Saving Malaysian education: 3 unacceptable ideas

Malaysia needs teachers who can passionately tell the story of Chin Peng without making it sound like he was the devil incarnate and Umno was God's pet angel. These teachers would then easily encourage students to care more about their country's underprivileged children than about their canteen's undercooked chicken.

Alwyn Lau, TMI

Why "unacceptable"? Because the acceptable - tied as it is to the "accepted' - is boring. Just like education as a whole and Malaysian education especially. The following ideas will never happen. We simply won't allow it and they're quite impossible. Or are they?

Teach teachers drama

Malaysia needs Al Pacino. Or, given the hole in our national treasury, perhaps we should fly in Shahrukh Khan instead. Whoever it is, we need drama in our schools.

Our classrooms are starving for enthusiasm, and I'm not only referring to that category of the undead called "students". Our educators also look less happy and passionate (and far less motivated) than the Jerusalem wall-climbers in World War Z.

Every Malaysian who wishes to teach, hence, should be a qualified "dramatist" as well. "Sandiwara" must be saved from our politics to save our education.

We need to train our teachers to talk, move, gesticulate and emote like their brains actually had chemicals in them. This is to say that teachers must learn how to smile, cry or fume when facilitating their subject - especially if they don't feel like smiling, crying or fuming.

Right now in the average Malaysian classroom, the lecturer usually looks as if he's bored, constipated or worried sick about that MQA form he has to fill up - and this just won't do.

Instead we need lecturers who behave like the lead dancer in Swan Lake and teach or perform like the universe is watching. These are people whose students will leave a session on "Global Warming" with their hearts on fire and ready to throw (clean) paint bombs at polluting factories.

We need teachers like that dude who stood inside a waterfall with pebbles in his mouth, practicing how to speak well. These folks could put the fear of bad speech into students the way Jonathan Edwards putting the fear of God and hell in the hearts of his church members.

We want Maths lecturers who can transport their listeners back to ancient Greece and re-live the wonders of discovering the numerical system.  

Believe it or not, such imaginative transferences require a lot more than academic knowledge and a textbook. It takes heart.

Malaysia needs teachers who can passionately tell the story of Chin Peng without making it sound like he was the devil incarnate and Umno was God's pet angel. These teachers would then easily encourage students to care more about their country's underprivileged children than about their canteen's undercooked chicken.

Maybe "drama" isn't the best word here. We could also use "art", "performance", "courage", "life" - you get the picture. But I don't think the MOE (Ministry of Education) does?

Flip teachers' salaries

Here's a sad fact. The teachers responsible for moulding the minds of excited little children are paid much lower than the big-shots with Pizza Hut Delivery titles who "educate" our bored young adults by droning on and on in over-sized lecture halls.

The logic is amazing: "You are paid so low because the fees for educating children are much lower". This is the same logic governing why helping drug addicts to get back on their feet will earn you much less than if you seek to persuade already-rich folks they should make even more.

Likewise, if you sell real fruits on the streets, your bank account will be much worse off than if you distributed sugared fruit-flavored water in malls.

The system rewards those who help perpetuate it. Our profit-loving world favours those who make it go round and kindergarten teachers don't exactly do that with all their talk about sharing, caring and giving.

How, then, would a teacher of small children seek to elevate her pay?

The most common answer is to become promoted to a Head of School. Isn't this like asking Wayne Rooney to manage Manchester United?

So our children are our future. And our education's future. Yet we give their teachers and nurturers not much of a future to look forward to.

Why is it important to pay our lowly paid teachers more?

Oh, no reason really. We're doing just fine putting most of our money to bigger buildings, fancier technology and educational leaders who care more about their organisations' profits and rankings than the welfare of the people who actually have to teach a class, thank you very much.

Stop closed-book exams

We have thousands of students whose only concern in Maths is ensuring they can recognise "what the question is asking" and which formula to use and scoring more than Ah Kow who sits next to them. This, really, is like a guy whose only concern during a date is how to get the girl to bed. It's vulgar, it's inauthentic, it's selfish and it's bad for society.

We should expel every student who asks that blasphemous made-and-packaged-in-Malaysia question, "Teacher, which chapter should I study for the exam?"

The problem is not only that every chapter is important and thus the question is like asking which teeth we should be brushing in the morning.

It's that the usual understanding of "study" pre-supposed by the questioner is a joke. C'mon, 120% of Malaysian students equate studying with memorising, hence, they're always wondering which chapters they should be storing up for later vomiting (and forgetting). This is like equating sex to prostitution or like confusing Unesco with Umno.

Why do kids continue to do this year after year? I sure as hell don't have the answer. But the MOE could try this: Discontinue the closed-book exam. Forever.

Open book assessment is less rigid, more fun and based on more real life. In one swoop, we can destroy learning-as-memorising. In two, we can bring an end to brainless regurgitation. Just nuke all exam halls completely.

Finally - dear students, parents, teachers, HR managers, and corrupted ministers - Please stop "seeing" successful learning in terms of the number of As' obtained. Our educational experience will diminish to the extent that all we care about when studying is about scoring high marks.

Again, this makes as much as sense as getting married because you want great sex. Think like that and you know you won't only disappoint yourself - you'll disappoint your spouse too. - September 26, 2013.

* Alwyn Lau is a student at Monash University (Sunway). He's still confused about what he's studying, but if threatened he'd say "Political Philosophy". He blogs at wyngman.blogspot.com.