The educational experience of young Malaysians

It is the time of the year again,where young Malaysians jump with joy or cry in anguish.I am talking about our annual SPM examination results, for the uninitiated after five years of high school, students in Malaysia have to sit for public examinations to determine their future direction in life. These results are highlighted in the media like the world has come to an end for some,and the beginning of a great romance for others.

Basically, it is much ado over nothing, but the culture in this country is such that parents, students, teachers and just about everybody else wait to see who score the most As. For some students 10As are not enough, some venture to score 17 or 18As.Some who score 3As feel they have failed.

If this mind set persists,I think everybody in the country is a failure. I don’t understand how As in the school subjects can guarantee you anything in life.Life is not a sprint but a marathon.Often, when you meet these students,they fail to impress and.not many are street smart.

This attitude is carried right to higher education, I know some local graduates who have excellent paper results but have to be told what to do at the work place.The system has killed their creativity,they don’t ask questions and they lack initiatives,they are mere robots-learn what the teachers tell you,don’t think too much, spot questions and regurgitate the information .It is all right if you don’t understand the concepts,the idea is to show the examiners how much you know.If you can reproduce word for word,then you are really smart.Little wonder as many as 60,000 local graduates are unemployable.

There have been talks of changing the education system to produce wholesome individuals with soft skills as well as other skills.Indeed, the over emphasis of the academic skill is not making young Malaysians competitive in the globalizing market place.Malaysia has some fantastic policies,the implementation is another story.

Lets face it, if we cannot produce competitive, confident graduates in large numbers,young people who can work anywhere in this world and hold their own, then, we have failed as a modern nation.

This is a multi-cultural country, you would think Malaysians would be at ease with one another, we hear three or more languages spoken everyday,we see different places of worship, we eat different types of food. Ask any young Malaysian if they can really celebrate all this diversity, chances are you will get a blank stare.Maybe,they take it for granted, be assured that they don’t know any better. Some people with authority take it upon themselves to influence the young to walk along a very narrow path instead of appreciating the different colours that have been our very own landscape for hundreds of years.

Until the education system is revamped reflecting the realities of this century, and students are taught to deal with the country’s various multi-cultural issues in a an open and transparent manner in the classroom and outside,we can produce all the A students for all I care. At the end of the day we lose the battle to make Malaysia the leading light in this multi-cultural world despite our own multi-cultural background.