Umno destroyed the education system: The rich can go overseas but what about the poor?

Cut-and-paste, plagiarism and lack of literacy skills among students and graduates are telling signs that the quality of education in the country is at stake. UMNO-led government has given less prominence to English by abolishing the PPSMI – depriving students from being exposed to the language when studying the sciences in school.

UMNO is also practising double-standard when it comes to education. When MRSM is allowed to offer the Cambridge International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE), other schools are not given this privilege. Beyond this are international and private schools for the rich where English is used to teach.

Of course, the well-heeled among Malaysians who have lost confidence in the local education system will send their children to English speaking countries to study. The poor and the marginalised Malays, Chinese, Indians and the Indigenous will be left to learn under a mediocre education system in ordinary schools. What's more, the education system provides for schools and colleges for a single race at the expense of national unity, which is totally against the so-called UMNO’s 1Malaysia jingle. Blame UMNO for the flip-flop policies in the education system that has led to this letdown.

Touch-and-go approach

In the ordinary schools obviously there is a lack of emphasis on the literacy skills in the curriculum. A bulk of the curriculum focuses more on rote-learning and the touch-and-go approach to learning. English is neglected and the acquisition of other important commercial languages are not emphasised at all.

The irony is that when these students get for tertiary education it is going to be all in English. When they get into the business world they are not equipped with one or two additional languages. Instead, dry and irrelevant subjects are given prominence from primary to university levels for trivial political reasons. Mandarin, for instance, is becoming increasingly important in the business world. In this country, the education system does not factor this into its curriculum. For this reason, thousands of Malay and Indians students would prefer to attend Chinese school at the primary level.

Malaysia must be the only country in the world where the education system has not fully morphed into a stable policy after almost six decades of independence. It flip flops to the whims and fancies of UMNO politicians of the season who are more interested in holding on to power than see genuine progress in education. UMNO politics has never diverged far from education in this country and the two have recently converged treacherously close to each other.

Billions of taxpayers’ money have been spent on education in its every Five-Year Plan. Many of the policies have failed despondently. Numerous unfeasible ‘inputs’ have been shoved into the system and the country has failed to produce sufficient quality graduates to be proud of. A lot of these inputs have come from the so-called experts from abroad but our education structure still remains stagnant and politically skewed.

“ Many students entering university are not primed enough to do a university education. There is the short-cut Matriculation and Foundation entrance-way as opposed to the much tougher STPM. A short cut to get a university education is partly to be blamed. They enter varsity with the incapacity to view knowledge from a creative and analytical perspective and this has partly attributed to their non-performing disorder. These students lack the prowess of imagination and inventiveness to facilitate them to become more original in their thoughts, critical and formulative when seeking and applying knowledge. Many have failed to achieve this insight – some even towards the end of their study at the university – as they lack, among others, a sturdy arsenal of literacy skills.,” said a senior university lecturer.

Copying, cut-and-paste, plagiarism

Education has been liberalised, no doubt and almost all students today can have access to higher education. Yet the country cannot produce the best from among the finest students. Not even the top 20 percent our students who go for tertiary education are proven to be truly accomplished. “Copying, cut-and-paste, plagiarism and group thinking are the distinctive features seen in the work of these graduates. They come up with no new ideas,” said a university professor in Shah Alam.

This must be due to the education system that has no clear vision of what to achieve for the nation. The 20 percent of those who go for tertiary education has not been equipped with adequate literacy and thinking skills. The majority end up as mediocre graduates who could only seek jobs with the government. Alas, out there many are still unemployed.

Looking into the curriculum, over 70 percent of the content syllabus at the secondary level demand for rote-learning. The curriculum is not geared to coaxing students to be independent thinkers but good copiers. They enter university and graduate with the same frame of mind. Without an independent mind they end up plagiarising works of others even when they get into jobs. “This rhetorical mode of teaching in schools and colleges has, to a certain extent, failed to produce graduates with an inquisitive mind,” said a local British-educated secondary school teacher.

If 80 percent of our graduates could not perform this can still be an excuse, as education is too liberalised and commercialised these days that any Tom, Dick and Harry can end up having a university degree with some effort put into it. This group of graduates however will blend into the society and end up doing mundane chores in life. They will have less burden of expertise in their life, so they can end up leading an ordinary life.

The burden of expertise

The burden of expertise lies on the top 20 percent of college graduates. But when these graduates themselves are not up to mark, it again reflects on the poor education system.

It’s the burden of being branded as expertise that makes many ‘professionals’ plagiarise works of others. In 2009, a ‘professor’ and a lecturer with a ‘doctorate’ from a local university were alleged to have plagiarised works of others to prepare a reference book for their students. The 64-page book was found to have been lifted from several websites including Harvard and Albion College. This habit among local academics has been too common for long. To some academics this is always the easy way through – a fast-mode approach to ‘academic excellence’.

Their excuse will always be that it was done unintentionally. No academic can ever make the excuse of unawareness or heedlessness, since their whole training is in how to access, utilise and build on the intellectual property of others.

Then came the issue of a local judge in 2000 who was alleged to have plagiarised a written judgement of another judge. Mediocrity has even crept into the judiciary. In another case in 1994 it was alleged that a lawyer wrote an entire legal judgment for a civil suit in which the presiding judge awarded the litigant a huge sum in damages. Perhaps, the judges could not write their own judgements due to the lack of knowledge or literacy skills, thus the plagiarism and outsourcing of written judgments for his cases.

