Do Our Students Measure Up?

For the next 6 weeks, no school but this school related post was written earlier... 8)

Been teaching for almost 2 decades.. and I seriously feel that there is deterioration of standards from then till now. We are more technologically advanced, yet we don't seem any better from the generation of yester years. Maybe it's because I've been teaching in the mediocre day schools for the most part of my career but my observation also tells me that it's closer to the actual situation.

We get avalanche of A(s) but students with no better problem solving abilities. Sports is also dead in many schools. Actually I find most of our students disinterested in the matters beyond their small little cocoons.

Schools are generally equipped with computer labs, powered by wi-fi etc, etc... but we seem to be drifting no where. Softwares are available to aid with the teaching but we hardly seem able to arouse much curiosity or inquisitiveness. By the time students get to secondary school, they're are generally more inclined to go for rote learning - regurgitation being the mode of spewing out what is in their brain. Or worse still, no learning! And these while away their years (till F5) at school. They become our nightmares! You need a few in each class and they disrupt the whole learning process. Exactly like the old Malay proverb; kerana nila setitik, rosak susu sebelanga. Whatever happened to the 'for the greater good' concept?

So, when you get news that a former top SPM student (Nur Amalina with 17As) flunked her 2nd year medical study in a UK university, you wonder why. Failing is not to be totally unexpected as there are always reasons beyond our control. But when many other JPA scholars also seem to struggle to pass in their respective courses in unis all over, then something is grossly wrong. Jaguh kampung... I'm reminded of that!

Today it is an accepted notion that many of our local grads simply do not measure up when it comes down to performance. Majority seem more like robots who need input, be told what to do than have that independence and drive that used to be the taken for granted before.

Decades of crutches, years of compromising quality for quantity and race - this is where we have gotten ourselves. On the surface we look good. But go beyond, the tell-tale signs of cracks are beginning to appear.

We seem successful on the outside. The recent release of the UPSR results - so many straight A(s). Successful kids aren't they all??? I wonder... Amalina was a very successful kid. Today I am reminded of this verse from Proverbs... "Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it." Success as what we understand may come at the price of the way they should go....