– Lok Wing Kong
The Malaysian Insider
March 30, 2014
Former de facto law minister Datuk Zaid Ibrahim said that in 30 years, Malaysia will be on a par with Singapore.
He is totally wrong in that Malaysia will never be able to catch up with Singapore. Why? It is simple. Singapore practise hyper meritocracy while Malaysia practises mediocrity.
The two countries are moving forward at different speeds. They can only be getting further apart over time.
World Bank senior economist Dr Frederico Gil Sander recently said that the low quality of Malaysia’s education was more alarming than its household debts.
The writer cannot agree with him more as the policy of mediocrity is at play.
Malaysia’s education system is based heavily on mediocrity and cannot produce talent to improve the economy. It will continue to be mired in low-skilled industries and heavily trapped in the middle-income pit.
For more than five decades, the government has been building up a low education standard system to suit mass production of graduates of one race.
The result is that from primary to tertiary education, the teachers, lecturers and professors are of mediocre quality.
Mediocre teachers produce mediocre graduates and this phenomenon has become a perpetual norm.
It will take many decades to rectify this appalling condition provided the powers-that-be has the strong political will and sincerity to do it.
There are more than 80,000 Bumiputera pupils studying in the Chinese primary schools. Many of them go on to study in the Chinese independent schools.
This shows that the Bumiputeras have lost faith in the national schools. In these Chinese independent secondary schools, after six years, many students sitting for SPM score good grades and with credit in Bahasa Melayu (BM).
The Unified Examination Certificate (UEC) of the Chinese independent schools is recognised by many foreign universities, many universities in Singapore have been admitting UEC graduates for umpteen years. Yet, the Malaysian government refuses to recognise UEC. It is ridiculous.
The government wants the Chinese independent schools to adopt the national educational syllabus in that all subjects are to be taught in BM, except Chinese language. This is not acceptable.
There is nothing to shout about if the government recognises the UEC with conditions attached. Unless it is recognised unconditionally, it is better to maintain the status quo.
Instead, the Chinese independent schools will strive and flourish and continue to maintain high standards.
It will eventually become the choice of parents, both Chinese and non-Chinese, to send their children to such schools.
National schools have become religious schools with low standards as reflected in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings. The 2013-2025 Education Blueprint will also not be able to reverse the decline.
The Malays have been favoured for decades under the New Economic Policy, yet the prime minister feels that it is not enough. Shortly after the 13th general election, he introduced the Bumiputera Economic Empowerment Programme (BEEP).
Barisan Nasional or Umno wants to maintain mediocre policies in all fields of human endeavour to suit the Malays perpetually.
It also wants to maintain the exclusive policies which promote racial polarisation in the country.
The pre-independent days of racial mingling are a thing of the past. All these policies have a double-edged effect in that the Malays will be weakened and will forever need government help if they want to survive.
Many talents have been pushed to emigrate when the powers-that-be favours one race.
BN/Umno wants to rule the country perpetually by keeping the rakyat stupid with a lousy education system. The Internet has prevented it from achieving this goal.
The civil service, government-linked companies, police and defence forces are all bloated with staff with poor education and low skills. They represent more than 1.4 million people with a national population of about 29 million, one of the highest in the world.
In order to save this country and the Malay race, mediocrity and race-based polices must be discarded and the country must practise meritocracy and need-based policies instead.
English-medium schools must be brought back urgently. Otherwise, there is no hope of us achieving developed-nation status even by 2050. – March 30, 2014.
Malaysia to catch up with singapore in 30yrs?
Its the catching up that sucks.
We started out way ahead of singapore with our land mass, population size and natural resources.
And now we are playing catching-up. That is sooo embarassing.
Will we ever catch up?
Look idiot, whilst NUS continues to climb the world ranking table, our local universities decided that it must be better to slide down that table.
Zaid is right. In 30 years we will be on par with Singapore today rather than what Singapore will become in 2044.
They regime is handling the country like they handled the MH370 disaster. Flip-flopping from day one.
50 yrs ago (or thereabout) when singapore was forced to leave malaysia and go its own way, lee kuan yew was in tears.
He was in tears because then without malaysia singapore would face a survival crisis.
Today (50 yrs later) malaysia talks about catching up with the little island nation of singapore.
Tak apalah. Yg penting, you must be proud of what you are and believe in what you say.
So yes, LET US CATCH UP WITH SINGAPORE IN 30YRS.
So hsien loong, remember this. Clean your car mirror on the right and then clean your car mirror on the left. Coz you really cant tell from which side singapore would be overtaken by malaysia.
Malaysia.
Endless Possibilities.
Unlimited Stupidity.
Kangkung Mentality.
Boleh!
If you take a dozen years ago. Singapore’s per capita was 8X Malaysia.. Today, its about 6X – seemingly to indicate that Malaysia will catch up with Singapore.
Truth is the main reason if Malaysia ever catch up with Singapore’s per capita is because of Singapore own’s limitation – its low birth rate and opposition to immigration is growing. BUT even with that, there are multitude of reason by Malaysia per capita will still fall short – the chief is because if you model our growth drivers – the factors are either external or financing – the trajectory of these growth shows a very quick slowdown very soon – before 2020 in fact.
So fat chance in 30 years. Perhaps in 50-70 years and that is because Singapore cannot politically grow its population and we Malaysia let mass immigration of Muslim population from neighbours and elsewhere to drive growth – ALL of which makes the goal of growth completely meaningless to our citizens..
The following details on 2009 PISA on Malaysia:
Maths Science
Below -1 25.05% 11.03%
Level 1 35.10% 31.92%
Level 2 26.80% 38.13%
Level 3 10.81% 16.24%
Level 4 2.01 % 2.61%
Level 5 0.21 % 0.05%
Level 6 0.00% 0.00%
Assuming Level 3 is the passing average, it means only 13.03% and 18.9% of the Malaysian students actually passed the test; meaning 86.97% and 81.1% had flung the Maths and Science tests respectively! At level 4 and above, we have only 2.42% and 2.66% for Maths and Science! Of course at Level 6, we have non! So we must ask the EGO on his MSC project; where can you find the ‘software’ with such results? Lau Lee wasn’t wrong when he commented that everyone can construct all the hardware except getting the correct grey matter that really matters! How can our students really compete in the 21st Century? When the top 5 economies having double figure percentage, our IT future could be bleak; indeed very bleak unless BIG CHANGE IS TAKEN BY ALL MALAYSIANS!
A lot of Malaysians are in Singapore and a lot have become the citizens and these Malaysians need not necessarily are the chineses
A teacher has this tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. He/She can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. He/She can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is his/her response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or de-humanized.
When politics become the decisive element in the classroom invariably “A teacher’s day is half bureaucracy, half crisis, half monotony and one-eighth epiphany. Never mind the arithmetic.”
MEDIOCRITY, MERITOCRACY – all relative
On top of these two, we hv PERKOSACRAZY n UMNOBCRAZY
think abt them, guys