but the root of our dissatisfaction at some of them stems from their educational level. Now, some of these individuals are not to be blamed mind you as some may not have been able to afford a better education. Others on the other hand, well, it perhaps some of them were dropped on their head as children .
Anyways, this conversation migrated towards education in Malaysia. Now, both my friend and myself were educated overseas, both having spent more than a few years in Australia. We didn't do any of that twinning program thingies and we both obtained our post graduate qualifications. Both of us have been rather lucky in that we had parents who could afford to send us overseas for a complete education. Many Malaysians are not like that. Many have to depend of local education, both in the private and public institutions. Unbeknownst to most of the world, Malaysia had a quota system in that certain races i.e. the bumiputras (the Malaysian aborigines if you will) were given certain educational privileges. I have written about these privileges before and if you, dear reader are interested, you can read about it here. However, I am glad to say that the government, in recent times have abolished this quota system, giving a fair chance to all races in Malaysia. They FINALLY decreed this new ruling as they came to realise that the bumiputras were getting rather lazy and their intelligence genome wasn't fully utilised. How's that for a rude awakening ??
Anyways, I am digressing from my story of the day. So, both my friend and myself were comparing ourselves to that of certain colleagues and the conclusion was that some of them were idiots... through no fault of their own mind you dear reader, but our local educational system. Now, these people were educated in the local private and public institutions. Now, one would have thought that armed with a degree, one would have some level of commonsense and some degree of self respect. None of the people we were discussing had that. Yes, yes, yes I know, 'tis a little cruel of me and I will be the last person to deny that I am an educational elitist but it's true. It appears that those who have been educated locally have got no commonsense. They are "doers" i.e. you have to tell them what to do, step by step and they will do it step by step. Leave out one step and they are lost. It's as if they were not taught to think "out of the box". You take the box away and they struggle through. They don't have initiative, they don't think for themselves and they have no drive. Sure, there are the exceptions but suffice to say, a majority of them will never be more than they are today as they have no drive. I wonder, does our local educational system kill whatever drive that we were perhaps born with?
We then started talking about the public institutions, i.e. the local, government run universities. It is a known fact that a large majority i.e. approximately 90% of the students do not or cannot get jobs in the private sectors. If they do manage to secure tenure in the private sector, this is also due to the government’s influence i.e. companies must have a certain number of bumiputras working for them. These local, public educated graduates are, in my humble opinion all bred to work for the government and we all know that governments all over the world are not the most efficient organisations in the world. My friend started commenting on how it took one of his colleagues (a local, public educated person who managed to get into the private sector) 5 days... count them 1.. 2.. 3.. 4.. 5 days to send out a fax!! It is the common belief here that local public educated graduates aren't the best personnel to have, in terms of creativity, ingenuity, initiative and English. Hand in hand with the abolishment of the educational quota, our government also realised that the level of English amongst local graduates (and thus, most of the country) is preposterous. They also realised that English could be a factor in inhibiting foreign investors from investing here. FYI, Thursday has now been decreed as an English only speaking day for government institutions.
Anyways, my friend has an immense disdain for local, public graduates as he has had some horrendous experience with them. Whilst not claiming to be a genius or anything of the sort, my friend is immensely intelligent, highly creative and full of drive. He has climbed the corporate ladder with great speed and ease.
Fortunately, I have not had much experience with local, public graduates as I usually work in the international arena. I have however, had bad experience with local, private graduates!! I can go on and ON and ON about these particular graduates. These are the ones who couldn't get into a local, public university (due to the quota system) and those who can't afford to go overseas. Thus, they obtain a degree with a local institution who has some form affiliation with an overseas university. Now, it doesn't matter where or what this overseas affiliation is, as long as there is some sort of contract signed. Whilst there are reputable universities affiliated here, many are what I call, fluffy universities.
Now, having these affiliations means that the curriculum with the overseas university should be the same locally. Granted, curriculum is curriculum but the execution of the curriculum is also important. It doesn't help if you have a fresh graduate teaching young, naive students. You need people who are motivated to teach, teachers who want to teach, teachers who teach because they love the profession and not because they can't get another job. These are the teachers who encourage debates in class, who motivate their students to strive for their dreams, to search out answers to their questions instead of telling the students to keep quiet.
