Category: Education

When Bapak Maszlee Keeps Missing the Trees for the Forest

Sometimes we get hung up on the finer points that we tend to miss the big picture. Many people tend to do this constantly. Me included. There are many reasons why this is the case but chief among them are the fact that there are too many things to do or to fix at any given time considering the VUCA state that we are in now. We then to get caught up in the whirlwind of things.

In the case of Bapak Maszlee the chief of the issue to me is the 3-page jawi subject. My apologies, it’s not even a subject but a passing remark for the Standard 4 BM subject. Just how long throughout a year of schooling will teachers be spending on three pages of a text book? Would it be one whole period? or half a period? Two period perhaps? And yet the whole nation is up in arms about it.

For completeness sake, let’s take a look at the proposed three pages of Jawi in Standard 4 textbook.

It really is nothing much isn’t it? Don’t you guys agree?

My eldest daughter and my son can read and write Jawi and they are still in Primary school. They aren’t great but they aren’t very bad either. They are doing fine even before all this hullabaloo. With these 3 extra pages on Jawi in the standard 4 textbook and probably 1-2 period spent on it, will it make them Malays, Chinese Indian, Iran, Kadazan and other ethics more Malaysian? At the end of the day, the only take away is “it’s Jawi writing”.

Today, if you were to google ‘Subjek Jawi’, you’d see endless links to opinions and debates about it. This article will definitely add to it. The more you delve into it, the more you will see that it’s dividing the very fabric of our unity. You’ll start to see that it has resulted in people being downright racist and bringing in religion into the matter. Let’s take a look at a few examples here.

With just people refusing to have a 3-page jawi in the textbook, they are immediately labeled as Communists. We see the Malays turned it into a religion. issue. And some even told these Chinese folks to go back to China. Would this sort of language makes people want to learn Jawi?

Personally, I am fine to have it included in the syllabus.I’m not against it and I’m not for it. I’m just indifferent. It won’t make or break anything for me. Make that what you want of me, you can label me with anything you want. Go ahead.

The original proclamation of Malaysia in Malay written in Jawi script.

This would’ve been a better topic to discuss about Jawi in my humble opinion. But then again I’m not an expert in Bahasa Melayu for Standard four.

What I am so angry about is that we treat Jawi as an Islamic script. Let us be clear, it’s not an Islamic script at all. It’s as Islamic as Rumi, or any other script out there. Jawi alphabet is not the even same as the per Arabic alphabet. There’s an additional 5 letters in Jawi in case you forgot about that. Have you read erotica in Jawi from the 40s and 50s? I remember reading some of it back when I was in primary schools. Friends passed around erotica in jawi, It’s almost like an amulet or “tangkal”, yellowish piece of ancient paper folded with Jawi writings on it. So yeah, nothing Islamic about that. Have you seen this add beer add in Jawi?

This is the problem with the Malays. We believe we own things and it’s exclusive to us. This country belongs to the Malays and Malays alone. The rest can get the hell out if you don’t like it. And whatever we owns are automatically Islam or Islamic. Bribery kinda now have Islamic version of it and working together with non muslims now becomes Tahaluf Siyasi. And now suddenly Jawi is the language of Islam. If it’s really is that, why are you lot only making a big noise out of it now? Why not back in 1950’s?

In case you forgot all about it, it was Asas 50 back in 1956 through 3rd Malay Language Congress (Kongres Bahasa ke-3) that proposed the Malay language be used in the roman or Rumi script. Asas 50 was made up of journalists, writers and teachers of the Malay language. These are the folks who hold up Bahasa Melayu up so high in their heart more than any of you guys and myself included. They love the language so much that they put up a proposal to romanise the Malay language.

You want to know why? It for one single reason and one single reason only. In a memorandum by Asraf and Usman Awang (Memorandum Mengenai Tulisan Rumi Untuk Bahasa Melayu: Disusun Oleh Asraf dan Usman Awang):

Bangsa-bangsa asing dapat mempelajari bahasa Melayu lebih mudah melalui tulisan Rumi, bukan saja kerana tulisan Rumi sudah menjadi tulisan yang universal atau diketahui di seluruh dunia umumnya, tetapi juga kerana buku-buku pelajaran sastera bahasa Melayu serta buku pengetahuan lainnya mengenai bahasa Melayu dapat dengan lebih mudah ditulis untuk orang asing dengan tulisan Rumi daripada dengan tulisan Jawi.

