I attended the scholarship forum organised by DAP yesterday, mainly because I am personally interested in education matters and also because I was curious as to what kind of things does DAP have to say about it. They managed to present some data and I actually thought that things weren’t as bad as it may seem.

You see, if we consider only the top 2% of our students as the creme de la creme, that’s about 10,000 people coming out each year. JPA only gives out 2,000 scholarships and that is spread across multiple disciplines and countries. Obviously, many people will just fall through the net. There just isn’t the budget necessary to fund everyone. Personally, I think that we should all be thankful that our government actually bothers to fund anyone at all. There are not many governments that do that.

The DAP worked out the number of places available for non-bumi to be about 1080 places. To me, that is a fair number. Things have changed a lot. In my days, we were competing for double-digit spaces. The trouble is that these places are spread over a wide number of courses and countries. If everyone wants to study medicine in the UK, there aren’t enough places obviously.

An MP mentioned that the interview process was flawed. Students were interviewed in large groups and hardly given any time to speak. I went through those in my day as well. There is nothing wrong with group interviews. It is all about group dynamics. You just need to understand how to make yourself stand out in the ‘right’ way. If you are quietly sitting at the corner waiting for your turn to talk, obviously, you are not going to get anywhere with the interviewer.

Another MP mentioned that considering someone with 12A1 as equal to a 9A1 is not right while considering someone with 12A1 and 1A2 as worse than a 9A1 is wrong. Personally, I beg to differ. I think that having a 9A1 criteria as a clear cut-off point is good. That is a perfectly quantifiable criterion. Considering someone with 1A2 as less than perfect, is also fair to eliminate those who take more subjects as a lottery to simply increase their number of As. You may not agree with the fact that 12A1 + 1A2 is worse than 9A1, but that is a crystal clear criterion. At least it isn’t subjective.

Of course, there was a fair bit of politicking at the event. However, I turned off most of that by merely closing my eyes and taking a break. The speakers spoke for about 2 hours. So, my attention span was dwindling anyway. Luckily, those which had anything to say, got to say it first.

I found it particularly interesting that a politician can make his ‘last point’ extremely lasting.

Since this is an annual thing, I thought that I should just put a few words down to tell the kids who got rejected by JPA – Don’t Give Up!

Dear JPA Reject,

I shall use the words that I had once heard, from a good professor of mine: “Although you may feel dejected, do not feel depressed.” The reason is really simple. The JPA scholarship is not the be-all-end-all of your dreams. Your dreams are yours to keep. So, keep them alive!

I have been fortunate enough to get multiple education scholarship offers in my life and I had turned down a few of them. I have also made many friends who are both government scholars and non-government scholars alike. So, I would like to share some of these experiences.

First and foremost, the JPA scholarship scheme is just one of the many scholarships available, both local and overseas. You should realise that there are many scholarship awarding bodies in Malaysia. For those who will be facing their SPM examinations in the future, please remember to apply for multiple scholarships, if only to increase your chances of actually getting one.

You see, everyone has a different set of criteria. You may not agree with the JPA selection criteria and you may not fit in with it. However, there are also other scholarship bodies who do not agree with the JPA selection criteria and apply their own criteria in scholar selection. So, while you may not fit into the JPA mould, you may actually fit into some other mould.

There are also many overseas scholarship schemes available. In fact, many foreign universities are able to provide some sort of financial aid for their students. You should check to see if you qualify for these. There are also various international foundations and bodies who offer scholarships. This is particularly true if you are able to secure a place in a top university.

This brings me to my second point. This is not the end of the road. You can still try again at the post-STPM (and equivalent) level. There is nothing to stop you from continuing your education to a pre-university level and trying again. There are plenty of Malaysians who have done exactly that – do their pre-university education themselves and re-apply for scholarships again.

If you cannot afford to study your A-Levels/IB at a private institution, you can always do your STPM. You may not realise this but the STPM is actually a very well recognised pre-university level qualification. You will still be able to apply for various foreign universities with the STPM. Do not always believe what the private colleges tell you about the STPM.

However, some of you may be turned-off by the lengthy duration of the STPM exam. For this, I have only one advice – a single year is nothing, in the larger scheme of things. Think about this for a minute. What is a single year difference when compared with an entirely lifetime. In fact, it is a common practice to take a ‘gap-year’ to go explore various avenues in life. This can even help you figure out what it is that you actually want in life instead of blindly going with the flow.

