Young man, study hard. Does it have any more relevance?

As usual, the answer is “It depends”.

Conditions that makes “Young man, study hard” a success :

• It is of own initiative

• The training is well designed….its fair, useful, competently done

• The objectives are clear and corresponds with the students

Now, lets narrow it to Primary and secondary school education…...what  are the objectives, the parents concerns, the students well being and society at large?

Its well known and practically unanimous agreement our school system is broken, the young are not being trained in skill sets that they need and learning stuffs that are not relevant.  Yet, in a typical Chinese home, what you get is great parental pressure to do well in school, to study hard, get all As, tuition classes. To do well in a broken system? What for?

The harm done to too many is enormous…..

• Destroys creativity

• Destroys self confidence of many

• Breeds hypocrites, fakes, pretenders,

• Learning what is not needed and not learning what is needed and useful

What are the stated and unstated objectives of the school education system?

The unstated objectives :

• To produce adults who form the army of unthinking workers

• To indoctrinate them into some religious thinkings

• For politicians to direct how other people children are to be educated

The unstated objectives have nothing to do with the stated objectives and the unstated objectives are more powerful in the final outcome.

In reality,  nothing destroys creativity more than the present education regime.

In reality, nothing destroys character building, curiosity for learning , learning for learning's sake, team building, moral values, communication skills, friendships, ambitions more than the present education regime.

What about democratic values, amanah, cekap, bersih, ?

What about the importance of sacrifices, of vision, of planning , of compassion, of charity,

What about the health and well being of the children?

The education system may reward the 1% who are top students…..but what about the other 99%? Are these to be sacrificial lambs?

What about children from poor families to view education as passport to a better life?

This question is full of emotions and cultural baggage. Not an easy question to tackle. Ideally, the answer to that question is a big YES but what is the reality?

It is the mission and vision of society to view  education as passport to a better life. To increase productivity, to fully make use of human resources….but what is the reality for children from poor families?

All over the world, the rich is getting richer, the poor poorer. That is the reality. Escaping poverty from education alone is getting tougher and tougher compared to 50 years.

In Malaysia , the reality is

• The quality of teachers is poor

• The syllabus is poor

• The handicap the poor student faces is enormous.

• Life experience of the poor students is so different from the rich experiences of the rich kids

• Counselling is poor

• No good role models for the poor

• For the rural kids, how are they to learn English? From who? Learn the importance of English?

• For religious schools, they do not want you to possess critical thinking skills, they do not want you to have independent thinking, they just want you to be faithful followers of their doctrine.

• See the challenges the education system has to face?

That being the reality...what next?

I bet you…..social  mobility via education is far higher in China than in Malaysia or most other countries.. I believe that is a fact. Unfortunately those responsible for the system cannot cure all the problems or even most of the problems.

A lot of the solutions is a multi prong approach but only the Education Minister will get the blame.

Man….it's a tough problem, ...what next?