The education fiasco continues
Restless NativePublished: Jul 24, 2009 7:32 AM | Updated: Jul 24, 2009 7:41 AM
I read with some sadness at the recent ruling of the Education Ministry on the reversion to Bahasa as a medium of instruction in the teaching of Science and Mathematics. When I saw the announcement, I said to myself "here we go again ….another experiment, another venture for the BN... all (yet again) with no explicit outcome measurements."
If you look at virtually every venture the BN government has undertaken in all of its custodial ventures of the country- whether it is education reform, administration change, operational enterprises or social re-engineering, you will see one common denominator in all of them… besides abject failure! That common denominator is a total lack of accountability - at every level.
Even more astonishing is the recent government announcement that the "the programme of teaching Mathematics and Science in English has failed..." In typical BN-style, as with all of the failed enterprises and there are many, no reasons for failure are alluded to simply another vacillating move. I have also read most of the letters in this column from people arguing passionately the case for one language medium of instruction over another.
All the English vs. Bahasa arguments aside, this is yet again another undertaking (and a major one at that) where the subject matter - Educational Excellence, English proficiency, Technical competitiveness, etc. is (a) poorly defined or not accurately framed in terms of what it is that we are after (b) what the success factors would be to know we did it right (c) how we would measure them - the performance metrics (d) whom will we hold accountable at every level (e) where the checks and balances will be to ensure everything in the entire chain is humming along as planned (f) controls on how will we address shortcomings, how will we refine (further along) and (g) what if we fail catastrophically (fail/safe mechanisms), etc. These are the fundamental "building blocks" of any major venture whether you are overhauling the MCCP, revamping the civil service or, as in this case, the education system.
Nothing strikes the Malaysian public more intimately nor raises the rakyat's passion barometer more than the topic of education. I have stated in the past that we had a world-class education system that was bequeathed by the colonial masters and what did we do with it….yes, we screwed it up royally. The current education system is really in the toilet, many teachers are sub-standard, the public is disenchanted and have no faith in it and the officials in charge could not be bothered as they try one failed experiment after another. The real casualties in these experiments are the students. We have had one whole generation of Malaysian students whose secondary education had been compromised by the current system. Are we then surprised when their competence fails the expected standards - gaining meaningful employment? What does the BN government do…well, what it has always done before…try yet another experiment!
In the late sixties, as high school students in Malaysia, my friends and I watched with trepidation the government announcement that they were taking over the School Certificate Examination (or SC) and substituting it with the Malaysian Certificate of Education (MCE) which was the forerunner to the SPM. I remember the heated discussions that followed among my friends then with the summary conclusion that "one day, MU would be the Gajah Mada University". This institution had the perception then (in Malaysia, anyway) that it was rubber-stamping any student entering it's corridors with a pulse resulting in the usual joke that a stone thrown from a tall building in Jakarta would fall on an un-employed Gaja Mada graduate!
Perhaps the statement was an exaggeration but the point was made that, the Education Ministry was going to tackle the 'sacred cow' with a statement and nothing much in the way of a concrete plan. What followed, in 1970, was a major fiasco when the Christian Brother schools in Peninsular Malaysia suddenly went from an average of 75% pass rate to less than 20% on account of failure in Bahasa Malaysia (compulsory subject). The result was strange in the sense that only the Christian brother schools were affected. Cries of foul play were raised by school administrators as well as prominent politicians who were ex-students of some of these institutions.
The ministry promised to investigate but, after two weeks, issued the statement that they would allow all the "BM-failed" students to be re-absorbed into the system for another attempt - never happened before! The vast majority did not return (denied their rightful place in Lower Sixth form) and went to private institutions to continue their studies at the "A" level….which was still untouched by the ministry at that point. Such "irregularities" persisted throughout the Bahasa implementation period. Anyone remember the "Bahasa Malaysia paper leakage" prior to the exams in the early-70s?
I have been living and working abroad for almost 30 years but follow developments in Malaysia like most concerned fellow Malaysians living abroad. Of all the things Mahathir did during his reign, the teaching of Science & Mathematics in English was the only laudable decision since its implications were the widest and most long-lasting. That it was critically flawed in its execution is another matter. That should have been incorporated into the mechanism for implementation right at the conceptual stage not left, as it was, to some bungling nincompoops in the Education Ministry.
