SPM vs UEC - why this debate makes young people laugh

I was texting my sixteen-year-0old cousin Hannah today, and I asked her how school was (what an “aunty question”). Her response was “Meh” and I’m very hip so I know that “Meh” today is the “Ugh, whatever, I don’t care” from my days in Form 4, just over ten years ago.

When I probed a little, Hannah gave me a deeper insight into what her beef with school was - She is in the Arts stream, Arts subjects like Economics and Accounting aren't taught in English and she’s definitely going to do A-levels so what’s the point of learning it in Malay (and why are only Sciences taught in English?)

Her interest in performing and creative arts is looked down upon by students and teachers and she’s just studying to get by. She would probably do best in an international school, I think, but I can’t tell her that now that she’s so close to the finish line (and honestly, she’s smart enough to know that already). But listening to Hannah now, I feel infinitely sad. Ten years later, and the national curriculum is still a joke.

I remember the first time that thought crossed through my mind: SPM is a joke. It was during a Moral Studies lesson. Do Malay people actually know what goes on in Moral class? Basically, we sit in a classroom and talk about the meanings of different moral values (there are 36 moral values that exist in this world. Well done, Ministry of Education for solving humanity’s greatest conundrum!)

This is by no means an intellectual conversation. Take Keadilan. Keadilan has a very specific meaning: “Tindakan dan keputusan yang tidak berat sebelah”. Change a word and you’re wrong. Use an example that’s not a model example and you’re wrong again. For two years of our lives, we’re made to waste hours of our lives memorising this stuff and what for? Honestly, ten years later, what was that for? And kids are still learning that now? And it’s still an SPM subject? What a joke.

Another time I found SPM both hilariously and hideously ridiculous was when it came to the SPM grading system. I rarely scored over 40 in my Add Maths exams the whole time I took the subject in school and was always in tears when I got my paper and it was a fail again. As SPM approached my (very nice) the Add Maths teacher told me conspiratorially “Don’t worry - you won’t fail at SPM.”

I had no idea what she meant and after sitting for the actual paper, came out of it thinking of the great shame I would bring upon my family being the first to fail a subject at SPM. And then on SPM results day, lo and behold, a C! I obtained a C! For the first time ever. At SPM, supposedly one of the biggest academic challenges the national curriculum could throw at me. I was awash with relief but also started to feel quite disdainful of this untruthful piece of paper that wrongly reflected to the world that I was an Add Maths-passer. How do you take pride in achievements in an education system that it so obviously shambolic?

I don’t know much about the UEC curriculum. But I do have a colleague who took the UEC, and he explained some of its strengths to me; he loved getting to study world history and Chinese history as well as Malaysian history. He felt sufficiently prepared for the university in terms of his proficiency in Science and Maths, although not in terms of language and multicultural skills. He appreciated the strict discipline of his school system and felt that his teachers pushed him because they cared.

There were definitely flaws in the system, he admitted, but overall he found his time at school challenging and interesting. Oh, and he took SPM just in case he needed it and thought it was quite a joke too.

Young people suffer for the sins of the old. I am one of the lucky ones, who had an array of options after SPM (despite not being prepared for any of them because most Social Science degrees require an ability to think critically, a quality that neither SPM nor UEC cultivates).

I can’t help but worry for future generations because a good education in Malaysia, whether it’s primary, secondary or tertiary, international, private or independent, is no longer free (and private education is inevitable, if unintentionally, divisive in terms of class and ethnicity). While old men squabble like children about the dangers of being multilingual, multiracial, multi-religious as though the country has been any other way for the last one hundred years, I wonder - have any of these old guys in power thought about providing a solution for the national curriculum that is an improvement for all Malaysians to last us for the next one hundred years?

For the record, I don’t think my long-imagined solution is unrealistic: strip the debate around education of race, religion and propaganda and revise the current curriculum to be more inclusive, current, truthful and challenging, remove time-wasting subjects (unless anyone has actually found a use for the 36 moral values?) and give students a wider range of options that will actually help them pursue their ambitions, rather than wait until they’ve left school to discover them.

Hannah is the last of our family to go to a national school. Everyone else sends their kids to international schools now, and I wonder how they afford it, but at the same time I know that if I had kids, I would want to give them the best too - and to me, international schools are clearly the better option if you have the money.

My colleague who went to a UEC school tells me that the only way he would send his kid to an SMK is if the quality became comparable to UEC, and this is regardless of whether the government recognises the UEC or not. He and I often laugh about whether we would rather save up for a house or a child. What a joke … - Mkini