faulker059

The case of Anucia, which Tony blogged about last month , seems to have struck a chord with you all: there are over 60 comments and counting on the post. Many are critical of Anucia's failure to research the government's requirements for a teaching post. A lot of people seem to have missed the critical point: if we want better teachers, we need to recognise more good universities. That's basically it -- as for what Anucia should do in her personal situation, the answer is fairly obvious: look for a private sector job, be it here or overseas. But what I want to draw more attention to is the important issue of information when it comes to education; there is an immense knowledge gap which often makes a huge difference in where people end up, and not enough people seem to have this in mind. My father comes from a rural New Village. The fact that he has a PhD from a prestigious foreign university is almost a fluke. He was fortunate that my grandparents earned enough to put him ...

A little departure from the regular post. It is inspired by a trip I recently took to the bookstore with 4 refugee kids who recently migrated to the US from a Southeast Asian country (Not Malaysia!) because their tribe was being persecuted by the central government in their country. My wife and I were giving some of them Math tuition for about a year before we had to stop because of my thesis commitments. We bought each of the eight kids in the family a Barnes and Nobles gift card and I brought 4 of them (space constraints in the car) to a Barnes bookstore on Monday so that they could use their giftcards to buy some books. It was a learning experience, for them as well as for me. The oldest kid in the car was a boy, 15. The girls were aged 8, 10 and 13. I thought I could just leave them to roam about the bookstore by themselves to pick and choose the books which they would like to purchase. But I thought wrong. When I was young, my parents used to dump me in a bookstore and let me wand...