The above is an actual, and cruel, PT3 exam question. Now pit your thinking skills against Form Three students. The students were given ten minutes.
Like my opening gambit? Stay with me. We're into some serious business.
My youngest Sarah came home today all happy and jolly. Why not? Her SPM is finally and truly over, with the final paper (Biology) put to bed. She'll never ever have to read, study and think again for the rest of her life. Well, not really. But it surely feels that way.
How the sadists at the Ministry of Education had found it necessary to spread the nine subjects over 28 days of exam is beyond belief. I mean, she's taking the normal Science and Maths stuff, no special papers like Art History or Basic Wahabbi. Twenty-eight days!
All I need is three more days to go completely mad.
It's been a nervy and edgy two, three months for me. I wish I could help Sarah along in some substantive way, like showing her the finer points of Physics. That's out of question, you know why. I've never felt so helpless. All I could do was to find her tuition teachers, provide her with enough food, and buy her the much needed stationery without asking silly questions, like why buy stapler every week?
Actually I'd also bought her a brand new iPhone early last year in return for a promise that she'd study hard and devote all her waking hours to SPM. She studied very hard and devoted all her waking hours to SPM from January all the way to February - two months.
Now that SPM is safely behind her, she can now devote all her waking and sleeping and eating hours to Korean TV.
Roughly 98% of our education system is SPM. (100%, according to DAP). So, sitting for SPM is a do-or-die mission for .....the parents!
Like it or not, SPM results are the gold standard in this country. If
your child doesn't get 9 A+, you're a failure as a breathing and
warm-blooded person. You can't walk
into Mydin, you can't make police report. As for the children, they'd be just fine, happily getting by
and living with whatever they've "accomplished". They've already got
their iPhone, remember?
Because
of SPM, our secondary education system has been badly broken up into two
classes of schools: the daily schools for normal students and Sekolah Berasrama Penuh (SBP) for paranormal students.
The SBP is further split into SBP and MRSM. You'd know an SBP by its feelgood nameplates like Sehebat, Semashur, or
Integomb (gomb rhymes with bomb). Each SBP is given RM100 million
a year to do whatever it fancies. Students get a seven-meal plan
complete with vitamin supplements and dental floss.
The truth is, these elitist schools have turned into slow slaughter houses. They're totally driven and doped by SPM. Teachers would see off the two-year syllabus in two months and then start on something out of US Navy Seal: practising past-year questions. For days on end they'd pore over hundreds of thousands of past questions dating all the way back to Isaac Newton. Performance is measured through weekly trial exams and weekly GPA. This business model works like clockwork as most students actually ace the exam with 9 or 10 or even 28 A+, thanks to those past-years questions and spot questions (not to mention, ahem, leaked questions).
The daily schools are the underclass. They are pretty much left to fend for themselves. With 90 students packed in one class, the teachers take one full year to memorize each student's name and IQ level. Every other month the school would hold a jogathon or poetry reading to raise funds for new toilet doors. A typical daily school set-up consists of an overweight headmistress, 35 lady teachers and one good-looking ustaz. A typical daily school gets a straight A student once in 100 years.
The truth is, these elitist schools have turned into slow slaughter houses. They're totally driven and doped by SPM. Teachers would see off the two-year syllabus in two months and then start on something out of US Navy Seal: practising past-year questions. For days on end they'd pore over hundreds of thousands of past questions dating all the way back to Isaac Newton. Performance is measured through weekly trial exams and weekly GPA. This business model works like clockwork as most students actually ace the exam with 9 or 10 or even 28 A+, thanks to those past-years questions and spot questions (not to mention, ahem, leaked questions).
The daily schools are the underclass. They are pretty much left to fend for themselves. With 90 students packed in one class, the teachers take one full year to memorize each student's name and IQ level. Every other month the school would hold a jogathon or poetry reading to raise funds for new toilet doors. A typical daily school set-up consists of an overweight headmistress, 35 lady teachers and one good-looking ustaz. A typical daily school gets a straight A student once in 100 years.
That's
our secondary education system in a nutshell, a simple two-caste structure, as close you can get to academic apartheid. Never in the history of humankind have the less gifted been so deliberately marginalised.
Oh, I almost forgot the tertiary education, I mean the universities, colleges, university colleges and college colleges, which provide a wide range of diploma and degree programs, some useful, like Medicine, some less useful, like Law. Like its secondary brethren, this supposedly higher education system comes in two flavours: public and private.
The public universities are founded and financed by the government and run by Umno. Leading this lot is Universiti Malaysia Pahang, known the world over now for its cutting-edge spiritual engineering and its flagship anti-hysteria kits. For some unknown reason, 90% of students in public universities are Malays and female. UiTM has the biggest Malay population (105%), more than Sheffield University's Malay population (60%). Half of all public university students are Kelantanese who speak only Kelantanese. This disproves the long-standing notion that public university students speak only Malay.
