Want my opinion of what is wrong with our education system?

Briefly I put it as:

1. The education policy has been based on the wrong premises since Independence. Although the development of the mind and soul have been touched on, it is essentially an over-emphasised nationalistic policy based on the status of one particular race, carried out by people who are prejudiced towards this one race and hijacked it for their own agenda.

2. The diversity of languages used in the primary school is unique with strong pros and cons, but again groups and individuals use it to promote their own racial agenda for political and economic gain.

When the national language was introduced in all secondary and advanced education, we lost our competitive edge over other nations to the detriment of our economic standing.

The much needed emphasis on English was never fulfilled and came too late when it did, But again some politicians sabotaged it and it's back to square one now.

It is now too late to try and reverse the trend as we do not have the means (good enough English teachers) and the will.

3. We compromised on selecting teachers. In the rush to fill the need for teachers we went down to such low standards in accepting teachers.

Today many of these are still serving and the new teachers are no better if not worse, as teaching has become the last choice of vocation and we accept scum from the bottom of the barrel to enter the teaching service.

Too little is done to improve the status of teachers today and it is too late.

4. Changes are done haphazardly without much study and experimenting in smaller pilot projects. The whole system had been used as a guinea pig far too often. Failed experiments were allowed to continue for want of a better replacement.

Each minister of education and each director-general of education in the past had their hand in such experiments. Not many bore fruit. Political contingencies of late have now become the prime recent for change rather than educational needs.

5. The rich and powerful ignore our education system and send their children to international schools or overseas schools to get a better education and at the same time lie to the masses that "we have a higher standard of education than that of the USA, UK and Germany."

Such blatant deceit on their part shows a sense of non-commitment to give the people of Malaysia a fair deal in education!

They are saying to us that what we get is already the 'best' so why complain?