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PSD scholarships – to scrap or not to scrap SAT, 26 JUN 2010 06:11 By Ken Vin Lek KUALA LUMPUR: Every year around the months of May and June, hundreds of “straight A” SPM students receive the news of not being offered the “illustrious” Public Service Department (PSD) scholarship. Thousands of complaints are made by various parties, the issue becomes politicised and many people start crying out about the injustice and inequality existing in the system of allocating scholarships. Recently, Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak announced that PSD scholarships would be phased out over time, and he was promptly supported by Minister in the Prime Minister's Department, Nazri Aziz, who said that the move is an effort to “reduce brain drain” and that the government “lacked capacity” to fund students. FMT has made an indepth study into the arguments surrounding the PSD scholarship issue, and we leave it to the public to make up their mind on what’s right and what’s wrong. Many parties have questio...

The Ministry of Education must not be hasty in scrapping all examinations which will create far reaching consequences for our human capital development Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin had announced that the Ujian Penilaian Sekolah Rendah (UPSR) and Penilaian Menengah Rendah (PMR) examinations may be abolished as “part of government efforts to restructure the learning system that as seen as too examination oriented and failed to provide a holistic education.” I would like to express our thanks to the DPM for also stating that “the ministry would not act in haste and wanted the public to give feedback to help improve the public examination system.” I would like to urge extreme caution from the Education Ministry on the potential move to scrap examination despite the noble objectives to “avoid producing machines” as explained by the Deputy Education Minister Wee Ka Siong. I are in complete agreement that we should reform our education system to preve...

My friends and I are running a series of workshops in several cities from this month through August on the US university system and its application process. There'll be one-day sessions in Kota Kinabalu, Kuching, Penang and the Klang Valley, and a longer two-day workshop only in the Klang Valley in August. The info sessions will give you an idea of what the US university system is like, and an overview of how to apply. They're FREE. The workshop will explain in depth how to apply, and since it lasts over two days, we'll cover a lot more material. There's more information on dates and venue at the website . If you're a Malaysian thinking about university, or know someone who is, I can guarantee you this will be useful (it's something most of us wish we had when we were in your shoes). At the least, it'll help you learn about your options (including financial support -- the US is pretty amazing as far as scholarships go). Even if you're not thinking about...

Silence of the mahasiswas — Lee Lian Kong May 31, 2010 There is a Bob Dylan song that goes “I used to care, but things have changed”. Malaysian students used to care. They used to live up to their grand Malay name “mahasiswa”; fresh, spirited, inspired. Now it is a deafening silence or, worse, clueless silence. We have become frightened and leashed. We have surpassed ourselves to become shining examples of obedience. Like dogs. If the dogs bark, the owners whip and yank on their steel collars. If they are silent, they are rewarded with treats. In time, we have forgotten how to bark. The mahasiswas of today are like those dogs. Historically, young people were a significant force in the development of this country. They were heady with the victory for independence. The mahasiswas debated, protested and demonstrated for pro-justice, pro-human rights, justifying their position and manifesting the education they receive in the best institutions of the country. Back in 1974 during the Tasik ...

We often think about schooling as simply getting good exam results; maybe at best, we regard it as a way to practice our intellectual skills. But schools are where the adults of tomorrow learn not just how to read and write, but how to live. Our schools do a good job of teaching us basic literacy (and arguably quite a poor job of helping us think about the things we read and write), but even our best schools are often only mediocre when it comes to preparing us for life outside academia. A friend of mine, Lim Su Ann, wrote an excellent post some months back on how deeply unsatisfying the opportunities for extracurricular growth are in our schools — it's a piece I recommend highly. Most of us in school simply go through the motions of extracurricular involvement — we don't really care about what we do. Most of the extracurricular things I pursued in school had nothing to do with my school. Until our schools allow students the freedom to pursue the things which interest them ...

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 ...

It's been a while since my last post on this blog. I've been buried in my dissertation for the past six months. Thus the neglect of my blogging duties. It's been a long journey, one that has been physically, intellectually and emotionally challenging (and oftentimes exhausting) but after approximately 6 years here at Duke, I successfully defended my dissertation on Wednesday, March 31st, 2010! Later, I'll write a lengthier post on the process of obtaining my PhD but for now, I'm enjoying the feeling of having the PhD monkey off my back!