real driving force of the German economy are their skilled workers, who go through vocational education centres that are partnered with firms like Mercedes Benz. These companies send trainers to these schools, as well as offer top students apprenticeships with the company.

Malaysia should do the same. The government should encourage companies to partner up with vocational training centres, and incentize these companies in setting up training centres of their own. Perhaps some CSR tax benefits may be in line. This way, the government reduces unemployment, companies get tailor fit and capable new recruits, and we all benefit along the way.

4. Resolve the PPSMI debate
The issue: Whether its BM or English, let's just get it over and done with. This flitting about in the span of a few years has thrown everyone from parents to teachers to book publishers in disarray. As seen in the TIMMS survey, Malaysia has had a huge drop in rankings, with deterioration in both Math and Science subjects.

The proposal: Education reform is a long, grueling process. Teacher trainers need to be hired, teachers need to be trained, book publishers need to write, examiners need to reach a standard of largely uniform marking. With Math and Science reverting back to BM after only a few years, one can imagine the dismay of fresh teaching college graduates who trained for PPSMI. The whole system needs time.

The same goes for the new school self-assessment that is to replace PMR. The remedy is simple enough: choose a system, and stick to it, at least for 10 years or so. And if there is to be a change, all stakeholders must be informed, consulted and planning must commence way before.

5. A more holistic education
The issue: PE class has been reduced to a young substitute teacher giving children a ball and letting them do whatever they want. Art class has degenerated into teachers giving random assignments and uninterested students messing around. Our education system emphasizes the superiority of the Science stream above the "dumb" Arts stream.

The proposal: In its current state, our education system is skewed. How are we to nurture the next generation of artists, sportsmen, skilled workers and accountants if they are told at every turn that they are not as important as Science students? Again, it boils downs to the same issues: better teachers, better syllabus. For example, PE teachers should be properly trained to teach vital and basic issues such as warming up before exercise, proper rules of games played and how to deal with a pulled muscles etc.

At the end of the day, many of these issues have been highlighted again and again. My proposals are far from comprehensive, I am young and still learning, but I hope that as we enter this important year of change, we will bear in mind these issues. Whatever your political inclinations, I'm sure we can all agree that education for our children is an important thing, so make sure you ask your MP/ ADUN what they intend to do about it!

The right way to study maths

Here is a fantastic presentation by a maths teacher, Dan Meyer, explaining what is wrong with virtually every maths textbook out there:



What I like about his idea is that it focuses on first understanding the concept, and only then applying the maths. It harnesses your intuition about a problem you would normally encounter in the real world to get you on the hook, so you have no choice but to learn the maths to get your answer.

He speaks as if this is a problem unique to the US, but it is not. As he says, teachers from all around the world have approached him about his ideas, because they resonate on a global basis. Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman has a famous essay on the irrelevance of mathematics textbooks in a similar vein.

Notice that Meyer identifies five symptoms of bad maths teaching. I think all of us in our school system have suffered from these symptoms at some point; the aversion to word problems and the over-eagerness to harness a simple formula must ring a bell for anyone who's ever stepped into a classroom here. Now the question is, how can we bring this new philosophy of teaching into our classrooms and textbooks?

Treating students with respect

Amidst the political turmoil in our country, this little story headlined Student alleges sexual assault by teacher appeared in Malaysiakini. For the benefit of those without a subscription, a Form 2 student claims her male teacher physically assaulted and sexually abused her in front of her classmates—and when she reported it, the discipline teacher told her to keep the matter a secret. She told her parents, who confronted the principal—but the principal claimed the teacher had only scolded the girl for not bringing her Malay grammar book to school.

Sexual and physical abuse is a clearcut issue, so let's talk about a related problem: discipline. I am not opposed to caning in the household or in school; I think used properly, the cane can reinforce a good lesson. But the problem is, caning is difficult to do responsibly. And the reason it is hard to cane responsibly is that it is hard to discipline young people responsibly.

A big problem with expecting schools to enforce discipline is that it is hard to respect children and young adults as people who have their own thoughts and feelings. I've attended many different schools, all of which had their own approaches to discipline. But in almost every case, I think the approach would have been very different if the teachers had been dealing with someone their own age and size, instead of someone younger and smaller than them.

You can argue that young primary schoolchildren need harsh discipline; I am inclined to disagree, but I can accept that. What I cannot accept is the idea that young adults in secondary school still need to be scolded and caned like primary schoolchildren for things like forgetting their books. How is this supposed to reinforce the lesson? These are young adults who are already in a position to think for themselves. If canings and harsh scoldings are supposed to work on young adults, why don't bosses cane their subordinates?

