“Remove the politicians from education”
By Deborah Loh, The Nut Graph
Whether concerns were about the curriculum, the lack of critical thinking, obsession with scoring As, lack of sex education, or ill-equipped teachers, the forum panelists agreed that Malaysia’s education system is too highly centralised. Teaching and learning is rigidly top-down, from the Education Ministry to teachers, and from teachers to students. VARIOUS concerns about Malaysia’s education system emerged from the The Nut Graph‘s latest forum, Found in Conversation: Creativity and Innovation in Education. But they all centred on a key and not unfamiliar complaint: that education is too politicised.
Whether concerns were about the curriculum, the lack of critical thinking, obsession with scoring As, lack of sex education, or ill-equipped teachers, the forum panelists agreed that Malaysia’s education system is too highly centralised. Teaching and learning is rigidly top-down, from the Education Ministry to teachers, and from teachers to students. Decisions lie with politicians and not with other stakeholders like parents, they said.
“If there was one thing you could do to improve the way children are educated, what would it be?” was the question that kicked off the forum on 25 July 2010 in Kuala Lumpur. The panelists were 3R executive producer and social commentator Datin Paduka Marina Mahathir; educator and Five Arts CentreMarion D’Cruz; and homeschool practitioner KV Soon. It was moderated by The Nut Graph editor Jacqueline Ann Surin. co-founder Datin
Parents, not politicians; passion, not grades
Soon said parents were not involved enough in their children’s education under the public school system. The most the system required parents to do was to collect their children’s report cards. “Parents are locked out of schools. They should be brought in, and the politicians taken out,” said Soon, who runs the homeschoolers’ resource blog Learning Beyond Schooling.
When parents are not involved, and when a child’s learning is left to the system, the process of automation, or “education industrialisation”, as Soon called it, begins. “Schools provide only two events for students – exams and grades. They do not teach resourcefulness, or initiative, or the desire to learn. The saddest thing is to see a person with no desire to learn,” he said.
It’s what drives homeschool practitioners to pull their children out of the public education system so that they can be directly involved in the child’s learning according to the child’s interest and pace, Soon explained. Because such learning is not purely academic, the emphasis becomes less on avoiding mistakes and achieving grades, and more on passion and curiosity. “It doesn’t matter if the child changes interests, it’s more important to teach them passion,” Soon added.
