Our Education Is Up To Par

According to this report from The Star, 55% of Malaysians think our education system is comparable to developed countries. Well, 55% is a believable percentage, not too grand or too outlandish. But wait, it gets better, another 35% says it's better than developed nations! Hence, this survey will substantiate the claims by our Minister if Education about our world class education system.

Apparently the survey had been carried out by this company called Introspek Asia on a total of 1800 respondents. This is an age of Google and so I googled up Introspek Asia. There isn't much to read about this company. Perhaps my search is not exhaustive enough but I think we should really question the credibility of this study. There is no breakdown of the types of respondents. For all we know, the company might have just gone to some rural areas and picked up 1800 people to interview. We know what the most likely outcome of such kinds of interviews will be. The result could have been very different had the sampling been more varied.

Anyway, like I said, I googled the research company. The information on their website is hardly impressive. The web design is clean enough but after reading their site, I was left with a feeling that their offering isn't all that great. In fact, when I clicked on 'About Us', the page just didn't seem to move after I clicked on 'Principle (note the spelling) Consultant'. The website claims Toyota as among their clients, with the rest mostly government related agencies.

Just how credible is this research our DPM and Minister of Education is using to prop his earlier claim? I don't know. But I do know this, I have serious doubts after going through Introspek Asia's website. The language used to 'sell' themselves seems muted, as if it was a direct translation from BM.... of course, one that is way better than the 'poke eye' one. Never mind too that the Minister did not give the details of the survey or try to explain why there are so many middle class Malaysian parents who send their children to private schools today. World class education system that is almost free! Parents must be really dumb to send their children to a paying institution!

I think, today, if we were to just randomly ask the educated parents about the state of our education system, many will probably say that it is in the doldrums. This morning, I talked to a parent who isn't so educated and she agreed that our education system isn't in all that great of a shape. Lol! A suburban parent, some more! Well she must belong to the remaining 10% of the survey!

Websites are easy to build. Information can be cooked, boiled, stewed with all kinds of flavourings. Even drug companies have been known to publish 'doctored' studies to sell their drugs. This is an age of easy information... and easy manipulation. And that is one reason why we need to have an education system that can enable our children to be thinking people, problem solvers.... not the buka mulut, tunggu disuap kind of students which seem to be the norm now. And oh, might I add, this claim doesn't seem to jive with the reality of unemployed graduates. Our graduates should be so laku, by right. But that isn't happening. Last I read we have many trained nurses (trained by our better than developed nations' education systems) looking for jobs. Shouldn't they be grabbed by other countries by now?

And this Introspek Asia survey (which was claimed to have ended on Jan 15) comes so handy to support the Minister's claim. Something smells fishy!!!! .... the fishy smell has always been there. Our noses have been stuffed so much that we can't smell well. That's why Duduk Bantah is bad..... For the 'nose stuffers'.