Yes, there are bosses who do yell at their employees, and there are some who even beat them. The latter is illegal, and the former is just bad business. It may be better to be feared than to be loved, but you should at least be feared for the right reasons.

I think a lot about my primary school headmistress when it comes to the question of fear, because everyone in my primary school was deathly afraid of her. I can't remember ever seeing her cane anyone; she never even yelled at anyone. There was just something in her demeanour which told us she meant business, and that she would not look kindly upon anyone who let her down. If you did let her down, you would get a stern talking to from her, but she wouldn't beat you up. She wouldn't shout at you. She would tell you what you had done wrong, and what she expected from you—and you would scurry away, tail tucked firmly between your legs, knowing you never wanted to get another such talk from her again.

The difference is that my headmistress knew that people will respect you when you first respect them (a lesson some politicians on both sides of the aisle could learn). She treated us as responsible people who knew what was right and wrong, even though we were just primary schoolkids. She made us feel shamed, not because we had been punished, but because we had let her and let ourselves down. That is the kind of shame and fear which works. This is why my headmistress was both feared and loved.

Because so many teachers do not understand that fear and love have to go hand-in-hand, we get incidents of teachers beating up and humiliating pupils. While this might work in the short run, it eventually makes school even more unpleasant for students, and makes them even more disinclined to learn.

I am presently reading a book by actor Keith Johnstone—a former teacher who hated school. One fantastic observation Johnstone makes is that we misunderstand the difference between good and bad teachers. Education, he points out, is not a quantity, of which good teachers dole out a lot, and bad teachers only a little. Good teachers, he says, really make you learn. Bad teachers really make you unlearn. This strikes me as true in a variety of ways, but I cannot think of an area where this applies more than discipline. Good teachers give you lessons in discipline which last for life; bad teachers only wind up making you even worse off than you were before.

Special Birthday Dedication to Ms Liew

This post is from Gabrielle and it is dedicated to a very special teacher by the name of Ms Liew. I think after reading this, we will all agree that we need more teachers like Ms Liew.

Today (April 19) is Ms Liew’s birthday, and this note is dedicated to her. (from Gabrielle Chong)

Back in secondary school, I hated Teacher’s Day. I hated the extravagant celebrations in my humid school hall. I hated the pretentious song dedications. I hated the students’ awful, half-baked attempts at performing, err, titillating pop dances (it was an all-girls school). Most of all, I hated the fact that while the entire school of over a hundred teachers and over two thousand students would sit down comfortably inside the hall to savor the show, the one teacher that I loved most happened to be the discipline teacher, and she would spend every Teacher’s Day (and Report Card Day, and Graduation Day, and ABC Teacher’s Retirement Day, and…) breaking out in sweat, manning the school compound, singling out troublemakers and catching truants. The hardest working teacher in school, working even harder on Teacher’s Day.

The first thing you will notice about Ms Liew is her tall, slim figure, partly due to God-given slim genes, and partly due to fact she has little time to eat. The second thing you will notice about her is her gauntness (sorry lah if you are reading this, Ms Liew!), the accumulated consequence of over two decades of labour from the heart. The third thing you will notice about her, if she opens her mouth, is her crisp, clear, ferocious yet comical voice, which can either reduce even the most defiant delinquent in school to tears, or drive a whole hall of students roaring in laughter.

Witty, sporting and outgoing, Ms Liew was one of the most popular teachers in school. But the students who claimed a special place in her heart were the outcasts: troubled teens, antisocial youths, school rebels and failing students. As much she came down hard on school hooligans, she worked even harder to bring them back within the embrace of the school community. She gave her care to the students who least deserved it, because they needed it most.

Ms Liew was stern, for sure. When the school received complaints from the public that truants were patronising various restaurants in school uniforms, she drove around the school, alone, early in the mornings to round the truants up. And when she scolds you in her trademark crisp, clear, ferocious tone, you would feel your hair standing on it edges. But she also had sneakier ways of changing people’s lives. If she decided that you looked troubled, she would take painstaking efforts to chat you up after school to get to know you better as a person. If she thought that you were isolated and defiant, she would rope you in for cheerleading and other activities so that you would feel involved as a part of the school community. There was also an occasion when she convinced a group of problematic students to take part in a Teacher’s Day performance and give roses to the teachers with whom they usually were on bad terms. The experience transformed everyone a little bit, both the teachers and the students.