My perspective is a little different from some of the locals. As late as 18 months ago, I sat on a board (yet again) that was outsourcing its contact centre business on technical support as well as its customer service support. The countries I saw on the final list of potentials included India, The Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong and even the PRC. Malaysia did not even make the list!
Five years before that, in a financial services company in New York City, I saw a similar list with Malaysia being omitted. In the end, in both instances, the two countries that both entities settled on were India and the Philippines. In December 2008, a similar situation I saw involved a major telecommunication enterprise relocating its technical support office to The Philippines.
Singapore was almost always ruled out, despite being labeled "most desirable" on cost grounds. The common denominator in all of the choice criteria was "fluency in the English Language." While it was the one of the many criteria used to evaluate the location, all other criteria being somewhat equal, the language factor was the final determinant for these kinds of business. Where assembly work type is concerned (not as desirable since it is downstream work and not significant value-add factor) the language factor may not be a determinant.
It is very hard for most Malaysians to fathom the impact of these boardroom decisions made so far away but I can tell you, from visits to (and reports from) some of these sites abroad, that they had major impact on the towns in those countries - read as jobs, knowledge transfer, infrastructure build-up including buildings, communication systems, highways etc. You have to see it for yourself to believe in the transformation. Towns like Puné, Bangalore, Rojas, Quezon and even Manila, New Delhi and Bombay benefitted greatly from such enterprises.
The benefits to the local communities providing ancillary services was even more astonishing. You had bullock carts being replaced with Toyotas within a couple of years…simply astonishing! You had to see the changes and the pace to really believe in these transformations. The amount of money pumped into the training and development of local talents was impressive. In six of the support centers I oversaw in 2007, the performance of the individuals rivaled those of the onshore (mainland US). The training was not just limited to phone skills but encompassed knowledge transfer in telecoms management and IT support. This, in my mind, beats the straight assembly-type work that we see in Malaysia. That we lost these golden opportunities (we probably never even knew) but were more fixated on "passing that SPM with jillion distinctions" is symptomatic of the "katak di-bawah tempurong" syndrome.
Having been through the Malaysian education mill myself, my impression is that the non-Malays who are clamoring for retention of the Bahasa in all subjects believe (maybe rightly so) that they have mastered bahasa and are worried by English which, presumably, might be more of a challenge. Certainly, I remember the General Paper (GP) of my "A" level days, terrified Chinese-language medium students since it was generally acknowledged as "very tough" during my time.
As for the "failed experiment", I could write a treatise on it and how to implement it in a fool proof manner. Some jotting points would be: - clear goal statement, even more clear outcome measurements (of success), proper materials, proper training of existing teachers, hire state school superintendents from England even recently retired ones, hire new teachers - preferably from the UK and US, robust teach-the-teacher programmes inc. re-training and advanced training, measure the teachers (post-training), have a reward mechanism for outstanding teachers/their institutions, raise salaries of teachers and pay exceptional teachers significantly more, have a robust systems of checks and controls all the way up and down the education tree (from ministry to rural school), 'fail-safe' systems - to cater to students who do not make it through certain grades (providing alternatives ex. vocational education).
I will also add a "Malaysia-only" stipulation - compulsory local tertiary education of all government ministers' children - hah! watch them make it work now. Needless to say, the primary stipulation should be - hire the best candidate for the position and hold him/her accountable. Heads must roll (including the Education Minister) if failure is not to be an option.
Of course, since no one in the Education Ministry is really worth retaining, I would retire all of them instantly - one and a half generations of miscarried education is an inexcusable result by any measure. Sometimes you have to shoot the family pet.
Unfortunately, all I can see happening is more flip-flops, more vague ventures, less accountability, more smug parents who think they have gotten their way by having Math and Science in Bahasa, more government interference in secondary and tertiary education institutions which prevents excellence from rising to the top, more talk about the "state of affairs in education" and more.
