YOURSAY 'The self-delusion by lowering passing marks of Malaysian public examinations can't be hidden when tested in international tests.'

'Poorer and poorer quality of education in Malaysia'

your say, YoursayEvenSteven: "(Malaysia is) lagging behind lower income countries including Vietnam by a wide margin," said the World Bank.

This sounds frightening and something has got to be done about it. It is not that this country is without the wherewithal to raise the quality of our education system but the will and resolve to do it.

A monumental task indeed but it can be done and must be done. A blueprint remains a blueprint until it is implemented to the full and not halfheartedly.

No doubt about it, the quality of our teachers, by and large, leaves much to be desired and the unskilled ones - and they number in the thousands - must be weeded out of the system with a 'vengeance' and be replaced with better qualified ones.

The key word here is meritocracy and the skewed NEP (New Economic Policy) must be suspended or set aside for the larger good of our children.

I can't see this happening anytime soon but the minister must bite the bullet and make it happen - no two ways about it if we are to raise the quality of our education several notches up.

The Stig: The worrying aspect of this is that with a generation of low-ability and low-skilled teachers currently in the system, the product of which would be low-ability and low-skilled students at best, and students with no ability and skills at worst.

These current crop of students will become teachers of the future and thus will propagate a never-ending cycle. As the saying goes, mediocrity breeds mediocrity, but even being mediocre at this stage would seem like a blessing.

Ipohcrite: The World Bank points to poor quality teachers as one of the causes of the poor standard of education in Malaysia. However, I think the poor quality of our education ministers is also to blame.

Today, in Malaysia, we have an education minister who thinks he can raise the standard of education just by talking it up. He proudly proclaims that Malaysia has a great system of education, even better than what other developed countries have, but without being able to substantiate his empty claims. Now, how phenomenal is that?

NtPlayGod: One of the problems is that the government is not interested in quality, as can be seen by the huge intake into institutions like Mara, and other government universities. (Possibly only SPM 2As will do).

What the government is interested in is that the system ensures that the students coming out of our schools view the government with a very bright coloured lens and are potential Umno voters.

That was also one of the reasons why history was made a compulsory subject, and why the Education Ministry must remain firmly under the DPM and Umno.

Fair Play: The powers-that-be had crafted the art or science of self-delusion to its greatest height. The end result of their effort is quantity over quality.

The products are the thousands and thousands of students who scored straight As at their UPSR, PMR, SPM, STPM respectively and graduates who could neither speak nor write in the international language (English) of business to compete with the best of other nations.

But no problem, they have an answer to all that - other nations are jealous of their success in elevating the economic welfare of the Malaysian rakyat.

Pemerhati: The sharp deterioration that has taken place in the education field has also happened in almost all other areas of the public service, such as the judiciary, the enforcement agencies and the civil service.

This came about because Umno wanted to impress the majority Malays by giving them nearly all the public sector jobs, even if they were useless, mediocre and under qualified, so that Umno would then get their votes during the elections.

This would then enable them to remain in power and steal billions of the people's money. The irony is that although a million or so Malays have managed to secure jobs in the public service easily as a result of Umno's racist recruitment policies, the majority of victims of the useless service provided by the public servants are Malays as they constitute more than half of the 29 million Malaysians.

Things will not change for the better as long as the illegitimate 47 percent BN government continues to hold on to power by using various crooked methods.

Onyourtoes: I have said a thousand times already. The problem of education in Malaysia is not allocation, is not classroom, is not medium of instruction and is not education blueprint or green print.

It is the blind leading the blind. We have stupid, incompetent and unqualified teachers and lecturers, period.

Please don't indulge in political correctness. Do a test on all teachers, headmasters and lecturers. They can't read fluently, they can't write coherently, they do not know their subjects, and they have nincompoop worldview.

But they are "eminently qualified" with all the right diplomas, degrees, masters and PhDs. Welcome to nincompoop land.

Bamboo: The Umno education ministers can't hide the sliding education standard in Malaysia. The self-delusion by lowering passing marks of Malaysian public examinations can't be hidden when tested in international tests.

It's just like the emperor without clothes been exposed naked. It will take greater effort to undo the damage of this MS (Malaysian standard) by raising the standard of teachers, then raising the education standard of students.

But will Umno do it? Umno needs ignorant masses to be their vote bank to keep them in power.

Swipenter: The sure way of embracing mediocrity is either you stay mediocre or you spiral downwards.

Quantity over quality over time is only not what we are seeing in our education system but the overall development of our human resources and affects the development and progress of the country. Cheating yourself is the unkindest cut you can inflict on yourself.

Moontime: Actually it has been the intention of the government all along. The dumbing down of Malaysians means continued rule and status quo for BN.

They know that smart people who can think are very vocal and will argue their way against mediocrity, small-mindedness and stupid government policy.

Secretly, they are rejoicing with glee when smart Malaysians decided to emigrate elsewhere. Everyone knows that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed person is king.

Yeoh Chee Weng: Didn't an ex-PM once said that Malaysia should not practise meritocracy because the Malays are not ready yet?

His ideology has the consequence of equating sheer numbers with quality as in achieving 12As at SPM level, a target of a population of 70 million with the Malays a clear majority, taller buildings, and more mega projects.

The longer the period of lowering standards for the Malays, the more incapable they are of catching up.

The measure of a civilisation is not how tall its buildings of concrete are, nor how big the number of its race - it's how well its people have learned to relate to their environment and fellow humans.

Anti-Dumno: I am proud with my three credits for my GCE in 1967 with my Chinese primary education before shifting to English medium.

Not like the present top scorer with 10As, who can't even write a proper resume/letter. What's has gone wrong?

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