Memorandum Mengenai Tulisan Rumi Untuk Bahasa Melayu: Disusun Oleh Asraf dan Usman Awang

It’s for this very reason that it was introduced to be romanised back in the 50s. And on 14 December 1959, Parliament have stated that both Jawi and Roman script of Bahasa Melayu are both accepted.

Today, we have people of various ethnicity can speak and write in Malay easily as it’s romanised. Now we want to go back to the 1050’s? Okay, I understand, fashion come and go right? Nowadays people wear ‘tengkolok’ or ‘tanjak’ a Malay headgear for men, it used to only be back in the day. So fashion do comes back in style. So yeah, don’t forget that it was the Malays who wanted to throw away Jawi. It’s very common for Malays to forget. Remember Boikot McD? Remember the more recent BMF? Of you forgot about it already? Ya, Melayu Mudah Lupa.

Now Jawi have become a national education issue and have somehow become the last straw for the Minister of Education to resign. It has divided the nation once again since 1956 memorandum. If we really are going have this rather time consuming and all encompassing discussions about our education system. If we really want to have a discussion that will probably divide the nation then why not do it proper? Why not take on the subject of One School System, No SRJK (C), no SRJK (T), no Sekolah Agama Rakyat, No Sekolah Tahfiz, no any other types of school except National school? Mother tongue language, Arabic, French, KAFA, Tahfiz, Usuludin or whatever else can be electives and taken up after official school hours. Debate on this and divide the nation on this instead of a 3-pages of Jawi that is not worth dividing the nation at all. This is a subject I don’t mind to divide the nation with. Not the 3-page Jawi non-issue.

With this Jawi issue, Mazlee let the bigger objectives of him being the Head of MOE be gone with the wind. Personally I think he had the toughest job right after PM and MoF. I don’t envy him and I think nobody in their right mind would envy him. It’s a tough position. He needs to get his head clear of the main objectives and keep that as the big rocks. Is Jawi his big rocks? Should it be front and centre every time Minister Maszlee comes up? Or should something else be front and centre? That’s the issue I have with him.

He not all bad, really. He did several right things right. He was the first among the ministers to share his ministry report card. Having said that, I personally think report card is rubbish. Anyone trained in KPI reporting will see that sort of KPI reporting is rubbish but I’ll give him the credit that he was the first to published it. He has the right mindset and the big balls to do it.

Summary of the KPI shared by MOE

He said all the right things on Cikgu Duka Lara (Teachers who are separated from their spouses as a result of being posted to different states are not only suffering mentally and physically but also financially). He started the ball rolling and made it all public. On top of that he also made inroads on reducing administrative works for teachers.

He made sure schools that are in dire needs for improvements get a big allocation in the budget. I remember cheering about it when it was announced by MoF in the budget.

As a first timer he did better than many other ministers out there. Many of whom who didn’t even break the news stratosphere because he/she did nothing at all. He did his best and Dong Zhong agrees with me. It’s unfortunate that the Jawi issue is overblown and costs him and us the situation we are in now.

With this resignation I expect other ministers who performed worse than Maszlee to resign as well. Dr. Mahathir proved that he’d doesn’t mind dropping a minister from Bersatu. So I’d expect Anwar Ibrahim, LGE, Mohd Sabu and others to also drop non performing ministers.

It’s important that the head of a family be true to the main objectives and goals. Don’t be caught in the whirlwind of things that’s not paramount to the objectives. It’s like this friend of mine, recently he contacted me through WhatsApp. He was telling me about this argument he and his wife were in on which school bag to buy for their standard 6 kid. The kid wanted an Barbie bag, but the Mom wanted to buy a Smiggle bag. It costs roughly about the same with Smiggle only slightly higher. Mom’s point is that it’s on sale. It’s usually much more expensive, not to mention it’s of good quality. Dad said his kid wanted Barbie and that’s what important.

I then replied the Bapak, “Bapaknye, you guys arguing about this bag…Have you guys bought all other things? The text book? The stationary? Uniforms? Got him a good tuition centre already? What about his extra curricular? Belum eh? Don’t miss the trees for the forest please Tuan.”