This brings me to my next point. Not everyone is made out to be a doctor. In fact, you are probably not made out to be a doctor. The medicine path is a long and arduous one and if you are not made out to be a doctor, studying medicine is going to be hell. I have seen this happen to many friends. So, you should really ask yourself if you really love medicine or if you’re doing it just for the heck of it.

You can be a success, if you do something that you truly like – be it something as dull as accounting or something as exciting as engineering (alright, I’m biased!). But seriously, you need to think carefully of your career choice. It is something that you will be living with daily for the rest of your life. If you find that you hate medicine after so many years of study, you will lose more than just a couple of years.

And finally, do not let this little hurdle stop you from pursuing your dreams. There are many paths that can lead to your dream. Sometimes, it may actually be better to take the path less tread. So, do not think that your world has ended as a result of this rejection. Learn to handle rejection and to use it positively to improve yourself so that you will ultimately, still achieve your dreams.

PS: Do not stop dreaming!

with metta,
Shawn Tan.
(Still trying to achieve my dreams!)

I had just read a response to my comment on the Education Malaysia blog. In it, the author claimed that I was “out of sync”. So, this got me thinking if I am truly out-of-sync with our education issues. Granted, I have left school for more than a decade and I do not have any school going children. However, the issue of Chinese schools being better than National schools have been ongoing since before I went to school. So, while the players may have changed, the arguments have not changed much.

Sigh. Ad nauseum

The reason that I had pointed out John Lee’s statement is because I doubt that either Kian Ming or Tony Pua would have made sweeping statements like he did without the numbers to back them up. In fact, that is all I was asking for – the necessary facts to back up his statement. As evident in some of my previous posts, I’m biased because I personally think that all vernacular schools in Malaysia should be shut down.

But the question here is whether or not I am in-sync or out-of-sync.

Anyone who reads Coltz’s reply to my statement can immediately see that he does not have any numbers to back up his statement either. He has to infer that that Chinese schools are better from a bunch of disconnected ‘facts’. Or are they? Correlation does not imply causation.

Firstly, he pointed out crime rates in schools. While I am not sure if the police actually publish statistics down to that level of granularity, I do have a simple answer to his assertion. There are more delinquents in national schools simply because the national school delinquents still bother to go to school. The Chinese school delinquents would have dropped out of school by then and are busy peddling VCDs in the market or earning some other form of work. That takes care of your bottom 30%.

Secondly, he posited that based on the National Math Olympiad results, there are a disproportionate number of top Chinese schools as opposed to National schools. So, I just quickly browsed through the list and this got me wondering, where were all the top National schools. Then, I suddenly recalled something from my past. My school never joined any National Math Olympiad. Instead, we joine the International Math Olympiad. I did okay enough. Granted, I do not know if this was still the practice today, but it is a possibility.

Thirdly, his assertion that Chinese schools have the ability to fire incompetent teachers, which may result in better teachers. Well, I would like to point out the fact that many of the Chinese schools do not even have teachers whom were qualified to be trained as teachers in the first place. Many of them enter teaching by first becoming a volunteer/substitute teacher at schools and then use that experience to then have the schools forward them for teacher training before being assigned as permanent teachers. This does not happen in national schools, which largely get teachers straight out of teacher training colleges. However, which is better is open to debate.

So, I’m not quite sure if I am in-sync or out-of-sync. Personally, I would like to think that my personal background does give me some insight into the system that I would otherwise not have.

I’m copying ad-verbatim from Zubedy’s blog. I certainly think that it makes plenty of sense.

We want a Social Contract that …
1. Sees wrong as wrong and right as right, no matter who did it.
2. No individual or community is left behind regardless of race or geography.
3. We work towards zero poverty – it’s superfluous to have skyscrapers and state of the art structures when there are Malaysians who do not have a place to call home.
4. Recognizes the Malay and indigenous customs form the core culture while the Chinese, Indian and other cultures play strong supportive roles to make our nation a unique and exciting brand.
5. All Malaysian children receive a first rate education, every child is supported and encouraged to achieve his or her maximum potential.
6. Encourages us to practice sustainable development without corruption.
7. Allows us learn and appreciate our own religion while at the same time encourages us to understand the religions practiced by our fellow Malaysians.
8. We help each other in business and transfer knowledge and skills from one community to another.
9. Treats non-Malaysians serving in our nation, Bangladeshis or Europeans; with equality, respect and dignity.
10. Does not introduce racism and division to our children at school or at home.
11. We provide adequate health care for all.
12. We look at our constitution as a whole and not pick and choose out of context to suit an argument.
13. Do unto your Malaysian brothers and sisters as you would like them do unto you.
14. Acknowledges that we are Many Colors, but One Race, Bangsa Malaysia

Like I said before, I’ve been busy ‘spring cleaning’ my house these last couple of week – tossing out 30 years of junk is not an easy undertaking. As a result, I have come across a lot of old memories and treasures from the past. Surprisingly, I found a copy of my undergraduate scholarship offer letter in my pile of junk last week. That brought back a lot of memories.