Private universities and colleges, on the other hand, are run like normal Chinese businesses with one noble objective: to make profit. English and Cantonese are widely spoken here. They typically charge extortionate fees for tuition, registration and air-conditioning. The fees hit the roof for joint-degrees with branded universities like Oxford (Brookes). A good example of a private college is Segi College Subang Jaya where 90% of its student population are Chinese and Nigerian nationals on tourist visas. They attend classes once in six months and you know them by their short shorts and half-shirts.
II
Based on the latest statistics, we have now 100,000 unemployed graduates waiting and vaping, half with CGPA of 3.85, half speak half-English like Wayne Rooney, but all vote PKR. To solve this problem, the government is "importing" 1.5 million loyal Bangladeshis to vote BN.
More damning statistics emerged recently when the deputy dean of Melaka Manipal Medical College alleged that 1000 medical graduates and housemen had quit because of poor English. Undead deans and dons like this are partly the reason why our universities are floundering in global rankings. Manipal is a glorified nursing school. Don't listen. Medical English isn't Shakespeare. Finish the antibiotics, drink a lot of water, your sugar level is 39. That's about it.
Our education system was recently ranked 50th in the world, lower than Kazakhstan but higher than South Sudan. Malaysia is also 50th on a corruption index. A coincidence, if you asked me. To be fair, there have been plenty of churns and chops over the years to trade up our education system. A new policy or program would normally coincide with a new minister and end invariably with a wasted expenditure of RM1.2 billion.
Remember English for Science and Maths? Cluster schools, familiar? Now the Ministry is purring about the DLP or Dual Language Program and HIP or Highly Immersive Program (HIP). Last month the deputy education minister P Kamalanathan went further, talking about SHITE or Sharing Hot Indian Teachers for English. As the name suggests, the project will involve recruitment of well-trained Indian English teachers from India to improve our English standard. We do have our own Indian English teachers, of course, problem is they're from Gombak, not from India. Go ahead and guess how much this SHITE will cost.
But nothing fires up my imagination more than KBAT. It stands for Kemahiran Berfikir Aras Tinggi, an unimaginative name for an unimaginative idea. Well, the objective here is to encourage students to think rather than memorise log table or watch Kardashians. (Never mind the teachers). How does the Ministry go about doing this? By asking students trick questions like Masalah Ayam above. Hahaha.
My niece Hana with A* in A-Level Maths and Physics is still trying to solve this problem after two months. It requires trial and error which, in turn, requires time and divine intervention. Students might get locked into this one moronic question for two hours and easily forget that there are 49 other moronic questions to solve.
SPM Add Maths last week was littered with killer Kbats. One top Chinese student in KL didn't sit for Paper 2. He took his own life immediately after Paper 1. This is tragic, sad and absolutely unnecessary. Our PM extended his condolences and quite rightly pontificated that exam isn't everything. Agreed 100%, it's "hard work" that decides success and wealth in later years, not SPM results. I think PM and all his ministers should make their SPM results public to prove this important point.
III
With education standard drifting about and the government turning and twisting with all kinds of tricks to stem the slide, teachers are bearing the bulk of the brunt. Their workload has been piling on - an average teacher now is busier than a hypothetical hard-working cabinet minister. As a result teachers are forever confused and disillusioned. It's only a matter of time before they start asking for ministers' plum benefits (car, smartphone, talking nonsense etc).
Good teachers are a God's gift. But I don't think we're overly blessed. Malays in particular are born inarticulate and untalented and clumsy. Our Indonesian maids can speak far better than us. So teaching becomes a burden, a bother, and never second nature. Teachers are well prepared for pitch battles, but way short on the softer skills and the craft to motivate students away from Instagram. Ask any teacher their idea of teaching, the answer is unequivocal: thankless and tiring. A teacher today has to eat one whole chicken to replace the calories lost through a half-day of teaching.
So where does this leave us? Well, how about teachers taking dancing and dressing lessons to perk up posture and poise? Or theatre and taranum classes to sharpen vocals and speaking skills? Our teachers have to shape up fast. Bollywood teachers are coming.
Oh, I almost forgot the tertiary education, I mean the universities, colleges, university colleges and college colleges, which provide a wide range of diploma and degree programs, some useful, like Medicine, some less useful, like Law. Like its secondary brethren, this supposedly higher education system comes in two flavours: public and private.
