Life on an assembly line awaits our youth

The next person who complains about the current state of education will have to ask himself what he has done to contribute to the malaise.

Our schools have become assembly lines churning out pupils fixated with examinations. We have schoolchildren who are adept at books but have difficulty appreciating life in general.
Are we then surprised by the findings that a large number of our graduates, especially those unemployed, lack communication or living skills?
We are reaping what we sowed.
We — parents, teachers, administrators, policymakers, and those schoolchildren who do not know any better — are responsible for the education system evolving into the exam-oriented mess we are in now. We will it to be so.
We do so by measuring success in educating our young by the number of As achieved in the UPSR, PMR, SPM and STPM examinations.
The more As the better. We love overachievers, as can be seen with everyone falling over one another to shower praises and gifts on wünderkind Nur Amalina Che Bakri. Of course, she should be applauded for her 17As.
This year, 4,000 students scored straight As in SPM. When I look back at my measly achievement at that age, I wonder if I could even tie my shoelaces and should be allowed out of the house at all.
Year in and year out, the message we send out is "It’s the As that count". We don’t seem to be too concerned with educating, but only achievements.
The pursuit of As has led to tuition, extra classes and workbooks, motivational camps, mock exams, parents taking leave during exam period, and to cover all bases, quick visits to the mosques, temples or churches for divine intervention.

Children are programmed for As. Pre-schoolers attend accelerated reading programmes and mental arithmetic workshops.
Children doing "kids’ stuff" is a no-no. Sport is a waste of time and reading non-academic books leaves you soft in the head.
We have children who can name the entire Manchester United second-11, and yet never kick a ball in their lives. Museums, art galleries, libraries, the classics, volunteering, well, you must be joking.
There is nothing wrong in wanting the best for children. It is a natural parental instinct. It becomes a problem, however, when we lose our perspective.
A significant number of our pupils are smart, the majority average, quite a number a bit slow, and there are some who are beyond help. We are talking about academic inclinations here, not street smarts or ingenuity.
A majority of our students won’t be Nur Amalina, no matter how many tuition classes they attend. I am sure the Education Ministry is not ignoring those who are mediocre and underachievers, but that is not the message that is being sent out.

Now how does all the griping about the education system translate into unemployable graduates? Perhaps it’s a stretch, but I think I have something here.
We can, of course, blame the Universities and University Colleges Act, teachers, the Bahasa Melayu medium of instruction, mismatch in qualifications and job market requirements, etc.
But in my humble opinion, the paper chase that began with four-year-olds has produced a generation of space cadets, excellent students but sheltered from real life.
Like racehorses, they are primed for the finish line, only to find that once their blinkers are removed, there is a world out there for which they had never been prepared. Thus, should we be surprised that there are graduates who cannot communicate or adapt to the real world or those who think Cuban revolutionary leader Che Guevara is a pop music icon? University education is beyond getting the magical diploma, it is way beyond the academic.
It is how students, fresh-faced school-leavers, will be confronted with the 1,001 problems of trying to function as an adult. It is the development of the mind, independence, the maturity of thought.
But such wanderings, experiments and explorations are seen as a waste of time and no longer tolerated in college common rooms, student unions and cafeterias. We have seen to that.
Everyone is fixated on the finish line and has his or her eyes on the prize.
In the past, the pay-offs of university education were very clear.
One got a leg up over the masses with a university degree. The phenomenon of unemployed graduates signalled a change in the rules of the game, which is that a degree is no longer the passport to middle-class comfort.
 
There is a line from a Bob Dylan song that says: "Twenty years of schooling and they put you on the day shift."
I suppose that is what our education system is doing, preparing our youth for an assembly line. We are producing great students, but not necessarily great minds. Sad to say, we are all a party to this.

Zainul Ariffin
6 April 2005

http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Wednesday/Columns/20050406075939/Article/indexb_html/

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