Former Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir has warned that the social-economic disparity in Malaysia will grow bigger with rich parents sending their children to study English in international schools and abroad while the poor are left behind in national and vernacular schools here.
The former Prime Minister was not revealing any secret when he said that Ministers send their children to private schools and international schools which use largely English as the teaching medium, whether at home or abroad, as this phenomenon started not now but during his 22-year premiership from 1981-2003.
Surely Mahathir was not unaware that his own Ministers were sending their children to private and international schools, whether locally or abroad, demonstrating their lack of confidence in the national education policy and system?
Although the Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin had boasted that Malaysian youngsters are receiving better education than children in the United States, Britain and Germany, even UMNO leaders and delegates do not believe him – which is why he would not dare to ask the Umno General Assembly to endorse his claim as he would be in for a shocker!
It is true is that the problem of lack of confidence in the BN national education system and policy is now even more serious than in the past, and undoubtedly, there are more UMNO/BN Ministers and leaders who are sending their children to private and international schools, locally or abroad, at present than during Mahathir’s time.
Let all the 33 Cabinet Ministers reveal whether their children and grandchildren had been educated under the national education system or whether they are products of private and international schools, at home or abroad.
Education is one important reason for the crisis of confidence in the Umno/BN government and leadership and why the majority of the national electorate had voted against UMNO/BN in the 13th General Elections resulting in the formation of a minority government and Prime Minister for the first time in Malaysian history.
Recently, former finance minister Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah lamented that Malaysia isn’t getting what it paid for despite pouring billions into the country’s education system.
He said Malaysia spent double than other Asean countries on education in terms of ratio to gross domestic product, more than Japan and South Korea in 2011, but “the heavy spending on education in terms of gross domestic product ratio is not worth it, or at least it does not give the desired return in terms of quality and increased productivity”.
Malaysia may have achieved the notoriety of having spent most on education in terms of ratio to gross domestic product but yet having the least confidence in the national education system among the country’s government and political leadership, including Ministers and Deputy Ministers, whose children opt out of the national education system.
These are the real issues which the UMNO General Assembly should focus on, why Malaysia is stuck in the bottom third of the countries surveyed in international assessments and not making any significant moves towards the upper tier of the top one-third of the countries; why 15-year-olds in Shanghai, Singapore and South Korea are performing in international assessments as though they had four or even five more years of schooling than 15-years-olds in Malaysia in mathematics, science and reading, instead of resorting to the histrionics and hysterics of racist politics as calling for the closure of Chinese primary schools.
dah lama dah i minta senaraikan nama anak anak pak menteri termasuk jugak anak anak kepala umno baru_a. anak menteri pendidikan di new york, bukan main imej dia keluar paper…
Speaking of how the education system was being manipulated over the decades and the way it is heading now and into the future, there might not even be a ‘Malaysia’ for our grandchildren to live in. The way our natural resources and the national economy is being managed, coupled with the massive borrowings owing to bad policies (which the government is still doing) and when those black gold runs out sooner than we think, then it’s all over for us.
Ask Obama how much $$$ America owes to the PROC and he may not have a ready answer for you. Even the American themselves can feel the end is near with hyperinflation settling in. America is over with – owned and operated by the PROC in times to come!
The 19th century was for the British; the 20th was the Americans. The 21st century belongs to the Chinese. This is the reality! Still thinks we can do away with SRJKs?
Ministers revealing highly personal details about their morally corrupt lives? Yah right..
I will be satisfied if we can get Najib and Idris Jala to admit they claimed that we were going to hit GDP of Vision 2020 earlier which they did earlier this year and now it looks pretty probably we will fall just short just as the sharpest critics have predicted when Najib first announced it, even maintained it when the numbers were rosy because of China and depreciating US$. If we can get them to just admit it will fall short and hence much of what they have claimed as “success” over the years are just luck, then it would already be leaps better than the torrent of excuses we will get eventually..