YOURSAY | ‘Is swimming far more important than improving our overall education system?’
Maszlee wants hotels to let students use swimming pools
Observer123: Our education system is in dire need of a major revamp. Unfortunately, we have an education minister (Maszlee Malik) who talks only about school shoes and swimming pools.
Please find a suitable replacement soon for the sake of our country.
Anonymous 1802761448130592: Oh no. Another one. Not again. The minister is just skirting around the peripherals and seems to have got the priorities wrong again.
What about the students' poor standard in mathematics and science and the lack of command of the English language?
ABC123: This man is clearly out of his depth. His ideas are childlike and reveal the simple way in which he views the world.
Black shoes. Black socks. Swimming in hotels. These are his grand plans to transform education. It is obvious that he does not possess the intelligence for such an important role.
Maszlee, I heard you are good at teaching about Islam and you have excellent Islamic credentials. Go back to that. There is no shame in returning to what you are good at. Stick to what you know.
Everyone has a role, a purpose in life. This is clearly not yours.
I Wonder?: Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Maszlee is basically an undisputedly good man just like my trusted peon. But he simply lacks the experience and ability.
He is the right man in the wrong position and always barking up the wrong tree. Could you please do something urgently before our children suffer irreversibly?
Odysseus: Is swimming far more important than improving our overall education, which is right at the bottom at the moment? Today, most students don't even know how to hold a racket or kick a ball.
Just go back to basics and you will produce a new generation of Lee Chong Weis, Nicol Davids and Mokhtar Daharis.
Cacing Tanah: Be reasonable. Introduce something that all schoolchildren can have access to and one of the best is within the schools. Make it compulsory to have minimum hours per week in exercise and the involvement of the teachers is a must.
Assess the teachers’ ability or interest in exercises and do not put someone who dislikes exercise to be Physical Education teachers.
Emile Lahoud: It's not a stupid idea, but it needs to have very strict guidelines. The time allocated, supervision, safety, transportation, etc. Otherwise, where do these kids go to?
Identify certain hotels as school swim centres and discuss it with the management. It’s better for our students to swim than wasting time doing something bad.
Caripasal: I am speechless. Why dig the hole deeper and deeper?
The politically-correct statement should read, "The school swimming programme is not feasible now due to the shortage of swimming pools.
“However, we do encourage the parents to allow their children to sign up for swimming lesson conducted by qualified private swimming coaches."
Case closed.
Hotel association sinks Maszlee's swimming pool idea
Kamaru: What is it about the educational issues in Malaysia that Maszlee cannot understand?
I don't think black shoes and swimming pool are issues that concerned parents care about in school.
It is the quality of teachers, the content of education, the deplorable standard of English and the polarisation of the education system he should focus on.
Maszlee should stop making a fool of himself.
Game: Maszlee, it has been a good six months already but there is nothing coming out of you in terms of betterment for our education system.
You need to look at the current system and fix it so that the next bunch of graduates have the right skills for the workforce or to create their own workforce.
Also improve the quality of lessons, material, teaching methods, etc. Stop wasting time on other issues, which are not of any priority, please.
Muruga: Maszlee, it is very impractical and students will be running all over the hotel and cause problems.
Allocate funds to develop swimming pools in towns so that anyone could go there. Some pools have been closed since a decade ago, like the Pandamaran public pool.
Just Sharing: Maszlee has good intention but with a bad proposal. He needs to have good advisers to guide him on how to convert his good intentions to practical solutions that benefit all people.
Anonymous_4ad72303: It may not be a good idea to ask all hotels with pools to assist, but to encourage those with proper facilities to do a monthly or bi-monthly exercise (part of their CSR or corporate social responsibility?) for students isn't a bad idea, especially during the non-peak seasons.
I support the education minister to continue exploring avenues to improve the quality of education in our country, not just academically but holistically.
Hopefully, he won't back down and continue to try to prove his worth in the coming months. Changing our minds will need results, but results, especially in education, would require time to come to fruition.
It sometimes takes people who think out of the box to achieve wonders instead of doing the same thing over and over again, hoping for a different result.
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