YOURSAY 'The kids of my generation became global players, but now our kids are not even employable in our own country.'

Parents group: No oomph in education blueprint

Intheair: The greatest sin was committed when politicians manipulate children's education for their own political gains. It started in the 70s. Former PM Dr Mahathir Mohamad repented in his old age but the damage was done. A whole generation has been lost.

While competitive countries forge ahead, we are running backward, staring at the drawing board, wishing that a magic plan will somehow transform our children when all along the answer is right in front of us.

Anonymous_rb345: Parent Action Group for Education (Page), you have been mislead to believe that the education minister would change his stand for our children's future. He is only interested in politics and to safeguard his rise to prime ministership.

To safeguard our children's future, we must get rid of him and Umno so that new education minister from Pakatan Rakyat will change our education policies to ensure that we are competitive with our peers down south.

Babylon: My son has just been offered a fantastic job in Singapore. Why? His command of English is second to none, compared to his peers in Malaysia. And it looks like Singapore is grabbing the opportunity to take such people in.

I feel a little sad for Malaysia's brain drain but the youngsters will have to do what is best for them.

I cannot tell my son to be patient and stay in Malaysia when it is so obvious that the leaders are only interested in enriching themselves. That is the sad state we live in, but I am extremely happy for his career and future.

Tmf: The kids of my generation became global players, but now our kids are not even employable in our own country.

Our national education policy, along with the National Civics Bureau (BTN) and what not, had destroyed our productivity and competitiveness.

Changeagent: The education blueprint is high on rhetoric and wishful aspirations, but low on realistic achievability.

For instance, how can the government ever ensure 100 percent enrolment across all levels from pre-school to upper secondary by 2020?

It's absolutely unrealistic to try to claim zero drop-outs for any student between kindergarten age and Form 5 or 6. The Education Ministry is really setting themselves up for failure.

Paul Warren: The bigger problem is the accessibility to and the opportunity given to rich kids to have an international education in English. In 20 years, they will dominate everything and every career.

Anonymous #67264380: What else is new. This experimentation has been going on for ages. As long as the education minister's post is a political power-based post controlled by the Umno bosses, we will never have a qualified education minister with genuine interests in the future of our children.

Can't you all see that the ministry's main intention is to control the teachers or headmasters (many of whom are grassroot Umno politicians) and all the strategy is to create subservient students who are brainwashed not to question the government and worse, not to think for yourselves.

It looks like only Umno can think for the Malays. I really pity my Malay brethren. Good luck to them, as the blueprint will perpetuate the same non-thinking mentality for the next generation.

P.Dev Anand Pillai: The level of English now is so atrocious that it is a shame to note that most of our university-college and university graduates are unable to express themselves well in English. To be world beaters, they would have to.

Jimmy Ng: This is typical of the BN government - big on talk and form but empty on substance and content.

It is all because we have crony nincompoops holding key positions in the government who are making such crucial decisions, instead of credible, qualified and competent individuals.

Umnopariah: We need to solve it at the root cause - which is Umno holding on to power with a screwed-up system. To solve it, we just need to kick them out - difficult it may sound, but not impossible.

Pemerhati: The education blue print has ignored the elephant in the room. And that is the employment of the best teachers and headmasters, irrespective of race.

The question here is will Umno dismantle its apartheid system of recruitment or resort to telling the usual lies, such as that the non-Malays are not interested?

The other 800-pound gorilla in the room is the introduction of Islam in the schools through various methods such as the reciting of the ‘doa' and through history books. This is unfair to the pupils of other faiths.

We should learn from the example of the most economically and scientifically advanced country in the world. In the US, religion is kept out of the school system and the public service so as to be fair to all the people.

For nation building, it is important to treat all the people equally and fairly. Otherwise the discriminated group will feel angry and disgusted with the people who practice such discrimination even if they proclaim 1Malaysia this and 1Malaysia that.

JimmyKL: Even if you guys get rid of Umno and BN, PPSMI (Teaching Science and Mathematics in English) will never be revived back even by the new Pakatan government. PKR and PAS have already made clear of their policy of not supporting PPSMI.

Even DAP have been very guarded and cautious on the PPSMI issue in order to satisfy its Mandarin-speaking constituents who are also anti-PPSMI.

A mere 500 plus parents in Page won't be enough to change what the majority of other Malaysian parents want.

Clever Voter: The trouble with all these politicians is that they lack the vision but more importantly the guts to push through a world-class education.

As self-serving politicians they probably see a world-class education a threat to their crooked ambitions, and then you have thousands of so-called leaders that choose to remain silent. In the final analysis, we end up with a system of mediocrity that harms our future and prosperity.

PaulOctopus: Education is about improving. Our Malaysian system is about changing - changing to the needs of BN. It has never once served the people's need towards improvement.

Anonymous #57883242: As a parent, I am disappointed.

With so many straight As, why need for blueprint?

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