Peace be unto you.

RM278 monthly for retirement sounds good?

Recently I saw a friend of mine quit his job to take care of his ailing father. He had a pretty stable job. Probably brought back a good RM7-RM8 thousands a month with his job then. He’s the sole breadwinner. He will be going back to Batu Pahat Johor to live with his father. He will be taking his wife and his 2 sons with him. His father was too old to be living alone and his father just don’t want to live with him in Selangor. It’s not our culture to send old people to old folks home hence as a good son he is, he moved his home to Batu Pahat and lives with his dad. He earned a living by driving for Grab while doing some odd jobs here and there.

This situation is not at all uncommon. We find there’s more and more people living with their mom and dad. And this doesn’t look like it will change any time soon. According to the data shared by Employee Provident Funds, on average contributors who are aged between 50-54 only have RM200 thousands in their account. What’s worse, 67% of these folks have less than RM50 thousands in their accounts. The rich have so much money it inflated EPF average number for that age bracket. That’s very very worrying.

Table from 2018 EPF Annual Report. It’s scary looking at them.

Let’s assume that many of these old folks will indeed retire with RM50 thousands in the bank. Let’s further assume that these vintage folks will continue to live for another 15 years as Malaysia’s life expectancy is indeed 75 years old.

What can RM50 thousands give you over 15 years? That’s about RM278 a month. How much does a pensioner needs to live nowadays? This is what EPF shared.

That’s right folks, for a vintage couple, they need about RM3,100 or RM1,500 per person in a month. Probably more if they live in Klang Valley, Penang or JB. In 5-10 years, those in the age bracket with about RM50 thousands in their EPF account vintage folks will retire with only RM278 monthly income. That is if they don’t spend it at one go for umrah or pay up their housing or personal loan upfront. Even if we have double of that amount, RM1000 a month is not a lot.

Why am I sharing this? Because, where we are headed at our current rate, it’ll be way way worse than this. Lots of the folks in their 30s and 40s are still paying for student debt (PTPTN), fresh graduates have upwards of RM40 thousand in student loan alone. Most will have taken personal loan for marriage (I took out RM15 thousands loan for my marriage back in 2005. Then there’s car loan and credit card outstanding balances and many other loans probably.

We may ended up not having anything saved for out retirement. If we are part of the 67% of people that have less than RM50 thousands in our accounts by the time we are 50 years old then we need a miracle to be able to retire comfortably.

Remember that current adults and later our kids will not have it easy either. Even now people in their twenties are having a hard time to make enough money for themselves. Fresh graduates are doing menial jobs and paid at just slightly above minimum wage of RM1400. These are salary for folks working in fast food joints and restaurants. They don’t even have enough for themselves. More than 60% of graduates are unemployed in the first year after graduation. In total there are more than 500,000 adults are unemployed in the country. We don’t need statistics to tell us if these are younger folks or older folks.

So let’s be better prepared with our finances to better take care of our parents. Be better to prepare our kids so they fared better in the economy. Be prepared so we retired comfortably and won’t burden our parents nor our kids nor their kids.

If we aren’t prepared, we will be living with our kids later, together with their kids and their kids’ kid all in the same home. Singapore folks seemed to be ready and way ahead of us for this, for better or worse.

Peace be unto all.

Between the Picky and the Prick

I was reading the news recently and came across this article from The Star. It’s our Human Resource Minister Kulasegaran saying, “As I am speaking, currently there are more than 640,000 job openings available. Not just the 3D (Dirty, Dangerous, Difficult) jobs, for example at the management level there more than 6,000; for professionals more than 21,000; as well as technical and associate professionals for more than 22,000.” He added “The biggest challenge for us is there are a lot of employment opportunities, but the youth are not willing to take these jobs.” Bold font emphasis is mine.

He was answering a question by DS Ismail Yaakob (BN-Bera) on the ministry to state whether the Pakatan Harapan government will be able to implement its election manifesto of creating one million job opportunities by the end of its five-year term.

First of all, if we add the management level, technical and professional jobs, it’s not even 10% of the 640k jobs available. Does it means the rest are all 3D jobs? Why do you like give half-assed answers that opens up your backside Minister?

