From Malaysia Today
By Terrence Netto
Education is the race between civilization and oblivion, said Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim in wide ranging remarks that virtually paraphrased H. G. Wells, the British futuristic writer, who once described education as the race between civilization and catastrophe.
While not comparably apocalyptic in tone, the PKR supremo, in recent speeches in the Dewan Rakyat on the Budget estimates on education and on amendments to the University and University Colleges Act, looked through our educational glass and felt impelled to report darkly.
“Our slumping economic fortunes are traceable to the recession in our education quality,” he said. “We are a nation at risk,” he cautioned.
Anwar saw as indivisible the link between educational quality and economic competitiveness.
“Our competitors in the region, once flailing in our wake, have caught up and are now ahead of us. We have lost our once frontal position in the region in commerce, industry, science and technological innovation,” said Anwar.
He cited several indices of decline such as the annual survey by the Times Higher Educational Supplement which saw our premier University Malaya fluctuating in the nether regions, if not actually bundled out of the publication’s annual top 200 classification. Anwar also quoted from studies and comments made about Malaysian education over two decades, including a survey done in 1983. All of them, he claimed, flagged the declension in our educational standards.
He described as “alarming” statistics recently collated by the Human Resources Ministry that found a rate of 70% unemployment among graduates of our public universities. He said this figure together with findings of 26% unemployment among graduates of private universities in Malaysia and 34% joblessness among graduates of foreign universities, especially from among Middle Eastern institutions, substantiated the perception of malady in educational quality.
The PKR leader had no doubt about the primary causal factor on the domestic front. “The in-built curbs on innovative and creative thinking contained in the University and University Collleges Act are to blame,” he opined.
Anwar equated the mediocrity percolating through our institutions of higher education as suggestive of the condition described by Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz, the Polish philosopher whose seminal work, The Captive Mind, mapped out the paralysis in the intellectual terrain in soviet states before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
“The sad fate that has befallen students in higher institutions has seeped into intellectual circles inhabited by our artists and thinkers. Robotic thinking engendered by the fetters on the intellect imposed by the University and University Colleges Act has spread its tentacles through the fabric of our society,” said Anwar.
He held that the continuing slide in our educational standards placed the country at risk, not just economically, but also socially and morally. He described amendments to Section 15D of the University and University Colleges Act, whereby an undergraduate could have his place suspended by the Vice Chancellor of his university, as boding more ill for the cause of universities as arenas for intellectual questing.
Further, Anwar criticized changes to Section 16A of the same Act that placed academic staff of public universities on the same plane as civil servants under the provisions of the disciplinary regime contained in the Disciplinary Act governing the latter.
“Though academicians in public universities are paid by the government, it is a grave misconception of the essence of their role and function to equate them with civil servants. It is a violation of the principle of academic freedom and autonomy without which true academic excellence cannot be attained,” he commented.
In summation, Anwar said Malaysia was at a grave juncture in its trajectory as independent nation where the evident loss of its economic competitiveness in the global sweepstakes was directly attributable to the decline in its educational standards and the minds of its graduate population, spawned by the mediocrity in local universities.
“The rot must be stopped; the decline has to be arrested. No investment, no effort in qualitative improvement in the higher educational sector is without its returns in the short term, more so in the longer term,” he said.
“We are never mistaken when we fret for the future of learning among our young,” said Anwar.
The malady and mediocrity have spread out and rooted deeply in the population. And that is the reason why we have MPs with no brain and only good to protect their interest and ‘kaki bodek’. Lets teach them in the next GE. CHANGE must take place!!!
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Kegawatan yang berlaku adalah dicipta semasa rejim Mahathir. Che Det membodohkan rakyat agar beliau menjadi JAGOH ORANG-ORANG BODOH. Inilah yang ditinggalkannya buat kita, dan sekarang Che Det nak cuci tangan dengan melemparkan segala kotoran kepada Pak Lah. Diciptanya berbagai slogan hingga ke MELAYU MUDAH LUPA. KAMI TAK MUDAH LUPA APA YANG CHE DET BUAT=BUAT LUPA.
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main stream media ? for me its a juke box … forget it
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Asalamualaikuym dato seri anwar
Adakah ahli keadilan lupa.