As I watch my own son and daughter start their undergraduate lives in Universities in their adopted country here in the US, I realize my good fortune that they have been spared the experimentation in my home country. I sigh in sadness of what we had in Malaysia at one time and what it could have been. Singapore has nothing to fear - the Malaysian education mess will continue they can rest easy now.
If you look at virtually every venture the BN government has undertaken in all of its custodial ventures of the country- whether it is education reform, administration change, operational enterprises or social re-engineering, you will see one common denominator in all of them… besides abject failure! That common denominator is a total lack of accountability - at every level.
Even more astonishing is the recent government announcement that the "the programme of teaching Mathematics and Science in English has failed..." In typical BN-style, as with all of the failed enterprises and there are many, no reasons for failure are alluded to simply another vacillating move. I have also read most of the letters in this column from people arguing passionately the case for one language medium of instruction over another.
All the English vs. Bahasa arguments aside, this is yet again another undertaking (and a major one at that) where the subject matter - Educational Excellence, English proficiency, Technical competitiveness, etc. is (a) poorly defined or not accurately framed in terms of what it is that we are after (b) what the success factors would be to know we did it right (c) how we would measure them - the performance metrics (d) whom will we hold accountable at every level (e) where the checks and balances will be to ensure everything in the entire chain is humming along as planned (f) controls on how will we address shortcomings, how will we refine (further along) and (g) what if we fail catastrophically (fail/safe mechanisms), etc. These are the fundamental "building blocks" of any major venture whether you are overhauling the MCCP, revamping the civil service or, as in this case, the education system.
Nothing strikes the Malaysian public more intimately nor raises the rakyat's passion barometer more than the topic of education. I have stated in the past that we had a world-class education system that was bequeathed by the colonial masters and what did we do with it….yes, we screwed it up royally. The current education system is really in the toilet, many teachers are sub-standard, the public is disenchanted and have no faith in it and the officials in charge could not be bothered as they try one failed experiment after another. The real casualties in these experiments are the students. We have had one whole generation of Malaysian students whose secondary education had been compromised by the current system. Are we then surprised when their competence fails the expected standards - gaining meaningful employment? What does the BN government do…well, what it has always done before…try yet another experiment!
In the late sixties, as high school students in Malaysia, my friends and I watched with trepidation the government announcement that they were taking over the School Certificate Examination (or SC) and substituting it with the Malaysian Certificate of Education (MCE) which was the forerunner to the SPM. I remember the heated discussions that followed among my friends then with the summary conclusion that "one day, MU would be the Gajah Mada University". This institution had the perception then (in Malaysia, anyway) that it was rubber-stamping any student entering it's corridors with a pulse resulting in the usual joke that a stone thrown from a tall building in Jakarta would fall on an un-employed Gaja Mada graduate!
Perhaps the statement was an exaggeration but the point was made that, the Education Ministry was going to tackle the 'sacred cow' with a statement and nothing much in the way of a concrete plan. What followed, in 1970, was a major fiasco when the Christian Brother schools in Peninsular Malaysia suddenly went from an average of 75% pass rate to less than 20% on account of failure in Bahasa Malaysia (compulsory subject). The result was strange in the sense that only the Christian brother schools were affected. Cries of foul play were raised by school administrators as well as prominent politicians who were ex-students of some of these institutions.
The ministry promised to investigate but, after two weeks, issued the statement that they would allow all the "BM-failed" students to be re-absorbed into the system for another attempt - never happened before! The vast majority did not return (denied their rightful place in Lower Sixth form) and went to private institutions to continue their studies at the "A" level….which was still untouched by the ministry at that point. Such "irregularities" persisted throughout the Bahasa implementation period. Anyone remember the "Bahasa Malaysia paper leakage" prior to the exams in the early-70s?
I have been living and working abroad for almost 30 years but follow developments in Malaysia like most concerned fellow Malaysians living abroad. Of all the things Mahathir did during his reign, the teaching of Science & Mathematics in English was the only laudable decision since its implications were the widest and most long-lasting. That it was critically flawed in its execution is another matter. That should have been incorporated into the mechanism for implementation right at the conceptual stage not left, as it was, to some bungling nincompoops in the Education Ministry.