This is why I hate our half-assed politician and minister. They think they are so good and performed well enough when in actual fact it’s far from what it should be. Let’s take a closer look at your ministry.

Here’s the Human Resource Ministry mission statements I took from https://www.mohr.gov.my.

Clearly, in the mission statements you wanted to “Increase employability and employment rate of the local workforce to meet the national labour market needs”. So it’s not just jobs creation, but also getting these unemployed youth to get jobs. Now, if what this prick said is true, that we have more than 640K jobs available and that 150K of those jobs were created within the year. We would’ve significantly reduced unemployment rate already by now because back in March, I remember our unemployed people in the country are in the range of 500k. So let’s take a look at the latest unemployment rate by the Department of Statistics Malaysia.

Unemployment rate has remained flat since the beginning of the year. – DOSM

So there you go you Minister Prick. You have done nothing so far. You can add even a million jobs and if the unemployment rate doesn’t change you can forget it. It’s just like increasing minimum wage, you can increase minimum wage to a hundred thousand a month. If the purchasing power doesn’t increase, you can forget it.

Now look, I’m a reasonable person, if he doesn’t stop at saying our youth are picky and continued to acknowledge that the ministry hasn’t done enough to either educate these picky youth or create more jobs that suit the youth and these are the things we are doing to fix that, then I’m okay. It means he understands that there are still more things that he needs to do. Then again, only a minister with a big cojones will acknowledge that he/she still have a lot to do. This particular minister, this particular prick? Not so much.

I have said before that youth nowadays have mismatched expectations when it comes to jobs. This is not something new, we all know this. You know this, Minister Prick knows this, I know this. So instead of saying the same thing over and over again, Minister Prick, you need to work on getting it resolved.

Another thing, you don’t get to say it out loud that youth are picky. You haven’t even done anything significant yet, so you haven’t earned the right to say it. Don’t for a second think you can be like Dr. Mahathir, he has earned the right. He can say Malays are lazy or whatever the heck he wants. He has earned it. You Minister Prick, haven’t. We the rakyat, get to say whatever we want because we put you in office. Remember why we put you in office? To solve the damn problem.

So start working on getting it resolved, stop telling us youth are picky because you are such a prick for saying it.

So, don’t be one.

Peace be unto you.

You Need A Budget Part 2

Yesterday’s posting stirs quite the bee’s nest. Thank you for all the feedback and views shared.

In this second part, the issue I want to bring up is on Malaysian@Work initiative. Under the Malaysians@Work initiative, graduates who secured a job after having been unemployed for more than a year will receive RM500 per month from the government for a duration of two years.

Employers will also receive a hiring incentive of up to RM300 per month for each new hire over two years. The idea behind it is to create jobs for the unemployed graduates. With this, the Malaysians@Work initiative is expected to create an additional 350,000 jobs for Malaysians and reduce foreign worker dependency by more than 130,000 and will cost the government RM6.5 billion over five years. That is a lot of money.

Malaysias@Works initiative tabled in Parliament as part of Budget 2020.

It’s typical of politicians or bosses that don’t have connected brain cells. Before solving a problem, we need to to a little bit of RCA. Root Cause Analysis, find out what caused the issue, not just any cause, we must find the root cause and then fix it. 

Let’s dig a little why do we have so many unemployment in the country. Here’s a quote from MEF Salary Survey 2016:

“In order to enhance the employability of graduates, he stated that 90.3% of the respondent companies were of the view that it was important to improve the proficiency of English to increase the employability of graduates followed by developing soft skills, such as communication, problem solving and management skills (87%),” said Tan Sri Azman.

You guessed it right, it’s a skill issue. In this case, companies aren’t hiring our graduates due to communication skills issue. Apparently our graduates can’t speak nor write in English for shit. 

God forbid they learn English in school, but ohhhh, they must have Khat and they are willing to fight tooth and nail till Jannah, to have Khat in the syllabus, even if it’s for just 3 pages of Khat studies in the textbook. Fight till Jannah for Khat, but for english…that’s kafir! That’s is stupidity indeed. Alright, I digress, my apologies, back to the topic at hand.