“If this is what our so-called professionals do, what example does this set for the cut-and-paste generation of students we have in the universities?” asked a foreign academic at a local university.

It’s all the paper chase

Besides the lack of literacy skills in English and other main languages, obviously the education system is not nurturing individual thinking or making students think ‘out of the box’. The curriculum is more geared towards rote-learning, memorising and regurgitating of what has been memorised in exams. It is a fast-track education approach where those who could come up with so many As’ in the exams are speciously considered as excellent students. Obviously, despite scoring straight As’, most of these students still lack the literacy skills needed of them at the tertiary stage and the vocational world. “Many of our students are just exceptionally good at rote-learning but not qualitative learning. They are apt to remembering notes and regurgitating them during exams. They are good at rehearsing facts but lack the skills to apply knowledge and ‘think out of the box’. This is, unfortunately, the setback in our education system,” said a part-time Kirby-trained teacher in a local university.

The education system has failed to give prominence to the mind of the individual to achieve greater things in time to come. It is the kind of system that does not allow the nurturing of individual minds to create graduates who are innovative and resourceful. They are inhibited to go beyond the stuff they have copiously written in their scholastic dissertations.

Many students living in poor countries with inadequate educational facilities have excelled in education more than what Malaysia has achieved. They achieve success in their countries of origin; also when they are employed in many developed countries. Besides having a reasonably good literacy skills, they are taught to value the importance of their individual minds in achieving their set goals. They are taught to be original in their thinking such that the output will naturally come form their own ideas. This is a patent of sort in their education system.

“It is too common to see written theses and term papers with more than three quarters of the content plagiarised from other sources. In this fast-track system it is the end that justifies the means. It’s all the paper chase that matters to these students. The system has produced graduates who lack creativity and innovative skills,” quipped a foreign professor in a local university.

Under-qualified graduates

“There are numerous PhD holders in the local universities who cannot even write a paragraph of original stuff intelligibly in English and speak the language legibly and yet they are teaching our graduates using English as the medium of instruction,” quipped an foreign academic advisor to a local institution.

Evidently, they lack ample and indubitable experience and qualifications that are on par with those in the developed world and some other developing countries. They are not employed based on true capability and this has made the education system become a laughing stock, even among the many other progressive developing countries in our region.

Many private sector employers lament that local graduates are not resourceful, creative and functional enough to survive in a challenging working environment. “They lack thinking skills, not innovative and are poor in communication,” said the CEO of an established foreign company in Kuala Lumpur.

Local university graduates are unable to secure jobs in many of the private sector companies, and UMNO politicians should wonder as to why this happens. Aren’t there enough jobs for our graduates or is it because they are not qualified enough to be employed? Many of the local IT graduates, for instance, are unemployed or doing jobs that do not commensurate their qualifications. Those who cannot make it within the country would obviously find it much tougher to survive in the global market.

“It’s a system that adopts the mode of strait-jacketing our students at the school and university levels,” jibed a foreign IT professor in a local university.

Politics in education

Politics has crept into the education system and UMNO expects university lecturers and students to become conformists and support them. “Students are inhibited and do not brave themselves in expressing their ideas and opinions of their own. They are not allowed rooms for dissent. They are tuned to conform to the ideas and views of the authority or else they will be branded as the anti-establishment type. Their minds are tightened with all the college rules and regulations for fear that they will end up not supporting the incumbent government,” said a local university lecturer. He added, “Students are seldom rewarded for their ability to think creatively or for their unconventional standpoints. There is a void of meaningful engagement analysis, independence of thought and support for students to think individually.”

Graduates have a very poor command of English because of the failed education system. English is not seriously taught at all levels of education. Priority is given to non-relevant subjects in schools and colleges that bore students more than reward them. “Some are so bad in English that they cannot even string a simple sentence together without overt errors. They do not even have the proper skills to paraphrase academic work of others. They just copy or plagiarise them. The best they resort to is copying or plagiarising what others have done. Some just copy or translate verbatim from the text book. This is then produced in class assignments as well as in theses up to the highest level,” said an external examiner to a local university.

This is not surprising as our graduates are not taught to go beyond the stuff they have copiously written in their dissertations to improve themselves. They however will manage to get through their studies, as seldom would universities fail students for fear that the university loses its ‘commercial’ value.

English is indispensable

The series of flip flops in the education policy has gravely diminished the quality of education under the present UMNO-led government. The waning education system has fallen short of meeting the aspirations of students in a multi-racial society. The education system is not rewarding those who are truly au fait, ingenious and inspired but those who wholly subscribe to the convention of copying, plagiarising and memorising notes from books and then churning them out in paper assignments, theses and exams just to earn a degree.

Young Malaysians have lost faith in the country’s education policies and structure. The English medium schools were abolished in 1969 then the PPSMI in 2012 to appease the duplicitous ultra-nationalists and double-dealing activists who advocate that being mono-lingual was enough for survival. They have failed to realise that today, not only English is indispensable for a good education. Even Mandarin is becoming increasing important in the wake of China as an emerging economic power.

Imagine the great asset of a graduate who speaks fluent English, Malay and Mandarin in the commercial world! The UMNO-led government has to be responsible for all this mess in our education system.

Malaysia Chronicle