My perspective is a little different from some of the locals. As late as 18 months ago, I sat on a board (yet again) that was outsourcing its contact centre business on technical support as well as its customer service support. The countries I saw on the final list of potentials included India, The Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong and even the PRC. Malaysia did not even make the list!
Five years before that, in a financial services company in New York City, I saw a similar list with Malaysia being omitted. In the end, in both instances, the two countries that both entities settled on were India and the Philippines. In December 2008, a similar situation I saw involved a major telecommunication enterprise relocating its technical support office to The Philippines.
Singapore was almost always ruled out, despite being labeled "most desirable" on cost grounds. The common denominator in all of the choice criteria was "fluency in the English Language." While it was the one of the many criteria used to evaluate the location, all other criteria being somewhat equal, the language factor was the final determinant for these kinds of business. Where assembly work type is concerned (not as desirable since it is downstream work and not significant value-add factor) the language factor may not be a determinant.
It is very hard for most Malaysians to fathom the impact of these boardroom decisions made so far away but I can tell you, from visits to (and reports from) some of these sites abroad, that they had major impact on the towns in those countries - read as jobs, knowledge transfer, infrastructure build-up including buildings, communication systems, highways etc. You have to see it for yourself to believe in the transformation. Towns like Puné, Bangalore, Rojas, Quezon and even Manila, New Delhi and Bombay benefitted greatly from such enterprises.
The benefits to the local communities providing ancillary services was even more astonishing. You had bullock carts being replaced with Toyotas within a couple of years…simply astonishing! You had to see the changes and the pace to really believe in these transformations. The amount of money pumped into the training and development of local talents was impressive. In six of the support centers I oversaw in 2007, the performance of the individuals rivaled those of the onshore (mainland US). The training was not just limited to phone skills but encompassed knowledge transfer in telecoms management and IT support. This, in my mind, beats the straight assembly-type work that we see in Malaysia. That we lost these golden opportunities (we probably never even knew) but were more fixated on "passing that SPM with jillion distinctions" is symptomatic of the "katak di-bawah tempurong" syndrome.
Having been through the Malaysian education mill myself, my impression is that the non-Malays who are clamoring for retention of the Bahasa in all subjects believe (maybe rightly so) that they have mastered bahasa and are worried by English which, presumably, might be more of a challenge. Certainly, I remember the General Paper (GP) of my "A" level days, terrified Chinese-language medium students since it was generally acknowledged as "very tough" during my time.
As for the "failed experiment", I could write a treatise on it and how to implement it in a fool proof manner. Some jotting points would be: - clear goal statement, even more clear outcome measurements (of success), proper materials, proper training of existing teachers, hire state school superintendents from England even recently retired ones, hire new teachers - preferably from the UK and US, robust teach-the-teacher programmes inc. re-training and advanced training, measure the teachers (post-training), have a reward mechanism for outstanding teachers/their institutions, raise salaries of teachers and pay exceptional teachers significantly more, have a robust systems of checks and controls all the way up and down the education tree (from ministry to rural school), 'fail-safe' systems - to cater to students who do not make it through certain grades (providing alternatives ex. vocational education).
I will also add a "Malaysia-only" stipulation - compulsory local tertiary education of all government ministers' children - hah! watch them make it work now. Needless to say, the primary stipulation should be - hire the best candidate for the position and hold him/her accountable. Heads must roll (including the Education Minister) if failure is not to be an option.
Of course, since no one in the Education Ministry is really worth retaining, I would retire all of them instantly - one and a half generations of miscarried education is an inexcusable result by any measure. Sometimes you have to shoot the family pet.
Unfortunately, all I can see happening is more flip-flops, more vague ventures, less accountability, more smug parents who think they have gotten their way by having Math and Science in Bahasa, more government interference in secondary and tertiary education institutions which prevents excellence from rising to the top, more talk about the "state of affairs in education" and more.
As I watch my own son and daughter start their undergraduate lives in Universities in their adopted country here in the US, I realize my good fortune that they have been spared the experimentation in my home country. I sigh in sadness of what we had in Malaysia at one time and what it could have been. Singapore has nothing to fear - the Malaysian education mess will continue they can rest easy now.
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