English is the language of business here in Malaysia. In 5-10 years time, it will probably be Mandarin because China as an economic super power is almost guaranteed now.We have no choice but to equip ourselves with English and our kids with both English and Mandarin. Get angry at DAP all you want but the future of SJK (C) and the Manadarin language is here to stay. We may end up having Mandaring language as one of the subject in Sekolah Kebangsaan. The ability to communicate with English and Mandarin speakers will be more important in the future. Here’s the 2018/2019 Critical Occupation List and Top Associated Skills from World Bank. Take a look at the skills needed for the positions. Notice the pattern? Good.

I highlighted Chinese for clarity. And noticed English is in almost every position. Where’s Khat? Jawi? Let’s fight till Jannah.

Secondly, in the 2018 paper “Graduate Work-Readiness in Malaysia: Challenges, Skills and Opportunities” by Dr. Noorziah Mohd Salleh et al., lecturer at the Faculty of Business and Management, UiTM (my alma mater). Dr Noorziah et al. wrote that while “low skill and low productivity work with tough working conditions and limited career development opportunities” are aplenty, these jobs do not appeal to graduates. “The low level of work-readiness among Malaysian graduates” is an issue that has yet to be resolved.

Ok the doctors in universities like to use hard to understand language. Let’s break it down. First, most work that is available are those with low skill, low productivity, tough working environment and with limited career growth. Basically it’s a tough job lah. Kerja susah, kerja kucing kurap dan susah nak naik pangkat, pastu gaji ciput. These types of jobs are not preferred by these graduates. And these jobs are filled with foreign workers.

This is what the government needs to tackle. Creation of high-skilled jobs. Not the creation of low level jobs that doesn’t give the satisfaction in the workers mind. I’m talking about job satisfaction, not monetary satisfaction. Take a look this statement by BNM in their report on the question of the workers paid fairly?

Evidence suggests that the lack of high-skilled job creation could have played an integral role in this. Between 2010 and 2017, the number of diploma and degree holders in the labour force increased by an average of 173,457 persons per annum, much higher than the net employment gains in high-skilled jobs of 98,514 persons per annum.

Apparently our economy are not generating enough high-skilled jobs to fulfil the demand of these graduates. Looks like the Good Doctor is right again. I still remember in the big hall of ITM back in 1999. I was among the people who are in the hall when Dr. Mahathir announced ITM will be given university status and the name changed to UiTM. In Dr. Mahathir’s speech, he mentioned that we have too many universities and we are producing way too many graduates who thinks they should be leaders. Dr. Mahathir said we may end up with too many ship captains without their ships and without their trusty sailors. It looks like this turned out to be true. We have way too many ship captains available and yet not enough ships in this economy now. And these captain wannabes want to be a captain and nothing else. Or, they can be sailors but with a captain’s salary, more on this soon.

These there are the problems causing the high unemployment among our youth. First, they can’t speak nor write in English. Second, we don’t have enough high-skilled jobs in the economy. I’ve been in the business of hiring youth the last 18 years, and I can confirm the above two facts are the truth. They are mostly Malays, we can’t deny that these are mostly Malays.

Don’t start telling me about many of our Malay brethren works delivering for foodpanda or Grabfood. These are high paying, low skills, low complexity jobs. Get that, kerja senang, gaji tinggi tapi takdak future. I have talked to numerous foodpanda and grab riders. They can get anywhere between RM750 to RM1250 weekly, yes weekly. They even told me, “I will do this for a few years to save enough money to (get married, buy a house, buy a car, etc) and then I quit. I don’t think this job has a future”. They know this is a dead end and low skilled job and yet they still do it because the pay is good. Low skills, no career growth and high pay. I have friends who quit their 9-5 job that have a decent pay but with tremendous career growth and yet quit and joined grab. They prefer big and quick money for a quick and easy job. Remember when I said our graduates don’t mind being sailors as long as they get paid like a captain? Yup, and did you recently hear someone, somewhere said the Malays are lazy? Kerja senang, nak duit banyak dan cepat. This also reminds me of the Marshmallow Experiment. Wants everything now and not later. Ah, I digress again. It’s not about the Rakyat, it’s about the 2020 budget and the government. We talk about the Rakyat in some other posts.

That’s is a nice looking jar of marshmallows. Go read up on Marshmallow Experiment. I’m failing this miserably with my kids. They seems to want everything now! Just like my bosses!