I never did well in high school or in college. In fact, I was close to flunking out of high school. I went to a private school and one of my teachers told me that it was lucky that I had a pretty face because I could marry well and I needed to marry well because the only university to accept would be the University of Zimbabwe!! I can still remember this, after all these years. In desperation, my parents sent me overseas and what happened? I soared to the top of the class, won prizes and it is a fact that I am the youngest student (at the time) to ever graduate with a Masters in Business Information Technology. Till I went overseas, I always thought that I was stupid or something. But I found that the learning environment in Australia was more to my liking. I wasn't made to stand outside the class for being disruptive for asking questions, starting debates or questioning the validity of what the lecturer was saying etc. Another friend of mine who went to a private high school can still recall the day he was called stupid by his Geography teacher and made to stand outside the class. The teacher was going through the curriculum for Mexico and he got the population figure wrong. My friend, an avid National Geographic magazine reader corrected him and was called stupid in front of the entire class. He went home to check the magazine (a current edition) for the correct figure and learnt that he was correct and that the teacher was mistaken, by a factor of almost 10 times. However, throughout high school, my friend never once spoke up again. During exams, he would write down what he was taught, regardless of whether it was correct or not.
Reading the papers this weekend, I came across this advertisement. It's by one of Malaysia's "oldest and most distinguished private institutions".
Well, aside from the obvious grammatical and spelling errors, the thing that shocked me the most was that "FRESH GRADUATES ARE ENCOURAGED TO APPLY". We are talking about fresh graduates, those who JUST GRADUATED with NO working experience teaching a bunch of undergraduates curriculum that would eventually help them obtain a degree. We are not talking about tutors here but LECTURERS! I can understand encouraging a fresh graduate to apply for the sales executive positions, however... gawd almighty, as LECTURERS?? What is wrong with this picture here? Granted, these fresh graduates might be especially bright etc. but are they equipped with teaching at a tertiary level? Most of my previous lecturers in Australia had heaps of experience, both in their chosen industry as well as in the teaching one. Whilst citing the curriculum case studies, they were able to draw on their own experiences, thus making the lecture heaps more interesting, exciting and useful. We all know that you can't learn everything from books. Experience is essential. So, if fresh graduates are encouraged to apply as lecturers, what does that say about our educational system here? AND in a private institution no less, where the students have to pay thousands of ringgit for the privilege of being taught by a fresh graduate. This "oldest and most distinguished private institution" isn't the only one encouraging fresh graduates to apply. We have many private institutions here in Malaysia and to many of them, unfortunately, profit is the bottom line. They will not hire more experienced lecturers as they are way more expensive... all they want is someone competent enough to deliver the curriculum handed to them by their affiliated universities. And by delivery, I don't necessarily mean verbally... some of the lecturers are down right BAD public speakers. All these institutions want is someone who has a basic understanding of the curriculum and to make sure that the class notes have been photocopied in time for class and delivered to the students at the appropriate times. Students are then supposed to use these notes, memorised them, not understand them mind you, MEMORISE them in time for the exam.
How do I know this, having gone abroad for my tertiary education? Well, during my pre-university days, when I was in college, that was the practice. There was less than 5 private institutions available then. Now, there are literally 10s of these private institutions. I have worked with some of these graduates. I won't bore you with all the sordid details, save one that I can't seem to erase from my memory. I once had to work with these two systems engineers, graduates from a local, private institution who also had the foresight to get a professional qualification, the Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer certificate. However, when thrown into the real world, these two "systems engineers" could NOT install Microsoft Windows NT, even though they were certified to do so. For those of you who don't know, the MCSE program at that time dealt primarily with Windows NT and these two MCSEs couldn't do a basic installation of the program. Nice huh?
To the overseas graduates, we see the standard of local education on the decline. This is blatantly obvious with the work standards and ethics of those who studied locally. It would be nice see more experienced people teaching. To do so, institutions have to want to hire these people and to get these people, the pay has to be a lot higher. People, governments and those in the power do not understand that teachers and lecturers are the ones who are shaping the world for tomorrow. It is pointless to churn out "drones". They need to create "thinkers". Without "thinkers", the future would never be too bright for a third world country, which has to spend much needed money importing the skills which can be developed in-house.
