Don't Know, Don't Care

i read michael backman's second article about m'sia again today... it wasn't as critical nor as controversial as the first one... however, it did raise some pertinent points...

the first is corruption... however, to me this point is moot.. simply because, every politician in this world is corrupt... corrupt is the very definition of politics... politicians have power and power corrupts... qed...

the next point was about spending money on education... how, m'sia needs to spend more money on education... i did raise the fact that m'sia has got a lot of scholarships for tertiery education... and that isn't too bad... however, he raised the point of primary/secondary education... and it wasn't about building more schools, but actually hiring quality teaching staff...

well... i have to agree on that... the education system in m'sia deserves a massive revamp... and the problems are complex and many...

quality of staff... unlike in the previous generation, the current generation do not consider teaching as a good profession to go into... most of the people who end up being teachers, are people who did not do very well in school.. and often, they are people who failed to get into any other vocation...

however, this is a generalisation... my ex roomie, was a chemical engineer, but is a school teacher now and i respect him for making that choice... but, is this problem uniquely m'sian?? there's an adage that says.. "those who cannot do, teach"... (and those who cannot teach, write!!)... so, no... it's not uniquely m'sian..

so, what we end up with in schools, is mostly sub-standard teaching...

but does it matter?? in the article, he quoted an email from one of his readers, that complains about all the "spoon-feeding, memory work and regurgitation" and such going on in schools... essentially saying that we churn out zombies...

i've actually always found school to be such fun... simply because i was an above average student... and in a m'sian school, i had enormous freedom in pursuing whatever it was that i felt like doing... however, i only had this luxury because i didn't go to school to learn... school wasn't a place for learning.. it was a place for social interaction...

however, i do realise, that many people expect to learn stuff in school... and in this respect, we need to fix some of it... however, merely having smarter/knowledgeable teaching staff won't fix it.. although it would educated the average students, it might stifle the creativity of the smart ones by bogging them down with mundane work...

so, merely having better teaching staff, doesn't necessarily help either...

why do i say this?? it's been my personal experience at university in m'sia, that most of the lecturers don't really know what they're teaching... i lay the blame squarely on similar reasons above... but in a university, if a student STILL expects to be taught, he/she is in deep trouble..

and over here, the lecturers know their stuff but don't care... simply because they're more interested in doing their research... and teaching to most of them is a chore that they need to get through... they usually can't wait to get back to their research...

so, essentially, what we need are teachers who care... and those are rare...

so, what's the solution to this problem?? it is unlikely that we would be able to fill our education system with people who know and care... however, if we could fill up our system with people who care, that would be excellent... simply because, a child does not need to be taught anything else, except for the ability to learn... teach them to fish and all that...

however, since most parents do not even care and leave education to the schools, i really wonder, who will... education begins at home... believe it or not... and there's nothing much that the government can do about that...