And since we are on the subject of grab and foodpanda, we have our Youth and Sports Minister, Syed Saddiq, working hard to bring in GoJek. It looks as if he’s giving Gojek preferential treatment with special meetings and some behind the scenes time. This is another short sighted views of the whole matter. We need to create high-skilled jobs, not more low skilled jobs. Our BNM reports said so Tuan Syed. Then he’s also meddling in this foodpanda vs the workers situation. If this is not paving gold plated red carpet for GoJek, I’m not sure what is. Here’s a new and young minister with a new face and no baggage of owing to corporations for money and whatnot, so don’t start going down the road of kowtow-ing to corporations lobbyist. Just be fair to all businesses, make it easier for businesses to thrive. Businesses thrives means more job creations. Ahhh, I digress again! The point is, high-skilled jobs, not low-skilled jobs. Got that Tuan Syed?

Syed Saddiq being perceived as paving a gold plated road for Gojek to come in. While it’s great for everyone that we break up Grab’s dominance in e-hailing, it must not be seen as the government is giving preferential treatment to GoJek.

Back to the main point, the root cause are skill mismatch issues and not enough high-skilled jobs issue. It’s not a situation of our youth not getting enough salary or the employers not having enough money to employ these youth. It’s so typical of politicians, they think they can solve problems by throwing monies everywhere. And Syed Saddiq smiles and looked so proud and can see his mouth saying jobs, jobs, jobs. Let me tell you mr Dear Syed, this won’t solve the problems. Giving free money to the Rakyat and companies wont’s solve the root cause of the problems. As much as you hated BN last time or giving out free money in the form of BR1M, you are doing the same thing here.

My beef is the budget didn’t touch enough on creating more high-skilled jobs, working with universities to have better courses and produce better graduates that have good english communication skills. Let’s hope the longer term 12th Malaysia Plan will touch more on this and makes it the central theme.

So there you have it folks, two issues I have serious beef with. PART 1 on minimum wage, Part 2 on Malaysian@Work initiative. See you in the next budget. 

Peace be unto all.

Being Critical, Being Objective and Calling a Spade A Spade

I’m been busy the last few weeks, only managed to catch up on news the last few days.

This one catches my interest. I have long since wanted to write on this topic. The news was on our Education Minister, Maszlee Malik. There are several articles on this (See HERE, HERE, for video see HERE) and he said the following:

“Matriculation is just a road to university, just like a diploma, STPM and so on. But the matriculation programme gives the chance for the poor to advance their studies at the pre-university level.

“If we want to change, if we say in ‘Malaysia Baru’ there is no need for a quota system and so on, then we must also make sure job opportunities are not denied to bumiputera just because they don’t know Mandarin,” he said to a round of applause. 

“We should not look at such issues in isolation – we harp on (the quota system in) matriculation without considering that people are being denied jobs because they don’t know Mandarin, for instance. 

“If we can make do without all that, if we can give equal and business opportunities, then we can talk about being fair to all.”

Education Minister Maszlee Malik with students of SJK (T) Sungai Ara in Penang. (Photo: Bernama)

These two have nothing in common. First of all, matriculation program is a government program. Together with it comes the quota policy.

How can a quota policy by the government be linked to what the ignorance private sector (the ignorant and possibly racist employer) do? Is this particular government policy a result of what the ignorant private sector is doing? It’s like, the government decided to raise the interest rate due the the increased number of blue-coloured car on the road. These two have nothing in common.

Maszlee needs to be more objectives. Don’t mix being objective and being emotional about the situation. He was right in the beginning to state the reason why matriculation program was setup. It’s due to the imbalance in university enrolment of bumi and non-bumi students in science scream courses. He should just stop there and it’s enough to both get the non-bumi to understand and the bumi to give him a round of applause.

Secondly, he shouldn’t be doing the immature tit-for-tat move. Those are kids stuff. Is he the type of person who can’t think and only know how to react impulsively. You racist? Ok lah, I pun racist lah. You pukul eh? Ok, I pun pukul la. You kick me? Ok then I kick you la. You stab me? Ok then I stab you back lah.

These are kids stuff. People who can’t think objectively will react emotionally. We can’t have people who can’t use their head properly be our ministers. We had enough of that back in the days.

