Najib: M’sian education system must change

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian students are too passive and the education system must change to challenge and encourage them to be more curious, said Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak.

The Deputy Prime Minister said that Malaysian minds were just not inquisitive and challenged enough.

“Our education system must change. Our children are just not curious enough. They must be curious about the world. They must ask questions,” he said.

“Malaysians are very good at rote learning. They spend hours learning,” he said, adding that society too was often passive sometimes out of a sense of respect for the other especially if he or she was more senior.

Najib pointed out that every society that is open to learning and knowledge flourished while those that closed up went into decay.

He, therefore, called for an intellectual renaissance in the country and wanted this to start at universities where the minds of students could be opened up and liberated.

He said Malaysian universities had beautiful physical infrastructure and excellent communications centres that were huge and rather expensive to maintain.

However, he noted that the “intellectual infrastructure” was lacking.

He said that more openness and a greater infusion of knowledge would create a stronger society.

“The whole paradigm shift must start in schools,” he said, adding that schools should make students curious and inquisitive.

Touching on an example, he said, he was struck by a question at his daughter’s university that asked if the Cold War had ended, a question which even he would have difficulty answering.

“You can’t find the answer in text books. There is no right or wrong. It depends on your power of reasoning and how you articulate your ideas. This is the (thinking) younger generation that we must propagate,” he said in his opening speech at the Seminar on Creating a Blue Ocean in Education and Training Sectors.

He said Malaysians should look at where they were today, where they would like to be in the future and find a way to get there.

“That to me is our challenge. I’m optimistic we will get there,” he added.

At another function on early education and ‘Each Child is a Gem of the Nation’ (Permata), Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said the government had recently approved the Permata curriculum and programme for children ages four and below and there would be a national roll out of the programme next year.

He said RM200mil had been set aside under the 2009 Budget for child early education (from age one to six), adding that the Permata curriculum would be made mandatory for private centres.

Najib said there were 8,814 kindergartens in the country, most of which were privately run.

He also noted that as of 2007, only 10% or 3.1mil children in that age group attended day care centres, which was far below the 80% in developed countries.

He said the government recognised that the first four years of a child’s life were formative years and that 90% of rapid brain development happened during these early years and hence there was a need for a holistic type of early education.

Najib’s wife, Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor is the chairman of the Permata committee.

In her speech, Rosmah said, over the last 18 months, they had set up 14 Permata centres all over the country for a total of 380 children with 80 teachers, all with a minimum of a diploma education.

She said Permata was planning to set up another centre in an Indian majority area with the help of Wanita MIC.

She was also in favour of Najib’s suggestion that parents sending their kids to the Permata centre should sign a Aku Janji (I Promise) letter that they would at least spend four hours a month participating in the child’s early education.

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/11/13/nation/20081113182638&sec=nation

Post young teachers to rural schools

IT IS good that the Education Ministry is thinking about making it compulsory for teachers to serve a stint of two or three years in rural areas. It is even better if this is implemented quickly without much ado. There is no point in mulling over for two or three years something which has proven beneficial for the country and something which can be implemented without much cost involved. All the ministry needs to do is to post as many new teachers who will be completing their teacher training soon to the rural areas.

Or if the ministry fears protests from the new teachers because they were not forewarned, it could do the next best thing: tell the new intakes for the teacher training colleges and university graduates applying to do their diplomas-in-education that they could be posted to the rural areas.

This was what it used to be until it was decided that teachers teach better when they are happy and they are happy when they are posted to schools in or near their hometowns or villages.

Making rural posting compulsory means all teachers will have to serve in villages like those in the upper reaches of the Pahang or Kinabatangan rivers. There are many benefits the schools and teachers can derive from this policy. Most importantly it will solve the problems of the shortage of teachers in rural schools. The presence of young teachers from the cities could also help improve the teaching of English and even of Bahasa Malaysia especially in dialect-bound communities.

It would be a whole new experience for the young teachers who have probably spent all of their lives in cities and towns and they should, therefore, welcome the move. Living in a rural setting might even kindle in them the love of the outdoors and adventure. And should they give in to this love, their total experience may even toughen them up. While their pupils learn from them, the teachers themselves could learn a lot from their pupils and the community in which they live.

A young Indian posted to teach in rural Sabah several years ago still speaks the rarest of the Malaysian languages, the language of the Rungus community among whom he lived for three years as an English language teacher.

Should the government implement this next year the young teachers and their parents should no longer feel anxious about being posted to Bangar or Bukok as the billions that the government has spent on rural development, especially on roads and electricity, have reduced the number of places that can be considered truly remote and isolated.

Article Source : The Sun