Those were trying times – an emotional roller-coaster. I can still remember receiving the phone call during my SPM examinations, to double check my choice of course and destination country. It was on the day of my Biology II paper. That got me all excited for days, about the prospect of going overseas for my degree. Shortly after that, came the letter that brought me crashing back down to earth.

It was 1997 and our currency had just been devalued by half in the short span of weeks. Funds were running dry and budgets were cut. Due to this, our government had decided to cut the number of scholars flying off. Thousands of students from all sorts of agencies were affected. I received a letter right after my SPM examinations. It was short and terse. In it, it said that in-line with government policy, the scholarship programme was being cut, and I, with it.

Now, that sucked. To a 17 year-old, it seemed like the end of my hopes and dreams.

After that, I received a scholarship offer to pursue my degree at a local private university instead. So, things didn’t look so bad after all. I would still be able to get a degree and I was quite excited by the prospect of joining a new university. I’ve always liked being a pioneer and I looked forward to all kinds of new experiences at this young university. In the end, I got to do a lot of cool stuff, more than I would have had the opportunity to at any old foreign university!

Then, the SPM results were announced. I could still remember the look that I got from teachers as I walked into the school to get my results. They already knew what I was about to find out. I did not do as well as all of them had hoped. It was not just me. Turned out that my entire batch did not do as well as the school had hoped. There was only one person with an A1 in BM that year, which was an anomaly, and it wasn’t me.

For me, while it was a sad occasion to have let down the entire school, I did not think too much about it. It was soon time to pack and get ready anyway. I already had a spot offered to me at a university, where I joined hundreds of other stranded government scholars. Orientation week there was thoroughly depressing like an AA meeting. We would all introduce ourselves in the following pattern:

“Hi, my name is [name]. I am supposed to be in [country] doing [course]. Instead, I am here now.”

Life likes to throw a wrench in the works sometimes. We went on to have some of the best years of our lives. I think that having the shared experience of being hapless victims of the financial crisis really helped us to bond. For me at least, I found the entire 5 years spent, a meaningful journey. It taught me a lot about how to take what life throws at me and not to ask too many questions about it.

Although there has been several more wrenches thrown into several more works since then, I think that my life has generally been a smooth one, so far. I’ve had to fight a few battles, but nothing yet that I could not handle. I’m looking forward to living my life to its fullest.

In a recent blog entry on Education Malaysia, Ong Kian Ming mentioned setting up a neighbourhood network (NN) so that kids would be able to play multi-player computer games at home and they would not need to hike off to the seedy cyber-cafes (CC) for their regular fix of group fun. However, it dawned on me that this NN is an excellent idea.

Disclaimer
The kind of network that I am describing can be seen as a form of wireless mesh network. Incidentally, the OMRP, which is an open hardware/software platform for implementing wireless mesh networks, uses my aeMB processor at its core. However, none of what I have to say, is processor dependent.

Installation
It is extremely easy to set up a NN today. Gone were the days when cables had to be lain from point to point. Today, we can just do the entire thing with WiFi. If every family buys a wireless router and sets up a home zone, all these zones can be combined together to form a blanket network. This can be achieved using something called the Wireless Distribution System (WDS), which is present on almost all modern routers.

Applications
There are some very obvious applications with the NN.

It would now be fantastically free to call up your neighbours on voice-over-IP (VoIP) technology. There is no need to use any phones to ring up your neighbour. Furthermore, you don’t need to limit yourself to just streaming voice, but you can also stream video over the network. So, it would be easier than ever to bug your neighbours. Of course, there are many other more creative pursuits that one can pursue using this technology.

With a network communications infrastructure in place, it would be trivial to install various IP-security devices. There is a lot of interesting work being done in the field of sensor networks, which generally employ a large number of simplistic sensor devices to produce all kinds of telemetry data that can be analysed for any number of applications. This brings the neighbourhood watch to a whole new level.