In 2007, I successfully nominated Ms Liew for Teacher Idol, a Teacher’s Day tribute organised by The Star. When reporters and photographers from The Star came to take a photo of her, Ms Liew went to the ‘weak’ Arts classes to gather students for the photo shoot. The thrilled students rushed out and carried Ms Liew in the air. The photo was never published, but I understood what Ms Liew wanted to do. She wanted the ‘weak’ students, who never get to enjoy five minutes of fame as straight A students, have their chance in getting the slightest bit of recognition.

A friend of mine, from another school, once told me the tragic story of two girls in her alma mater who were constantly abused by their father. They finally snapped one day, and engaged their boyfriends to murder him. The two boys were sent to prison, while the girls were sent to a rehabilitation center. I sometimes think that if they had a Ms Liew in their school, tragedies like that would never happen - observant Ms Liew would have singled the solemn-looking girls out for counselling and discover their problems. Or rather, if there were Ms Liews in every school, the world would improve by leaps and bounds.

There were, of course, times when Ms Liew had her fair share of hardcore delinquents who did not budge at kindness. There were vengeful students who tried to intimidate her with mockery and vandalizing her car. But after stern disciplinary action was taken in each of those incidents, there was always, always room for forgiving and reconciliation. Today, countless ex-students return to my alma mater year after year to visit the teacher who had made such a profound impact on their lives.

Ms Liew was my school discipline teacher for many years (she has since been promoted to other positions), but her stint at my alma mater covered many other roles which she performed simultaneously. Among other things, she was the legendary teacher-advisor of the prefectorial board, the English team debate coach, the choral speaking coach (she wrote the script for the team every year), and the default co-ordinator for every major school event. In a nutshell, she was the backbone of an entire school.

I first interacted with her when I was in Form One, but only began seeing her regularly in when I was in Form Three as one of her prefects. At that time, I was still an angry, highly aggressive, defiant teen who had quarrelled with probably half the school’s teacher and student body.

One day, I yelled at a teacher right in front of a whole class so badly that I reduced her to tears (it was sparked by a petty quarrel over her insisting that I make my personal notes in pencil and not pens). I thought that that marked the end of my stint in the prefectorial board and the start of even greater contempt by the school towards me. I expected a heavy lashing by Ms Liew. She did see me eventually, but she never raised her voice at me, nor did she strip me of my position. I later apologized to the teacher that I had scolded. If there was one thing I learned from Ms Liew, it was redemption.

In Form Four, I conjured the courage to write her a 9-page letter one day, with a full list of questions on religion, existentialism, ethics and morality. These were the questions that had brought me a decade of weird stares, isolation and reputation as a weirdo in a conservative, Chinese school environment. Ms Liew met me for a chat in the office one day to reply my questions in that letter. From that day onwards, I no longer felt like an outcast.

Ms Liew had her quirky ways of teaching her students. Once, she told the debaters to research a topic over the weekend in preparation for a practice debate in front of a class. When that day arrived, she gave us our motion an hour before we were due to hold our debate. The motion was entirely different from the topic she had asked us to research, and we suddenly found ourselves with impromptu public speaking skills that we never knew we had.

Another memorable incident occurred during one of the prefectorial board outdoor camps. While going on a night hike one day on Pangkor Island, Ms Liew sneaked up behind us, grabbed the last prefect in the single file and brought her back to the base camp. Amazingly, no one realized that she was missing. When head counts were made back at the base, everyone was traumatized by the knowledge that one of our fellow friends was missing. Ms Liew brought out the ‘missing girl’ a few hours later, and we had a good lesson on accountability and responsibility for others.

My six years of friendship with Ms Liew was never a smooth one. We had our vast ideological differences, and we constantly feuded over disagreements on religious, sexuality and various social issues as well as personal matters, but none of these disagreements were ever severe enough to destroy our bond.

Like all cool teachers, Ms Liew was renowned for her raunchy sense of humour as much as for her intellect. She used to brag that she gave sizzling lessons on reproduction while serving as a biology teacher at an all-boys school. “We even discussed whether cats have orgasms”, she smirked. Another time, when she introduced a new, male teacher trainee into the school, she remarked to an entire hall of students, “We have a new teacher today, and he’s a guy…I can already hear your hormones raging.” In addition, Ms Liew was the first liberal intellect that I knew in my life. After entering the debate team in Form Four, she lent me her stack of socioeconomics, history and political books - the first time I had access to a huge pile of advanced reading material (that was how I felt back then), and which later spurred my interest in those fields.