If we really want to have a New Malaysia or Malaysia Baru, we should abolish the policy favouring bumi versus non-bumi and have a new policy that favours the less able or the B40 instead.

If we really think about it, who are the B40? What is the racial distribution of B40? The answer will be the same, the majority will be the Bumis. Huge majority will be the Bumis. Don’t believe me? Check the statistics for yourselves. Let me share some, HERE and HERE. You can get more, just google and read them up.

A diagram showing breakdown of the B40, M40 and T20. Taken from http://www.dosm.gov.my

We all know which race is the poorest, we all know who are the farmers, fishermen, low level government servants, low level policemen/women, low level army/navy/airforce officers. In case you don’t know, a good 80-90 percent of them are Bumi. So it goes without saying that the policy based on income level benefits the Malays and Bumi the most. If together with the Bumis we have 10-20 percent non-Bumis, it’s all good for unity right? All of our less able Malaysian get taken care off. ALL of them, ALL of the less able be it Malay or otherwise, ALL of them Malaysian . That’s good. That’s the ideal situation. It can’t get any better than this.

Here’s another reason why we shouldn’t have a race-based education policy, take the example of MARA scholarship, or MRSM or Sekolah Berasrama Penuh (SBP) enrolment. Since the BN days, these are places reserved for majority of the Bumi. The problem is, not many of the enrolments are from B40 families. It became the places reserved for the Malay elites. These people are probably already in the higher M40 and T20 and yet still get a place in the above places. It’s been abused to no end.

The famous MCKK. One of the many Sekolah Berasrama Penuh.

Nobody stopped them because it’s not against the policy. The policy is for the Malays and Bumi right? They are Malays and Bumis, so nothing is wrong right? Wrong!

We have heard so many stories of the rich Malay elites getting MARA scholarship and getting into SBP/MRSM. It’s disheartening that nowadays we still see only 70% of MRSM enrolments and 50% of SBP enrolments are from B40 group (See HERE). We should either have more from B40 or use the surplus budget to spend on other things for B40. Not spend for non B40 or those Malay elites who can afford all manner of things already.

Now if we do it based on income levels, the Malay elites can no longer enrol in the above program. So we will end up with more budget per students or we can include more from the less able or less stellar result to be enrolled. Give them special care to better educate them and we will end up with more bright people in the country. So, let’s do away with race based education policy. Let’s do it based on income level. Let’s start to do the good things and good things will come to us. It’s what Allah have said in the Quran.

If we spend our wealth in the way of Allah, we will get more and more. Spending for the wrong Malays, who isn’t supposed to be there in the first place isn’t called spending in the Way of Allah.

We need to spend the money wisely, if it’s for the poor or B40 groups then let’s do it as such and Allah will give us more to spend.

We need to always be objective, even more so as leaders. So Maszlee as the Minister of Education has to be objective in this part. As much as I’m a supporter of PH, I need and I want to be critical. When you love something, you always want the best for it. So you tend to be critical of it. I believe Maszlee should be more objective and not make that stupid comparison. He’s wrong to make that comparison and unbecoming of a Minister. So, I am calling a spade, a spade. Nothing more, nothing less.

Peace be unto all.

Iqra’ – Any Fool Can Know. The Point Is To Understand

Had this sudden impulse to write again. Just like exercising, it’s so hard to start but once you got it going, it felt so good and you would want to do it again. Also, reading and writing is actually exercise, for the mind. Our very own Dr. Mahathir said it. It’s the very reason I started this blog.

Earlier today I read an article on PPSMI, our good Doctor is on it again.

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Huzzah! PPSMI is back. I was disappointed when it was withdrawn and now that it’s back perhaps my kids can savour Math and Science in English.

In the article the good Doctor made another interesting comment.

Mahathir was asked in the interview what he would have done if he were the education minister, a post he stepped back from due to Pakatan Harapan’s manifesto pledge barring the prime minister from holding other portfolios.

“We need to teach science and mathematics in English. The idea that the Malays cannot learn in English is stupid. It’s not true at all.

“I am a Malay, I can speak reasonable English. Why can’t other people?” he said.