The public universities are founded and financed by the government and run by Umno. Leading this lot is Universiti Malaysia Pahang, known the world over now for its cutting-edge spiritual engineering and its flagship anti-hysteria kits. For some unknown reason, 90% of students in public universities are Malays and female. UiTM has the biggest Malay population (105%), more than Sheffield University's Malay population (60%). Half of all public university students are Kelantanese who speak only Kelantanese. This disproves the long-standing notion that public university students speak only Malay.
Private universities and colleges, on the other hand, are run like normal Chinese businesses with one noble objective: to make profit. English and Cantonese are widely spoken here. They typically charge extortionate fees for tuition, registration and air-conditioning. The fees hit the roof for joint-degrees with branded universities like Oxford (Brookes). A good example of a private college is Segi College Subang Jaya where 90% of its student population are Chinese and Nigerian nationals on tourist visas. They attend classes once in six months and you know them by their short shorts and half-shirts.
II
Based on the latest statistics, we have now 100,000 unemployed graduates waiting and vaping, half with CGPA of 3.85, half speak half-English like Wayne Rooney, but all vote PKR. To solve this problem, the government is "importing" 1.5 million loyal Bangladeshis to vote BN.
More damning statistics emerged recently when the deputy dean of Melaka Manipal Medical College alleged that 1000 medical graduates and housemen had quit because of poor English. Undead deans and dons like this are partly the reason why our universities are floundering in global rankings. Manipal is a glorified nursing school. Don't listen. Medical English isn't Shakespeare. Finish the antibiotics, drink a lot of water, your sugar level is 39. That's about it.
Our education system was recently ranked 50th in the world, lower than Kazakhstan but higher than South Sudan. Malaysia is also 50th on a corruption index. A coincidence, if you asked me. To be fair, there have been plenty of churns and chops over the years to trade up our education system. A new policy or program would normally coincide with a new minister and end invariably with a wasted expenditure of RM1.2 billion.
Remember English for Science and Maths? Cluster schools, familiar? Now the Ministry is purring about the DLP or Dual Language Program and HIP or Highly Immersive Program (HIP). Last month the deputy education minister P Kamalanathan went further, talking about SHITE or Sharing Hot Indian Teachers for English. As the name suggests, the project will involve recruitment of well-trained Indian English teachers from India to improve our English standard. We do have our own Indian English teachers, of course, problem is they're from Gombak, not from India. Go ahead and guess how much this SHITE will cost.
But nothing fires up my imagination more than KBAT. It stands for Kemahiran Berfikir Aras Tinggi, an unimaginative name for an unimaginative idea. Well, the objective here is to encourage students to think rather than memorise log table or watch Kardashians. (Never mind the teachers). How does the Ministry go about doing this? By asking students trick questions like Masalah Ayam above. Hahaha.
My niece Hana with A* in A-Level Maths and Physics is still trying to solve this problem after two months. It requires trial and error which, in turn, requires time and divine intervention. Students might get locked into this one moronic question for two hours and easily forget that there are 49 other moronic questions to solve.
SPM Add Maths last week was littered with killer Kbats. One top Chinese student in KL didn't sit for Paper 2. He took his own life immediately after Paper 1. This is tragic, sad and absolutely unnecessary. Our PM extended his condolences and quite rightly pontificated that exam isn't everything. Agreed 100%, it's "hard work" that decides success and wealth in later years, not SPM results. I think PM and all his ministers should make their SPM results public to prove this important point.
III
With education standard drifting about and the government turning and twisting with all kinds of tricks to stem the slide, teachers are bearing the bulk of the brunt. Their workload has been piling on - an average teacher now is busier than a hypothetical hard-working cabinet minister. As a result teachers are forever confused and disillusioned. It's only a matter of time before they start asking for ministers' plum benefits (car, smartphone, talking nonsense etc).
Good teachers are a God's gift. But I don't think we're overly blessed. Malays in particular are born inarticulate and untalented and clumsy. Our Indonesian maids can speak far better than us. So teaching becomes a burden, a bother, and never second nature. Teachers are well prepared for pitch battles, but way short on the softer skills and the craft to motivate students away from Instagram. Ask any teacher their idea of teaching, the answer is unequivocal: thankless and tiring. A teacher today has to eat one whole chicken to replace the calories lost through a half-day of teaching.
So where does this leave us? Well, how about teachers taking dancing and dressing lessons to perk up posture and poise? Or theatre and taranum classes to sharpen vocals and speaking skills? Our teachers have to shape up fast. Bollywood teachers are coming.
The solution to Masalah Ayam, if you're interested:
8 chicks @ RM5 = RM 40
11 chicks @ RM3 = RM 33
81 chicks @ 3 chicks for RM1 =RM 27
Total: 100 chicks for RM 100.
