Revive proven practices

THE thrust today is for educational transformation. We want innovation, creativity, “out-of-the-box” thinking, paradigm shift, “new wine in new skin” and new horizons.

It is undeniable that new challenges need new approaches.

Any disposition against this line of thinking may be considered archaic, irrelevant and inapplicable and is shunned upon.

But let’s also spare a thought that perhaps some problems we are now facing could have come about simply because we had abandoned some proven good “old” ways of doing things.

Perhaps we should take a moment to reminisce on things that we might have done right before and that had successfully propelled our education system earlier.

Shouldn’t we consider putting back in place some of those old practices?

First, we discarded the compulsory requirement of a credit pass (even a simple pass) in English in our secondary public examinations (PMR and SPM).

Now, the standard of English of our students and graduates is pathetic.

To remedy, even if we have to have two “levels” of papers in the same examination to cater for students from different English background/exposure environments, we must have them.

A “compulsory” pass will have a psychological impact on students and push them to learn the language seriously.

Second, we have compromised on the entry qualification and quality of those recruited as teacher trainees.

The “right teachers” are crucial because the whole education system, from top to bottom, will be manned by these teachers eventually.

A “bad/poor” teacher will cause his/her charges to suffer.

Then, if he/she, by manipulation or other less than righteous means, gets promoted as an officer in the district/state/ministry, the “cancer” will spread.

He/she is not likely to bring into his/her ambit of service and authority any good, able and conscientious teachers.

Birds of a feather flock together. Subsequently, the whole system suffers.

Do as we had done: Be stringent, strict and professional in teacher recruitment.

Third, we have abandoned true sporting spirit and games activities that were synonymous with established schools of old.

Just visit any so-called premier one-session school in town in the evenings or on any Saturday and see for yourself.

They are as quiet and serene as cemeteries. They come to “life” only when there are some sponsored events ( acara anjuran) which incidentally may have little to do with sports and games.

Teacher volunteers and students volunteering to come to school for games and sports after school and on Saturdays are rare nowadays.

We have to bring back the true sporting spirit to our schools.

Fourth, our national primary and secondary schools were once the “melting pots” for students of all races.

Heads of school were known to care genuinely for all their charges. Not anymore. If English language was considered as the unifying factor then, it must now be shown that the national language, Bahasa Malaysia (BM), is able to do the same or even better.

More importantly, those qualified and proficient in BM and subsequently appointed to be heads of school must demonstrate qualities and a competency in their running of their schools that would not arouse uneasiness, least of all suspicion, amongst parents of students who are of different races and are from all strata of society.

So, let’s revive some old proven practices even if we have to venture into new ones as we move our education system forward. LIONG KAM CHONG, Seremban.