The Malaysian Education System : Not-So-Clever-Normal Schools Versus More Clever 'Special' Schools

I received the following piece of analysis from leekh, who is obviously a teaching professional.  I am reproducing the article in full. My comments follow.

Dear T. Syed

I wrote this little piece in my blog gurusekolah.wordpress.com some time back. 

Feel free to post or edit for posting at your leisure.

Thanks

leekh

Stupidity Trumps

Our education system is based on the assumption that intelligence is a rare commodity and randomly distributed over the population of the country. We have figured out that only a minority in the population possess some inert talent or ability. 

The role of the school system therefore is to identify these rare gems of intelligence and provide the best possible environment for these talents to grow.  

The not-so-clever-left-behinds can be left to another type of fate.

The MOE uses the Ujian Penilaian Sekolah Rendah [UPSR] to identify the smart students.  In practice teachers start to “stream” children into “A”, “B”, “C” classes the year they step into school. 

After UPSR the best performers are sent to special schools like Maktab Sains Rendah Mara or Sekolah Asrama Penuh. 

The State Education Department will sift through the left overs and place them in other special schools called Premier Schools, Controlled Schools and the like. 

More recent creations are called Cluster Schools or Sekolah Harapan Negara. All the children in these schools must score a string of “A”s.

The rest find themselves in the normal schools. The teachers in these schools proceed to do a final streaming on these not-so-clever-left-behinds and place them into their very own “A”, “B” and “D” classes. 

This is testimony that all the teachers have also just demonstrated their subscription to the same belief that intelligence is indeed limited to a few.

Then when the public examination results come out it only cements this belief in the the not-so-clever normal schools versus the more clever special schools system that we have had for decades now in this country.  And the examination results promotes the persistence of this system.

You do not need to be a genius to know that the best performing students inevitably come from these special schools. 

The best schools in the country are these special schools by far! 

Then over in the 'normal' schools , again not surprisingly  the “best” performing children tend to come from the “A” classes.  

Apparently the MOE's sorting and isolation of these students into special schools and A classes has preserved the intelligence of these students.

This is heralded as the great success of the education system. And since we are in the process of “transforming” our education system, the MOE has proposed to showcase our world class education system by collecting all the clever or intelligent students into 40  High Performance Schools   [20 Primary and 20 Secondary]  in the country. 

Not only the best children but all the best teachers and all the best administrators will be collected and placed together in these High Performance Schools. These HPS, now already germinating are being held as the beacons of achievement by the MOE of their successful contribution to the transformation of the Malaysian Education System.

The irony of this belief system seems  to have escaped our “experts”, especially the teachers. When the “best” teachers are selected to teach in the “best” schools, does that not mean that the teachers teaching in the normal schools are “not-so-clever”? 

Ok, just so that everyone does get angry, does it not mean that most of the teachers are “stupid”? 

MOE stats show there are 415,304 teachers. If we estimate that 60,000 intelligent and clever teachers are pre-selected and safely tucked away in the special schools, then does this mean that there are 355,304  not-so-clever teachers running our normal schools?

More interesting is that all our educational experts right down to the 415,304 teachers seem to agree that “intelligence” or intelligent students have a peculiar attribute. 

According to them “intelligence” (clever children) is very fragile and vulnerable. They must be kept apart, kept away, in a special school (even away from their possibly not so intelligent parents) or in special classes. The MOE buys into this completely. This will explain why they will only allow the best teachers and administrators into the same environment. And no resources must be spared.

Conversely they seem to say that “stupidity” is very hardy and robust. It will persist no matter what. Most likely it will grow, multiply, seep, spread and overcome, especially intelligence and intelligent children. Stupidity will persist! 

So separate the schools. And separate the classes. You can put any kind of teacher or administrator. You can put all the retarded and stupid teachers to teach them. Robust stupidity will flourish on minimal resources! 

Don’t think for a moment of sending in the clever or intelligent teachers, they will most likely be overpowered by the stupid students in 'normal' schools.

Intelligent students and the stupid ones cannot mix!   When challenged by the proximity of “stupidity”, “intelligence” will  just disintegrate or evaporate! Intelligence will not permeate or be absorbed by the “stupid” students. It will just disappear!

