Day: September 19, 2013

by Lee Shi-Ian
The Malaysian Insider
September 19, 2013

The Royal Commission of Inquiry on Sabah’s illegal immigrants problem today heard from Opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim that indiscriminate issuance of Malaysian identity cards had begun during the time of second Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak Hussein.

Anwar, the Deputy Prime Minister from 1993 until his dramatic sacking in 1998, Ibrahim, told the Inquiry that between 1972 and 1984, there was an influx of refugees fleeing fighting in the southern Philippines.

The refugees were granted identity cards indiscriminately between 1979 and 1990, said Anwar, who said a special task force was formed by the National Security Council for this purpose.

“The task force is still active today,” he said. Continue reading “Anwar tells of special task force to issue ICs to foreigners in Sabah”

by KJ John
Malaysiakini
Sep 17, 2013

I was touched and moved by Marina Mahathir’s excellent treatise on the value of human dignity in her most recent column in The Star. Hers related to our school system. That motivated me to share my own experience and that of my two sons in our school system.

My experience of abuse

First my own experience given that I am now already 63 years old. Yes, when I was in Form Two, in the Ibrahim Secondary School of Sungai Petani, one afternoon, my friend Gobalkrishnan and I went to play basketball in our school. We borrowed the school basketball which was kept by the canteen operator after signing our names in the book.

While we were making hoop shots a younger student in school uniform came and asked to take the basketball for his class because his teacher wanted the ball for his PE class. We said no, as we had borrowed and signed for it.

After a while the class teacher turned up with the same boy and asked for the ball; I said the same thing that we had signed up for the ball to play. He slapped me across the face and threw the ball at my friend’s head. Then they walked away with our ball! Continue reading “A matter of human dignity”

Khairie Hisyam Aliman
The Malay Mail Online
September 16, 2013

SEPT 16 — Recently we heard that out of 60,000 English teachers nationwide, about 70 per cent of them did poorly when sitting for the English Language Cambridge Placement Test.

Last Monday, Education Minister II Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh said these English language teachers, classified as “unfit” to teach the subject, had been sent to courses to improve their command of English.

“The ministry will also consider sending them overseas for exchange programmes to take up TESL (Teaching of English as a Second Language) courses,” a news report quoted him as saying, while adding that a good portion of these teachers had enrolled in local English courses.

Well, now talk last year of Malaysia possibly importing English teachers from India is put in a different perspective. But the core of the problem is also brought to light — what’s up with our teacher recruitment process?

While I am all for continuous self-improvement whatever your job title is, these “unfit” teachers have no business teaching English in the first place. If they are unfit to teach English to our kids and have to be trained further to be good enough, how is it that they became English teachers in the first place? Continue reading “Why are our English teaching standards so low?”