Adakah pemimpin keadilan lupa
Adakah reformis lupa
Adakah orang umno lupa
Adakah polis lupa
Adakah orang melayu lupa
Adakah keluarga dsai lupa
Adakah dato seri anwar lupa
Tetapi-tetapi tidak jamilkucing
Ya ya yang lepas jangan di kenang ,kepala bapak ko orang, dia kena hentam teruk sorang-sorang senang je suruh lupakan.sampai matipun tak akan jamil lupakan .kenapa sila ke :
http://bbcatlover.blogspot.com
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DSAI has never failed to amaze me. His deep insights are very usefull to all of us and should be a warning to those in power to for once do the right thing. Nothing can replace sound knowledge and a skillfull person. We have spoken so much about the K – economy in the past. But if the System and the people who deliver the knowledge is of sub standard then the economic future of the country looks bleek.
I teach memory methods to students who sit for their PMR,SPM and STPM exams. And Im amaze of their low ability to comprehend and even remember. Which is the first step. Only after attaining such ability can they go to the second step of intergrating this knowledge and making sense of it – thinking conceptually, thus avoiding robotic thinking. And only then can they go to the finnal step of applying HLOT – higher level of thinking which involves both horizontal and vertical intergration and able to see every issue from above ( some say its finnally having some ability of critical thinking.
Our Malaysian students unfortunately are still struggling to get past the first step.
Cheers
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jangan la semua nya salah kan universiti salahkan auku yang menyebabkan kita dibelakang dalam ranking. kalau diteliti betul betul kaedah ranking anda akan faham bahawa universiti tempatan semmgnya takkan berpeluang untuk meningkat dengan sebegitu cepat dan drastik. terdapat banyak faktor luar kawalan yang sememangnya bukanlan salah pedidik di universiti tp di peringkat strategik planning negara. saya rasa auku juga tidaklah menghalang sepenuhnya pemikiran yang kreatif tetapi yang menjadi penghalang adalah masyarakat sendiri. Masyarakat malaysia termasuklah decsion maker adalah terlalu takut untuk gagal dan terlalu takut to be different. for malaysian to conform to peoples perception is the objectives. sebuaragai pendidik sememangnya byk potensi bg pelajar di institusi tempatan dan setanding dengan universiti luar tetapi sikap conform to people perception terlalu kuat menyebabkan potensi ini tidak dpt dikeluarkan. rakyat malaysia sebenarnya yg menkat pemikiran dan perkembang universiti bukannya auku atau ranking. jika dibuat public survey universiti mana yang baik pastinya semua akan berkata di US UK dll lebih baik tanpa melihat fakta yang sbenarnya di US dan UK byk universti yang lebih teruk yang baik cumalah yang sudah lama bertapak mungkin lebih lama dari negara Malaysia sendiri. persepsi ini bukan baru saya rasa semenjak dari mulanya kedatangan inggeris di malaysia lagi. munkin ada yang kata universiti singapore lebih baik anda harus lah selidik bagaimana mereka bermula dan investment yang dibelanjakan saya dapat memberi jaminan ianya takkan sentanding dengan 3 universiti tempatan digabungkan. saya amat kecewa kalau masih ada org yang promote memory method untk pelajar sekolah kerana disebabkan emphasis on memorisationlah yang menyebabkan polemik conform to people perception ini. pada pendapat saya universiti tempatan bukan lah ketinggalan malah saya rasa ia sebenarnya meningkat jika diambil kira condition, situation, kekangan yang dihadapi. tp apa juah sekali pun yang dibuat pastinya perception public takkan berubah. dan saya pasti setiap kali kita akhirnya akan benar benar mencapi ranking pembuat ranking akan menukar variable supaya universiti mereka sentiasa dia atas dan kita akan sentiasa dibawah. adakah pemimpin negara kita seprti saudara DSAI tidak mampu membuat ranking kita sendiri berdasarkan variable yang membantu kita. byk universiti ternama didunia tidak mempedulikan ranking dan kpi mereka bukanlah ranking tp specific knowledge building for good mankind. kecemerlangan universiti bukanlah mencapai ranking tp membantu membina ketamadunan walaupun kecil.
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I’m in agreement with DSAI regarding the education in Malaysia. It needs a complete overhaul to make it competitive. It’s unlikely to become realizable under the present BN government. Some of the university and college students can hardly write pieces of articulate papers. We wish the PR coalition (PAS) candidate makes it in the upcoming KT Parliamentary By-election despite Husam Musa’s untimely statement on Hudud Law.
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