As an undergraduate student, Ms Liew studied biochemistry. But after some soul-searching, she decided that teaching was her true calling instead. She was, as a Sixth Form student at St Michael’s Institution, inspired by a missionary named Brother Paul who left home at a young age to serve as a teacher in a strange tropical land half the globe away from his country. My mother, who used to loiter around St Michael’s Institution as a child, remembered Brother Paul as a kind man who gave sweets to the poor children in that area and gathered them for Biblical story-telling sessions. To this day, Ms Liew still visits the grave of the man who taught her a life of service every year.

Ms Liew’s life outside the school is no less remarkable. She brought up two lovable Dennis the Menace-lookalikes as if they were her own children. She was friends with the school janitors, the laboratory assistants and the canteen aunties. When one of her Liew’s colleagues and best friend started having difficulties walking, she volunteered to drive her to and back from work every single day. By the time I graduated, she had been doing that continuously for six years. There are so many other heart achingly beautiful anecdotes about Ms Liew that I would love to share, but it would be impossible to do so without intruding into the personal life of a highly private and humble person. Hence, I will just conclude by testifying that she was so much more than a dedicated teacher; she was also a filial daughter, a caring foster mother, a steadfast friend, a humble intellectual, a perpetual optimist and a faithful Christian. Some people excel at ping pong. Others excel at making cheesecakes. Ms Liew excels at living.

Ironically, Ms Liew never taught me for a single minute in class - I never had the fortune of having her as a subject teacher. And yet, she has taught me more about life than I could ever learn.

Class size or teaching?

I've found that one of the most controversial debates when it comes to education, especially in developed countries, is what is the best way to spend the scarce money we have on education. The debate often boils down to a choice between two things: smaller classes, or better teachers.

Personally, I've always felt it's obvious that we should pay teachers better, especially in Malaysia. There is no reason to hold teachers to a rigid pay scale based on seniority, let alone the pay scale of the civil service. Teachers perform a much more important job than civil servants, and I daresay deal with a lot more stress. It only makes sense to pay them more, and especially to pay the outstanding teachers more.

The argument for smaller class sizes seems rather vague to me, and it's predicated essentially on the notion that it's hard for good teachers to pay attention to more than 20 pupils at a time. While I think there is probably room to rethink the traditional classroom dynamics of one teacher lecturing/supervising a classroom of pupils, I think that diminishing marginal returns kick in pretty quickly past the point of 30 pupils. While I don't have much data, from my personal experiences, the rowdiest classrooms have been those of 35 or more, with not much difference below that, especially not below 30 students.

Recently my attention was drawn to a University of Auckland study, which claims to have brought together 50,000 different studies and looks at a total of 83 million pupils around the world. The study's conclusion is that class size is not very important, and that the quality of teaching easily outstrips class size in terms of importance. The professor who authored the study is John Hattie, who I have not heard of before. He seems to have published quite a bit on this subject, but I was unable to turn up much about this latest study of his, so it is worth taking with a grain of salt.

Nevertheless, I think it's still a question worth asking: what matters more, teaching quality or class size? Obviously Malaysians have some other things to worry about, such as our horrible exam system, but there already seems to be a general consensus that we need to raise the standards of our exams, and try to orient them away from general memorisation of facts. There is, however, nothing close to a consensus on the question I'm raising.

What do you think? Should we spend more money on hiring good teachers to teach to classrooms of 30 or 40, or should we spend more money to hire the same quality of teachers but with smaller classrooms of 20 to 30?

Punishment for racial slurs : A Transfer

A teacher in a Banting school was recently transferred over allegations that she had made racial slurs and might even beaten up some students.

The Malaysiakini report has more details in terms of the racial slurs used - 'keling pariah', 'Negro' and 'black monkeys', ‘Indians came from dogs', Indians are ‘children of prostitutes' and the community is stupid and also allege that teacher had said the community youth ‘did not have testicles', ‘always menstruates' and indulged in thuggery and theft.

Furthermore, it was reported that she had 'beaten' up some of her students for being late. Not sure if these students were only from the Indian community.

Pending an investigation, she has been transferred to another school. My sense is that the investigation will be covered up and the teacher will get away with just a slap on the wrist.

I don't think that this is an isolated incident in our schools. I'm sure that in environments where only students of one race are taught, some teachers will not be afraid to let loose their views on students of other races and religions. After all, this kind of racist rhetoric is prevalent in BTN 'brainwashing' seminars where non-Malay students are present.

If the MOE is serious about stopping this kind of racial slurs in our schools, they should conduct a full scale investigation and sack this teacher as a sign to others who might think of following in her footsteps.