The Public School Dilemma

Hmm... being in the education line I know how good a school is, not just the school, the students' demographics, the teachers' attitude towards the learning process, and even the headmasters/headmistress' true perangai... especially having witnessed them many times during their training/meeting sessions..

The problem with Malaysian education is not the policy, it's not the blueprint of the idea, but it's in the attitude of those at the schools. If you've got good people with the right attitude, you've got great schools. If you've got good people with not so right attitude or not so good people with the right attitude, you've got just an average school, if you've got bad people and bad attitude... haaaa.. kesian la bebudak kat sekolah tu..

To burden the government in providing the best education for our kids is fair for us as they control the education system and we need to seek for the best for our kids coz in return, these kids will help propel the country to greater heights.

To blame the government for non-performing teachers, schools and kids... that is not fair at all, especially when the root cause of the problem is not what the government has planned and implemented. The problem is in the "IMPLEMENTEES".

To monitor the implementees from deviating from what should be implemented, susah giler.. there are more than 10,000 schools in the country and hundreds of thousands of teachers altogether. Whenever they come for checks, the teachers will always terkial-kial planning for a good show for the MOE people. Kenapa pulak tak terkial-kial for the everyday teaching?

Of course, not all implementees are bad. Many are really good. The ultra good ones are even recognized by the MOE people. MOE knows who are the good teachers. And they would ask these teachers to give training to other teachers...

Implementees will work hard to implement the best for the school when they are challenged. One of the best challenges for them is to position their schools to be the top school in the state or in the country. This works well if the schools are already in the top 10% in the state or national ranking. What if the schools are in the 50th percentile of the performance curve? Would the implementees have the same motivation to work as hard?

Those good people with the right attitude would. Others would be more concerned of their allowance etc for working extra hours. They will not be working as hard as there are no MOE people to be hissing at the back of their head everyday.

That is why people are shying away from the public school (Sekolah Kebangsaan) and go for alternatives like the national type schools (SJKC, SJKT) just out of disgust with those implementees. SJKC and SJKT has better monitoring system. But I wouldn't say the same for what the system produces.

From my observation, the SJKC, especially, are so kiasu! haha.. berlagak nak mampus, just because they pride themselves of having a "better" education system, when all I can say is that they are just "better" beacuse of a better implementation monitoring system, and of course, more money at their disposal to provide better learning environment.

Unfortunately, the SJKC lacks the "human touch" in the learning process. It is just a generalization, not to say that all are like that, but generally, students who are from the SJKC would tend to be more "robotic" in the way they do their work.

Robotic is good, as they listen to instructions well, but if all of us are products of the SJKC, we would only be followers.. damn good followers, and no innovative and forward thinking leaders to lead our future generations.

Just to illustrate an example, from one of my many discussions/ debates with the MOE officers of different pangkats and darjats, it is a fact that SJKC students perform better at answering direct straight forward questions.. like what is 2536475 x 1538593 or something like that... hehe.. (malas nak think of examples.. but you get the point). But it is also a fact that they perform worse than the SK students in questions involving reasoning. So in short, they can do a damn excellent job but they would not know what good that is to them for them to manipulate the knowledge that they learn to good use. If they can do an excellent job from what they were taught to do, they will definitely be excellent followers.

Where will the leaders come from then? SK lah!

I have worked with people who came from SK and those who came SJK, and if I'm an employer, I would definitely get both. The SJKC flers will be those who would do the work for me together with a few SK flers, and then I would appoint the SK flers later to be bosses in their departments to help me monitor the SJKC flers do their job.

Mind you, I'm not talking about Malays vs Chinese here. I'm talking about Chinese from SK schools vs Chinese from SJKC schools for a fair comparison.

That's why if I were to put my son in a public school, I would go for SK's that are at least at the top 10% bracket.

If I couldn't get any one of those schools, I would go for an average school, BUT I would enroll my kids to other classes (not tuitions, as I don't believe in sending kids for tuitions.. I never went to any so my kids don't need that either). Classes as in music class, drama class, art class, Mandarin class, taekwondo class, swimming class, business/engineering/science - related classes for kids, etc.

Hmm... that would put soooo much pressure on the kid.. poor thing, unless of course the govt has all these elements included in the SK system!

Which is why I am seriously considering sending Rayyan to a private school like Sri KDU.

I'll blog about the call I made to Sri KDU soon.