1Malaysia, 3 education systems, ALL guinea pigs!

Unexpectedly, my article A mother's woes has received a great response from readers. It was not only a mother's woes, but also a father's and a teacher's. I have recorded a few of their words and let's see what they said.

Mr Chow said, "My wife is a Chinese primary school teacher and she told me that under the new Standard Curriculum for Primary Schools (KSSR) syllabus, students are allowed even to use pictures instead of words that they do not know how to spell in making sentences. I cannot help but wonder whether our next generation can be considered as educated, according to our standard. However, not like the mother in that article, I am not going to sit still and wait for the doom. I am highly educated and have the ability to give my children a different kind of education after work, which could be considered as a form of home schooling. It is ridiculous, however, as we have to get back to the old road of private education after all the efforts made!"

A teacher said, "The KSSR has been implemented two years ago but was not been massively reported. However, it has now triggered an uproar when secondary schools start to implement it. It seems like primary school teachers are more easily "bullied". Teachers are very clear that the KSSR will be a failure. I feel really sorry for students every time when they are turned into guinea pigs. However, we have no way to help. We just take the order and do whatever told. Please log on to Facebook and go for the page of "KSSR sharing group" to browse through some words from teachers and I hope that you can help publish some of them."

Mr Lin said, "I am an education victim of the Mahathir administration. I studied in a national secondary school but I want to send my daughter to a Chinese independent school so that she wouldn't be another victim like me. I could always score A1 in English and I thought that my English was excellent at that time. I believe you should understand that we were actually deceiving ourselves as our standards were not achieving the international standard."

Jane said, "I can deeply felt the woes of the mother as I have three children and there is only a six year gap between the oldest and the youngest. However, the three of them are studying under three different education systems and all of them have been turned into guinea pigs."

Mei Li, who used to be a student reporter, said, "Why can't the government learn a lesson from failures and improve? Teachers are now suffering, students are not receiving a proper education and parents are worried. And what does the government get? And why have many political leaders sent their children to international schools?"

Another teacher also said that as a parent was not happy with her daughter's band 4 result for a subject, the parent actually went to the school to heckle the teacher, forcing the headmaster to call an emergency meeting and eventually, the school changed the band 4 result to band 5, just to avoid trouble.

I do not want to comment more, I just hope that our education officials have heard the voices of teachers and parents!

-Sin Chew Daily