Instead it is stupidity that will spread and permeate into the vacuum left behind by escaping intelligence! The net result of mixing the intelligent with the non intelligent is that the intelligent kids will become less intelligent or even stupid and the stupid kids will remain stupid. The effect is so deleterious. Intelligent and the stupid students cannot be put together.

The MOE has the best of intentions. Lets look at some hard facts.

The MOE’s website shows that there are 5,255,448 students in 10,091 schools taught by 415,304 teachers in our country.  [OSTB : 5,255,448 students divided by 415,304 teachers  gives a student to teacher ratio of 12:6 to 1. Wow. This is already better than Finland.  But this is NOT the case in our schools. There are still 40 students per class. I think a lot of teachers are doing the ponteng thing.]

Add up all the “best” schools in the country:

SM Asram Penuh………………..68

MRSM……………………………..49

Premier/Controlled Schools……50 (est)

High Performance Schools…….40

Total…………………………….207

Let us be generous and round the figure to 300 schools. The MOE determines that all these schools have a population of 1000 students. Based on this we have 300,000 clever/ intelligent students sequestered away [that is only SIX PERCENT of total students]/

There are 5,255,448 school children in the country. So the remaining 4,955,448 children are getting the message that they are the stupid ones. The parents of these children would also be getting the message that the children they produce are just not good enough.

Then what about the teachers? Just consider. If we staff these elite schools with 200 teachers each, there will be a total of 200 x 300 = 60,000 “guru cemerlang”. There are 415,304 teachers in the country. So the remaining  355,304 teachers get the message that they are not good enough. Well, they would not get the message if they are dumb!

In summary out of  10,091 schools, we have  9791 schools [97 percent of our schools] which are populated by 4,955,448 dumb students and taught by 355,304 dumb teachers!  

Only 300 schools or less than 3 PERCENT of the total number of schools in Malaysia are deemed as 'intelligent' schools.

Do we get the message or are we really stupid?

End. 

My comments :  For more than fifteen years now there is a deliberate policy by some really foolish policy planners [who are obviously politically influenced] to destroy some aspects of the country's education system.

They are using the 'lets just save the three percent' policy.

As the writer points out, there is an overemphasis on the sekolah asrama penuh, the MRSMs, the special schools etc. But there are only 300 of these schools with less than SIX PERCENT of the total student population. 

There is a deliberate policy to allow the mission schools to rot. Up to the early 2000s the old mission schools were still among the top performing schools in the country.

Now with the creep of religious extremism into all sectors of the government especially education, the mission schools are being treated as 'illegitimate children'.  Mission schools are undoubtedly identified with the old Christian churches. The land on which many of these schools stand are privately owned - by the Churches. 

[I think some people are eyeing these lands, especially in the high priced urban locations].

Many mission schools are now in the lower Band classification [Band 3 or lower].

The sekolah asramas on the other hand have become religious ghettos where besides normal classes, students are brought up on religious and racial propaganda.  The MRSM has even set up special 'Ulul Al Bab' versions [the religious version] of its sekolah asrama.

When the sekolah asrama was first envisaged, it was designed to extricate poor Malay students with potential, away from the debilitating environments of their homes and families in the kampongs. The kampong environment was not conducive to fast tracking smart Malay kids into the modern age. 

The sekolah asrama penuh provided a sterile and carefully nurtured environment that had none of the drawbacks of the kampong environment.  

Old sekolah asrama friends used to tell  me that the lingua france on campus was English [they are still taught in English]. They would watch English movies, be exposed to debates in English and were taught by a largely non Malay faculty.  This was the sekolah asrama of the old days - when they were first set up.  In those days, for the smart Malay students who were fortunate enough to attend the sekolah asrama, the environment in the sekolah asrama was completely different from their home environments.

The situation has now changed  180 degrees.  The sekolah asrama is now fully infected and infested with religious hocus pocus. The backward kampong has crept into the sekolah asrama system.  They have become ghettos. Not to be left behind, those remaining  9791 government schools [97 percent of our schools] have also become religious ghettos. 

Our entire school system has become ghettoised.

Maybe we should  relook the old policy of 'streaming' students into Science, Arts, A class, B class etc. The American system has students moving from one class to another. They do not stay inside a  permanent classroom.  There are no 'class monitors' etc. 

To cut it short - the education system is totally screwed up. It is NOT meeting the requirements of the 21st century.

It is the 21st century and the education system is going backwards into dubious and debateable religion.