faulker059

As we enter a new year, we reflect back on a year full of trials and tribulations. From the pending abolishment of PMR to the flitting about of PPSMI, from the Rawang school of terror to the plight of Orang Asli education , Malaysians have had their fair share of drama in the education scene.  Which is why, we have to look forward and strive to do much much better this year. Here's a list of 5 things  everybody from the government to the ordinary citizen should look into for the sake of our children. 1. A revamp of the History syllabus The issue: The History syllabus as it is, is too myopic in its scope. The Russian revolution, Ottoman Empire, Alexander the Great, Kublai Khan all used to be part of Malaysian history syllabus. It is little wonder that a complaint against fresh Malaysian graduates is that they lack general knowledge. Important figures of history like Yap Ah Loy have also been reduced to a mere footnote. The History Syllabus is also incredibly rigid: the ...

Here is a fantastic presentation by a maths teacher, Dan Meyer, explaining what is wrong with virtually every maths textbook out there: What I like about his idea is that it focuses on first understanding the concept, and only then applying the maths. It harnesses your intuition about a problem you would normally encounter in the real world to get you on the hook, so you have no choice but to learn the maths to get your answer. He speaks as if this is a problem unique to the US, but it is not. As he says, teachers from all around the world have approached him about his ideas, because they resonate on a global basis. Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman has a famous essay on the irrelevance of mathematics textbooks in a similar vein . Notice that Meyer identifies five symptoms of bad maths teaching. I think all of us in our school system have suffered from these symptoms at some point; the aversion to word problems and the over-eagerness to harness a simple formula must ring a ...

Amidst the political turmoil in our country, this little story headlined Student alleges sexual assault by teacher appeared in Malaysiakini. For the benefit of those without a subscription, a Form 2 student claims her male teacher physically assaulted and sexually abused her in front of her classmates—and when she reported it, the discipline teacher told her to keep the matter a secret. She told her parents, who confronted the principal—but the principal claimed the teacher had only scolded the girl for not bringing her Malay grammar book to school. Sexual and physical abuse is a clearcut issue, so let's talk about a related problem: discipline. I am not opposed to caning in the household or in school; I think used properly, the cane can reinforce a good lesson. But the problem is, caning is difficult to do responsibly. And the reason it is hard to cane responsibly is that it is hard to discipline young people responsibly. A big problem with expecting schools to enforce dis...

This post is from Gabrielle and it is dedicated to a very special teacher by the name of Ms Liew. I think after reading this, we will all agree that we need more teachers like Ms Liew. Today (April 19) is Ms Liew’s birthday, and this note is dedicated to her. (from Gabrielle Chong) Back in secondary school, I hated Teacher’s Day. I hated the extravagant celebrations in my humid school hall. I hated the pretentious song dedications. I hated the students’ awful, half-baked attempts at performing, err, titillating pop dances (it was an all-girls school). Most of all, I hated the fact that while the entire school of over a hundred teachers and over two thousand students would sit down comfortably inside the hall to savor the show, the one teacher that I loved most happened to be the discipline teacher, and she would spend every Teacher’s Day (and Report Card Day, and Graduation Day, and ABC Teacher’s Retirement Day, and…) breaking out in sweat, manning the school compound, singling out tr...

I've found that one of the most controversial debates when it comes to education, especially in developed countries, is what is the best way to spend the scarce money we have on education. The debate often boils down to a choice between two things: smaller classes, or better teachers. Personally, I've always felt it's obvious that we should pay teachers better, especially in Malaysia. There is no reason to hold teachers to a rigid pay scale based on seniority, let alone the pay scale of the civil service. Teachers perform a much more important job than civil servants, and I daresay deal with a lot more stress. It only makes sense to pay them more, and especially to pay the outstanding teachers more. The argument for smaller class sizes seems rather vague to me, and it's predicated essentially on the notion that it's hard for good teachers to pay attention to more than 20 pupils at a time. While I think there is probably room to rethink the traditional classroom dyna...