Issues
There are some legal issues to deal with, especially if the NN shares multiple Internet connections. The NN can combine and aggregate these multiple connections into a single large pipe. However, ISPs often have legal restrictions in place on the freedoms of end-users to ‘share’ their connections. Obviously, if a resident does something illegal on-line, it creates a whole host of legal issues as well.

Anyway, this sounds like a great idea to me. Maybe, instead of rolling out a state-wide WiFi infrastructure, our local governments should actually focus their resources at setting up and linking a number of neighbourhood networks. The people can help fund the project by supplying part of the equipment while the government takes care of the pipes linking the disparate networks and the Internet.

This was our first proper day tour in ChiangMai. What amazed me when I first got out of our hotel was the conditions of the streets outside. While the area was lined with the night market the night before, it was totally cleared up by morning. Not a single speck of rubbish was to be seen on the streets and the only visible evidence that anything had actually been there the night before was bags of trash being piled up by every street corner, which was promptly taken away later that morning. I seriously wonder if this was the common practice or if it only happened in tourist districts.

We were kind of lucky to have arrived during the King’s birthday celebrations. So, there were some rather interesting things to learn about Thais. Thais love their king and he is like a father to them. Since it is his birthday, there were many altars set up around town where people placed offerings to him. While we were being driven through the streets to our first tour stop, we were witness to a pindapata ceremony, where people lined the streets giving alms to the monks who came out in full force that morning. This reminded me that Thailand is a very Buddhist country in the Hinaya tradition.

Our tour guide also regaled us with stories of his time spent in the monastery. According to him, it was fairly standard practice for poor people to go into this sort of life after they reach a certain age. For one, they would have food to eat and they were given an education in the monastery. After spending 16 years of his life in the monastery, he left to find a way in this world. So, although Thai people may be poor, they are not poor-poor. At the very least, they will have food to eat and a chance at a basic education. Personally, I think that this is something that we are sorely lacking in Malaysia. Our poor are reduced to begging on the streets (although it can be argued that even beggars make quite a good living in KL).

Anyway, our first stop of the day was to visit some local tribes who worked the poppy fields. Alright, that’s not all that they do, but according to our guide, it is their primary source of income. If you’ve never seen a poppy plant, that’s one in the photo. It’s a really lovely flower and it will not be our last encounter with the plant during our trip. Northern Thailand is afterall, part of the Golden Triangle. According to our guide, it is called such because drugs used to be traded in gold in this region, weight for weight. He then told us grand stories about the King of Opium who lives further up north and stuff that would make the Corleone family look like sissies.

Seeing that we were a family of Buddhists (Theravada tradition), our guide decided to take us to see a touristy temple – Doi Suthep. The reason that it is a touristy temple is because it is located on top of a mountain and provides an excellent viewpoint overlooking the entire city of ChiangMai. However, it was particularly misty (or foggy or smoggy) that day and I did not manage to get a clear photo of the city. It would be a great place to take a night-shot of the city though. To make matters worse, the golden Chedi that was built 700 years ago, was being refurbished and there was too much scaffolding in place to get a good photo as well.

After lunch, it was time to do a little shopping. No trip to Thailand would be complete without a visit to the local jewelers who sell precious stones. I even managed to snag myself a tie-pin there, though the selection was severely limited. The entire store seemed to be 99% dedicated to women, which doesn’t surprise me one bit. We also visited a honey factory. Now, you may not think that there’s anything special about honey, but these particular honey bees, feed off poppy flowers! It’s a bit of a stretch but I guess that the bees must be buzzing all the time, while spreading all the pollen. Anyway, it was an interesting visit to me because I managed to learn a few things about honey that I did not know before.

No shopping visit to Thailand would be complete without silk. So, we visited the local Shinawatra Silk factory. Now, if that name rings a bell, it’s the family business of their deposed PM, Thaksin Shinawatra. I ended up giving them some of my money in return for a few custom made silk shirts. They sure have a huge selection of silk cloth of every colour imaginable! It was at this point that our tour guide began to tell us some stories about Thai politics (for some reason, the Bangkok Post seems particularly thin on this subject). According to him, Thaksin’s power base is the North and the people up there love him. Thaksin basically took a page out of the old political playbook by helping the poor clean up the streets and giving them an education. That is why, when there are political problems, it only seems to happen in the south.

