Kerja Kursus in the Malaysian Education System

This is a continuation of my ramblings from my earlier post, Missionary School Model for 1Malaysia.... in a couple of days, marks for all these practicals should be submitted. Coursework done for the year for the SPM kids!

Coursework... The last decade or so have seen more coursework being introduced in schools to make our assessment more complete or holistic. It was also introduced to reduce the dependence on written exams. In our present system a student's future hang on to just one exam; which means that if he happens to be sick during the public exam, the 2 years spent in preparation will be kinda wasted. So, we try to balance up... at least it looks good in theory. But it has become an arbitrary, artificial system of evaluation imposed by the ministry with little thought as to what the schools and teachers can do.

Coursework... they are highly unreliable in our context. Right now at Upper Secondary, they have coursework for Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Pendidikan Islam (PAFA), Pendidikan Moral, Pendidikan Seni, English and BM (Oral)... but they are basically quite meaningless cos students don't do any real work. Most of the stuff they submit are copied or done for them. You see, teachers have to make sure the students do their coursework.. I've seen teachers making the recalcitrant students sit and copy notes prepared for them. It's mostly copy, copy and more copying. And for the more initiative, they will Google and plagiarised... all cut and paste. Teachers don't really bother. Most did bother in the beginning but the constant barrage of 'must pass the candidates' from higher up have all but ensure that whatever little credibility in this form of assesment is all gone.

Then the folio for Pendidikan Moral... they're all quite fake-ish. Oral for English, on the other hand doesn't quite test the speaking abilities cos students don't make much effort or bother sometimes. Sometimes, teachers have to prepare the stimuli just so that they have something to talk about. PEKA (Bio, Physic, Chemistry) basically test your ability to 'reproduce'... many students just copy from their senior or reference books. It's the same for History and Geography at Lower Secondary. These subjects are supposed to involve some field work... but often times, because the students are not bothered and teachers are warned not to 'fail' them, copying becomes the norm as it's the easiest way to complete a task.

For Pendidikan Seni, it's well known that students sometimes pay professionals to do their art work. And nothing is done to 'disqualify' their work from the exam. In fact, they get good grades some more! Teachers have very little autonomy to disqualify them here as orders from higher up insist that the students be passed. The grades do not reflect real work... a whole generation brought up on compromise, plagiarising, copying....

So, tell me! What skills do they learn from course work? We teach them that it's okay to copy, acceptable to fake things, that everyone is doing it.... take the easiest way out. There is actually very little control on the 'cheating' that takes place in all these kerja kursus.

Coursework... probably the one good thing they are good for is they are good at generating the economy. Cos the one place that students seem to definitely head are the shops for binding, nice covers and all those set to impress.. the superficial. The content after all has been tried, tested and graded. Not theirs but of those before them... continued deception, sanctioned by our education system. Now tell me... isn't that also happening in our Malaysia Boleh? Reading the spat between Ong and Tiong implies that so many things are wrong also with MCA. In BN, they are all actually 'brethrens' of the same minds....literally. Really depressing, ain't it? It all begins with the little seed call 'compromise'.

So you see, we still need those one-off exams such as SPM and STPM. They still have their roles to play... cos after all the artificial evaluation and work done, we still need to fall back on exam grades. It's still a more reliable yardstick (despite standards being pulled down).