COMMENT We celebrated Teachers Day with added gusto last month. Now that is over; get back to business.

I don’t mean this in the cynical sense that nothing changes. On the contrary, quite a few things are changing: school based assessment (SBA) and a decommissioned national exam considerably alter the form and appearance of Malaysia’s schooling system.

No, I am being reasonably sceptical, for we see scant evidence that the business of teaching will change from the current narrow, stifling attitudes and modes - and it could get worse because ongoing reforms create a mirage of progress on the horizon, while teachers remain cogs of a cloning apparatus and an Umno-BN vote automated teller machine (ATM).

The decline of our education is documented. In April, we found out our students rank 39th out of 44 countries in the Programme for International Assessment (Pisa) test of creative problem-solving. Our performance on Pisa’s mathematics and science tests also place us bottom of the class.

On Teachers’ Day, we and our government thanked them profusely, acknowledged their hard work, and appreciated their impact on our lives. We seemed to want a lift. National morale feels heavy and languid; our multi-ethnic, multi-religious tapestry frays at the seams.

But it also feels like Putrajaya’s exaltation of teachers serves to massage and cajole them into accepting new terms and conditions. The SBA, hugely unpopular among teachers for its administrative monstrosities and constant website implosion for daily uploading of students’ scores, will resume, Education Minister Muhyiddin Yassin assures us, after some revision and reduction in workload, and perhaps expansion of server capacity.

There is no intent to pare down the obsessive compulsive control mechanisms. A month after elevating teachers, the government is now berating them for exercising freedom of thought on Facebook.

This year sees the replacement of the PMR national examination with the PT3 in Form 3, with tests to be administered at the school level and reduced in scope and intensity.

Technically, of course this package of reforms supposedly moves our schooling system away from the exam-centric mode that even government laments.

However, these changes, being fixated on form and speed instead of substance and depth, are mortally flawed.

We are only taking away the centralised national exam, while the culture, the ethos and the environment basically stay. You can introduce school based assessment, but how is this casting out rote learning?

Fixated on form, not substance

Nothing of true, lasting importance changes so long as we are fixated on form and not substance.

Changing the form is easier, quicker, and more convenient. As usual, that is our chosen route. In fact, changes have unfolded so abruptly that teachers are mad and stressed, parents and students are clueless and anxious.

Teachers usually acquiesce to do what they’re told, but the SBA was so savagely burdensome that even they protested. They also pointed out that, without the inducement of scoring grades, kids have little motivation to study.

After lionising straight A students all these decades and suppressing critical and independent thought, should we be surprised that they are lost when asked to learn without the reward of high scores?

After decades of squeezing their minds into one officially sanctioned mould, and punishing anyone who dares to differ from the formula, of course they are lost and confused when the system takes away the target and reward for their brain cramming efforts - and does not fully explain what replaces it.

So we wait. And we ask, how will decentralisation work?

There will not be a national exam at the end of Form 3, but there will still be tests and assessments. We are assured that schools will “administer, assess and score the assessments based on standardised guidelines prepared by the Examinations Syndicate”. Ah, there’s that word, comforting to some, dismaying to others: standardise. Maintaining standards here refers to uniformity, not quality.

This holds out ample signs of a national disaster repeating at the local level.

One attitude will be, no harm trying. You don’t know the potential benefits until you give it a go, and besides, how could one fault such a fine idea as less exams?

Good point. But I fear that, not only could we fail to achieve the potential, but this could actually be detrimental.

Why do I say so? Because we’ve done it before. We’ve turned a sensible scheme into a mindless monster.

The KBSM (Kurikulum Bersepadu Sekolah Menengah) reduced the weightage of multiple choice questions and increased that of written answers in the national exams. And who could object? Isn’t it better for students to be scribing sentences instead of shading boxes?

Yet the more I think about this, the more I reckon it caused harm. I am of the last cohort of the previous curriculum, where multiple choice questions basically counted for half of one’s total grade.

I am no great fan of that format, but at least, prior to answering the question, we pondered privately over the choice, constructing original lines of thinking before choosing the answer.

No slaving over memorisation

Sure, there were formulas and strategies to scoring. But we did not slave over memorisation the way students do these days. Under the KBSM, students have increasingly become cued into Pavlovian mode from the instant they read a question, reflexively retrieving and spitting out THE one and only answer.

And could we do the same with this shift toward decentralisation and a less exam-oriented system? Yes, we might - just look at what remains unchanged. Teachers and students are still subjugated, deprived and alienated of meaningful autonomy, freedom, creativity and empowerment.

The system still demands innovative students of physical sciences but subservient students of history, the arts, social sciences and humanities. It still wants children to explore science in open fields, while corralling other subjects in gated enclosures. It fails to grasp that, if we want innovation and critical thinking, these must apply across the spectrum of disciplines. Freedom must be accorded to students and to teachers.

Now let us consider some scenarios.

First, teachers, hunched beneath stacks of administrative protocols, revert to standardised practices. They can now choose from a wider menu, but it becomes even more difficult to express new and original ideas, because teachers and students no longer fall back on the national exam requirements.

Previously one could wander as long as one eventually got reined back to the exam’s standard answer. Now students are consumed trying to decipher the teacher’s standard answer.

If teachers do not have the thinking skills and self-confidence to deal with plurality of perspectives and opinions, and if they derive fulfillment from students’ bowing and nodding, they may even more stringently conduct rote learning.

Second, at another extreme, some classes drift toward an anything goes mode, with increasing invocation of the “there are no right or wrong answers” clause. This is often a terrible piece of mis-education and intellectual laziness.

The maxim, if there must be a replacement, should be “there can be many right answers and many wrong answers”. “Right” or “wrong” here are not meant in the sense of reproducing or contradicting the textbook, but in terms of coherence, consistency and clarity.

Third, in line with educational trends, students conduct more presentations, do more projects and group work. Good stuff, especially social interaction and public speaking. But without proper guidance, this descends into a superficial interaction, copying and pasting from the Internet, and yet again, form over substance.

The most gaping hole - writing

The pleasing sight of students making presentations lulls us to continually neglect the most gaping hole in our education system: writing. If we want critical and innovative thinking, we have to teach writing.

I am not referring to writing of formal letters or neat reports, but writing as a channel for clarifying thoughts, crafting questions and developing ideas, for creative expression and self-discovery.

I see this vacuum acutely in my university teaching experience. Students assuredly can put on a slick powerpoint show - a direct result of measures taken to address our youth’s lack of “presentation skills”.

But ask them to pose or answer questions and they turn mute. They cannot think. They know not how to synthesise information and construct an argument because they have never been taught to write - in any language.

Fourth, the SBA and PT3 usher in transformation of our education system, producing creative, dynamic and fearless youth brimming with ideas, questions, and...

Oh, give me reason to not despair.


LEE HWOK AUN is senior lecturer in development studies at Universiti Malaya.