That evening, we ended up having a touristy dinner, with cultural performances to boot. During the dinner, we were once again visited by the cute local girls in costumes and photographer and had our photographs taken again. Anyway, it was during these cultural performances that the mythical Thai beauties began to appear. Our guide kept raving about ChiangMai beauties but there were few to be seen on the streets. According to my friend, most of the beautiful ones would have all gone down to Bangkok to work, which made perfect sense to me. So, the only ones left seem to be the ones who managed to secure gainful employment locally. According to my sister, the local spa (recommended by our guide) was also filled with beauties. Unfortunately I did not join them for that.

After our dinner, we once again visited the night market. This time, I noticed something else that was very entrepreneurial – mobile bank kiosks! The streets were littered with these little things. They are both an ATM machine and a Bureau de Change in one. There were different ones from different banks and financial institutions. It is so obvious a tourist thing, to make money off tourists, but it certainly beats having to go around hunting for a money changer when you’re trying to haggle down the price with a stall owner.

One last thing that I feel needs to be mentioned – there are so many skilled craftsmen in ChiangMai. They literally fill the streets. You can actually see them working alongside their little stalls at the night market. That is why the labour cost here is so cheap and the reason why a lot of these things are selling really well. Of course, there are a lot of standard goods and our guide literally warned us about the Made in China syndrome inflicting his city. However, you can also clearly see that there is a lot of products that are locally made, and of high quality. The suit that I had tailored, was certified by our family tailor as being of extremely good craftsmanship – certainly not something we can get in Malaysia without paying a handsome premium.

According to a MalaysiaKini article today, Lim Kit Siang claims that, “Umno Youth chief aspirant Mukhriz Mahathir had committed sedition in calling for the closure of Chinese and Tamil primary schools. He pointed out the Constitution Amendment 1971 had imposed absolute prohibition on Malaysians from questioning the four issues, which includes anyone who propose the closure of vernacular schools.”

Does this mean that my previous blog entry might be seditious as well? As I am not a lawyer, I wouldn’t know for sure. So, looking at the Sedition Act 1948, it mentions in 3(1)(f) that:

“A seditious tendency is a tendency to to question any matter, right, status, position, privilege, sovereignty or prerogative established or protected by the provisions of Part III of the Federal Constitution or Article 152, 153 or 181 of the Federal Constitution.”

As we all know, Article 153 deals with the special rights and privileges of the Malays and Bumiputra while Article 181 deals with the royalty. However, Article 152 does deal with the issue of languages. So, let’s see what it actually says:

The national language shall be the Malay language and shall be in such script as Parliament may by law provide: Provided that-
(a) no person shall be prohibited or prevented from using (otherwise than for official purposes), or from teaching or learning, any other language; and
(b) nothing in this Clause shall prejudice the right of the Federal Government or of any State Government to preserve and sustain the use and study of the language of any other community in the Federation.

While Mukhriz had called for the closure of vernacular schools, he has not called for an end to the study of any of the vernacular languages. Quoting the M’kini article, “We can make it compulsory that the Chinese and Indians study their own language in their mother tongue while these two languages can be optional for Malay students to learn or we can make it compulsory for students to learn at least three languages.”

Obviously, our respected Lim Kit Siang and all the other politicians who are rising up to the defense of vernacular schools, have been misinformed. They are also in the business of spin and trying to play this issue up for their own political mileage. What Mukhriz is calling for is in fact an reinforcement of Article 152 of the constitution, a fairer and more sustainable way of doing things.

If there is anyone who is acting seditious, it is the Dong Jiao Zhong who have fought previous attempts at introducing vernacular languages in national schools. So, if Mukhriz gets elected in as UMNO Youth Chief and then gets appointed as the Minister of Education, I will support any attempts that he makes at phasing out the vernacular schools.

However, he must put his money where is mouth is and introduce a third-language into our schools. We already have the option of taking Arabic, French, Mandarin, Tamil in SPM. So, please introduce all these languages in schools and allow anyone to take any languages that they wish. It will make all our kids trilingual and that can only be a good thing, particularly for national unity.

I stand by my previous statement that vernacular schools need to be “burned down” (not literally of course!). However, we should also open up all our national schools to everyone, meaning that there should not be any measly quota restrictions anywhere. Let’s all play fair now!

According to MalaysiaKini, Wee Meng Chee (aka NameWee) is once again embroiled in another stupid saga. However, I personally think that he is acting like an idiot now. I think that his touch with fame has gone to his head and he is now attention hungry. It speaks volumes of his musical talents if he has to resort to constant controversy in order to sell his music.

