A better way…

The recent announcement by the government of the three pronged strategy to transform our higher education into world class must be commended.

Some of the key strategies include apex university-where only the best academic staff and students will be admitted, autonomy-public universities to be self governing in funding and research and development and audit panel will be introduced, where standard of all universities to be assessed by independent committee comprising of only experts.

The revamping of our education system is long overdue.There have been talks of our schooling system is to be less exam oriented, our children who go through the system will be more all rounded in terms of their self development.

I think it is a good idea to spell this out clearly to the public, so that when we talk about our education system, we, as the stakeholders, understand the direction it is taking.

As it stands, I really don’t know what new things are being introduced to make our children more competitive on the world stage. Everything to me is still being done on a piece-meal basis.The whole thing is still hazy, what is clear is that our politicians simply love to experiment with the education of our children.

It’s fine to experiment if it works to our advantage,what we have seen is the deterioration of the standard instead, which makes us less competitive in the world market.

If the authorities cannot decide what to call our national language, whether it is Bahasa Melayu or Bahasa Malaysia, what hope do we have in seeing our children getting good education in their own country? The people in charge don’t know whether they are coming or going!

Our students should be schooled to face the issues and challenges facing the 21st century head on, and they should also be trained to take advantage of future scenarios.

Education should be about producing individuals with good values like integrity and trust besides the necessary knowledge and skills. In the words of Raja Muda Perak, Raja Nazrin, we should not be producing “robots” .

I would think a better way to prepare the nation is to focus more on the pre-tertiary level education, when you build a house, you want to make sure your foundations are solid first, then everything will fall in place.

With quality students being produced at the primary and secondary schools, the apex universities will never be short of world class students later.

For a start, why don’t we go back to teaching in English?

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