Tag: 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.

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.

Screenshot 2019-04-08 at 21.13.01.png

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:

Screenshot 2019-04-08 at 21.30.59.png

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.