Here’s a guy from a kampung and yet he is able to speak English so well. Add to that, my English isn’t that good but I can tell you that being able to read and speak reasonable English, have enabled me to learn from so many sources and earned me interview spots and great jobs. And I am from Kedah, among the poorest state in Malaysia. So I believe in PPSMI and really am glad it’s back.

Our good Doctor made another a MORE interesting comment.

Mahathir, who served as education minister from 1974 to 1977, also told NST that while schools should provide religious and moral education, it should not be at the expense of other subjects.

“With regard to religious education, we believe schools should provide religious education, but it should not encroach on the teaching of other subjects.

“We find that in the curriculum, so much (time) is given to religious education at the expense of other subjects – science and mathematics,” he said.

Now, let me give a little bit of a preamble, I’m a product of our national school. I believe I did okay up till now, so in that sense, I trusted our school system and decided that it’s okay to send our kids to national school. We were planning to send our kids to a private school but in the end, decided against it (my wallet was so relieved, I was told). So yeah, I trusted our school system. That is till I read the above comment by Dr. Mahathir.

I quickly called my daughter Alia, Primary 6 now, and asked her to read to me her weekly class schedule and total up the hours per week spent on each subject. Here’s the breakdown in hours:

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Pendidikan Islam, Tasmik and Bahasa Arab altogether take 5.5 hours a week. Let’s break it down. Pendidikan Islam 3 hours, Bahasa Arab 1.5 hours and Tasmik 1 hour. I did a bit of google and found out that Tasmik is basically reciting Al-Quran. And yeah, I was clueless what Tasmik was before this.  Here’s the objective of Tasmik as taken from the link I found above.

  • 3.1 Murid dapat membaca al Quran dengan bertajwid.
  • 3.2 Murid dapat mengkhatamkan bacaan al-Quran 30 juzuk.

It’s just that, able to recite (not read) the Quran. Recite the Quran and that’s it. 1 hour a week. Half the time allocated to learn Science.

Then, we have another 1.5 hours for Bahasa Arab, officially it’s allocated for Bahasa Tambahan but somehow my daughter’s school only have Bahasa Arab to choose from. What did she get from Bahasa Arab? You guys can probably guessed it, almost nothing. If any of you guys have a kid in primary school, talk to them, find out what have they learned and how that will help in shaping their future. Combine Bahasa Arab and Tasmik and it’s 2.5 hours. More than Science, more than Sejarah and just half an hour short to equal Math. Personally, it’s way too much time allocated for those two things.

We also send our kids for Quran recital class outside of school and that’s another 1-2 hours weekly. I know many parents send their kids to Kelas Agama outside of school for several hours a week. It’s our responsibility as parents. If we can’t or are not capable to do it, get someone to help us teach them that outside of school. It’s not the school’s responsibility. It’s ours.

It should not take the time in school, that is much better spent to learn Math, Science, Accounting, Commerce and many other subjects, a typical parent can’t teach. A typical parent can’t for the life of them teach their son complex math or science stuff. That’s why there are schools, trained teachers and a fully developed curriculum. So let’s not let these subject time taken by things that we can teach them ourselves and should not even be in school official hours.

Finally, since we are on the subject of reciting the Quran, I implore all muslim parents out there, go a step further. Don’t stop at teaching our kids to recite the Quran, go on a step further and teach them to READ the Quran. READ and UNDERSTAND it. Read it in a language that you and the kids can understand. Be it in Malay or in English. It’s so much more meaningful to READ and UNDERSTAND it.

And for us, read it like you would read a book. Read it to understand it. Learn it, study it and make sense of it.  Not just recite and sing it along and not understanding a word of it.

Quran has been forgotten by many muslims. It has been relegated to a book we singalong with. Open it up weekly, singalong the notes and later close it. That’s all it has become nowadays. It’s so true. Think about it. When was the last time we read a surah and understand it? How often we open it up and search for something to guide us? When was the last time we open it up and learn about a topic that is of interest to us? What does the Quran say about that topic?

We read the hadith in a language we understand but not the Quran? Why is that? Which one is firman Allah? Hadith or the Quran? And yet we relegate it to just a singalong book.

I leave you guys at that and end this article with the title of this article, Albert Einstein said it, “Any Fool Can Know. The Point Is To Understand”. Let’s change it up, “Any Fool Can Recite. The Point is to Understand”

Peace be unto all of you.