According to the article, “The video featured a school teacher teaching English in a class, using vulgar words. The clip also included several semi-naked scenes. The first part of the video was four minutes and 54 seconds long, the second was four minutes and 47 seconds and the third clip was three minutes and 3 seconds long. Wee had shown the name of the school in the third clipping.”

Personally, I have not seen the video myself as it has been flagged as inappropriate on YouTube. However, I can already draw some conclusions from the news article. They quoted him as saying that, “I think the school wanting to take action against me is a good thing because this will allow more people to get a chance to see the video and understand the issues.”

He claims that the education system in Malaysia is all screwed up for Chinese schools. The example given was for mathematics. The students learn it in Mandarin in primary school, switch over to Malay in secondary school and then switch over to English again at the tertiery level. While I totally agree with his observation, he should not blame the government entirely for the predicament.

At present, Mathematics is taught in English at all levels but there are certain quarters who want to revert the teaching of it back to Mandarin. These quarters claim that it is easier to switch the students over to English at the secondary level while maintaining Mandarin as the language in primary. To these people, I say “hogwash”. If the foundations were built with Mandarin, they would have to play catch up with the rest when they get to secondary school, which isn’t all that easy.

However, I think that NameWee is an idiot. While I think that he is free to comment on a pertinent issue, I vehemently disagree with him using the footage of his school in the video. There is absolutely no reason for him to do so. He can still raise awareness on the issue without naming any specific school. Afterall, this is a national issue, not a specific issue with the teachers in a specific school. This smacks of idiocy to me. I thought that after his Negarakuku saga, he would have learned to put a little more effort into his work.

Not only do I think that it is stupid, I also think that it borders on illegal. Schools are not public grounds where one can freely enter or exit. Moreover, his school is not a public school and I am sure that he has no grounds to use footage of his school in his video. Any person with half a brain should know that you will need to apply for permission from a school before you can shoot footage on their ground. I know because I had done it before in the past.

So, I think that NameWee is an idiot. He hungers for publicity, has to sell his songs through controversy, and has no respect for the law at all. I personally hope that the school sues him for every last sen that he has.

I just read this article in TheStar today, where our DPM (and soon to be PM) openly questioned the quality of the Malaysian education system. Quoting the article, our DPM said that: “Our education system must change. Our children are just not curious enough. They must be curious about the world. They must ask questions.”

This brought back memories of the time when I was training to be a lecturer. The professor that I was under, was telling about how we need to challenge our students to think. As my task at the time was to design a series of experiments for the students, I had to make sure that the experiments had a purpose and that the questions raised during the experiment would force the students to think and constantly question the theory that they were taught in class.

In the end, I ended up designing experiments that seemed to show that the theory was consistently wrong (didn’t matter how many times you repeated it). Instead of getting the result that they expect, they would consistently obtain results that were significantly different and cannot be attributed to simple experimental error. Then, I would ask the students to suggest reasons why the results were the way that they were.

At the meeting where I presented the draft copy of the experiments to the professor, even he had some trouble figuring out the reasons until I pointed out the trick to him. The trick that I used was to move the problem from the theory, to the underlying assumptions. So, the student would not only have to question the theory involved, but work their way back to the basic assumptions.

University education should never be about rote learning but this brings back another memory. During one of my tests for a humanities subject, I actually wrote down, “I know that you expect the answer to be XXX but I disagree and think that it is YYY because of …”. In the end, the lecturer gave me the mark but told me under no uncertain terms, that I should refrain from doing such things during exams and stick to the answer script.

I do agree with our DPM that our education system stresses too much on rote learning, and needs changing. Students need to be challenged to think and the easiest way to do it is to ask them difficult questions. However, the problem would be with the teachers who will have to evaluate the students’ answers. If the teachers themselves are only capable of rote evaluation based on a specific scheme, they would need to adapt to an entirely new style of teaching, which isn’t always easy.

A teacher must be fully versed in his/her subject area in order to be able to handle anything that the students are able to dish out. Otherwise, the teacher will often end up looking foolish in the eyes of the students. This challenges the established power structure and may make a lot of teachers uncomfortable. Considering that our teaching profession is staffed by many people who generally took up teaching because they had no other choice, this doesn’t bode well.

We need to do what Obama promised to do in the US. We need to hire new teachers, pay them better wages, and demand for higher standards and accountability from them in return. However, this raises a big budget problem for the government. The teaching union is the largest work force organisation in the civil service with about 150,000 members. So, I don’t see this happening anytime soon, particularly in the present global economic climate.