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 ...