Stories....

A car gets stolen and is left at another location which barely 5 km away from the place where it was stolen. The thieves had second thoughts??? So for 3 weeks it sat in a parking lot in an area frequented by police patrols... and they didn't notice that the same car sitting there. So finally, one observant fler called the police to report the car which had been sitting in the same spot for so many weeks. Turned out the car was stolen from Pacific Hypermart's parking lot. Don't they put out APBs for stolen vehicles? Aren't our police trained to be on the look for things out of the ordinary? Every area is supposed to have their own Beat Officer(s). So, if the said officers have been doing their rounds, they would have noticed the car in the same spot day after day, evening after evening and night after night. Anyway, suffice to say that the owner of the car, an old lady was glad to have her wheels back again. One more thing, this car was parked in an area where you are supposed to pay for parking. 3 weeks! Not even a wheel clamp on this car! So much for efficiency...

Schools have also become grounds to collect donations. I recently saw a brochure from a NGO to seek donation from students. Apparently it's sanctioned by the MOE. And students who donate more than RM100 will be given a certificate signed by none other than our Angkasawan. But at one school, the students said that their school counsellor told them to go canvas for 10 people to give donations or if they cannot do that, donate RM5 themselves. The donation is for the Gaza cause. A friend of mine was questioning how can we be sure that the money will get to the intended people... After all, there is no issuance of receipt even for money given. There is no transparency at all. These days... it's money this and money that. Some schools hold a Bacaan Yasin for their exam students but make them pay money (around RM5); for food. We want to be hospitable but we make our guests pay for our hospitality. Aiyo!

A friend said this recently... all the ferrying her son, the crazy tuition schedules, the long hours that he had to stay back at school... and all for just 3 days of UPSR. A whole year of childhood gone into all that. Now she wonders whether it's worth it. I said most of us will say it's worth it when the momentary joy of seeing the 7A(s) on the result slip. But deep down I wonder too... why have we all turned so siao?

Pendidikan Moral...

In Pendidikan Moral for SPM they have 7 bidang (area). And this is from the first one. There are 12 nilai or values related to Perkembangan Diri or Self Development. With each one comes a definition which must be reproduced most of the time bulat-bulat.

1. Kepercayaan Kepada Tuhan (Belief in God)
2. Amanah (Trustworthy)
3. Harga Diri (Self Pride)
4. Bertanggung jawab (Responsible)
5. Hemah tinggi (Cultured???)
6. Toleransi (Tolerant)
7. Berdikari (Independent)
8. Kerajinan (Hardworking)
9. Kasih Sayang (Compassion)
10. Keadilan (Justice)
11. Rasional (Rational)
12. Kesederhanaan (Moderate)

And now take all these nilai and try to measure them up against our political leaders, top figures and bosses in the civil service and see how they fare. Where the Pengetua in Johor is concerned, she'd probably fail at 8 or 9 of them. LOL!

Let's take the Siti Inshah Mansor fiasco and put it on the Perkembangan Diri yardstick and measure her. And on the other side of this same divide, we have Namewee. Both would fail equally miserably on the nilai score.... but then again, perhaps both also didn't take Pendidikan Moral at SPM level. LOL! But I am sure Ms Siti would have gotten enough teachings from Pendidikan Islam... students have to either take Pendidikan Moral or Pendidikan Islam. As for Namewee, he took the UEC and I am not sure whether he took his SPM.

So do you wonder why our students poke fun at Pendidikan Moral and label it a useless subject? Add that to the senseless memorizing of definition and silly situations, Pendidikan Moral actually teaches our young how to be 'politically correct'. Ms Siti Inshah interpreted her political masters correctly and hence came out with her diatribe....

So, even if your interpretation of the situation given contains a nilai (value) that is applicable but not listed in the mark scheme, no marks will be awarded. But in the case above it's in and full marks hence no action 46 days since her speech at the assembly.

Our measure of morality is really skewed... Pendidikan Moral equals a failed subject too.... not forgetting rote learning intensified; otak becomes kayu.

Eat, Love, Pray... by Elizabeth Gilbert

This is bonus round cos it has gone beyond the amended target of 40 books for the year. Book 41, recommended by Other Half.

It's a best seller and has already been Hollywood-ized. So, it's selling like hotcakes now. I notice that it's being mentioned a lot on the radio stations lately. The novel is more like a travelogue of Gilbert in search of the meaning of life after going through an emotional (identity?) crisis; she divorced her husband. So, to 3 I(s) she went - Italy to seek the pleasures of life, India for spirituality and Indonesia to balance pleasure and spirituality.

The author is candid, witty and intelligent. At points one might think she is schizo and she wonders it herself... but then again, aren't majority of such people are tortured souls? Amidst the deep melancholy, arises the genius... something like that.

Eat

In Italy, the pleasures of eating. I find her description of everything Italian interesting. Didn't know that Italian men are to what we think of French women. Hmmm... interesting to note that she finds Italian men beautiful (not handsome). She wrote about Depression and Loneliness as 2 characters coming back to sway her in Italy. Interesting!

Pray

To an ashram in India she went. There's this appeal in Yogic meditation, the pull of a Guru, etc. But I echo her sentiments on this particular thought - the longing to have something to believe in becomes more pronounced as we end our journey on this side of the divide. But this longing is up against many obstacles - intellect, common sense, greed, etc..... As much as many of us might proclaim that life ends with our last breath, many too ponder about the claimed worldly divide. Humanity is a constant evolution in search of the divine, in many forms.

Love

In Indonesia, she had these 2 friends... both medicine people, Ketut and Wayan. It's quite hilarious though some of the accounts she made of them. We need balance in our lives. Faith is a choice. I always believe that God created us with the ability to choose. Everyone is entitled to make their own choices. Faith is more than just doing good... it's trying to live out to a calling. And love - the balance between the first two. Faith and works, the compelling factor is love. Hence we try to do good...

So Eat, Pray and Love.. I look at it this way. EAT represents the passion and pleasure that we are created for. God created us to have fellowship with him and PRAY is precisely that... a union with our creator. If this is too hard to comprehend, think parents and children. Children long for their parents' fellowship when they are young, and the roles become slightly reverse as the parents age and children become adults. But children tend to forget their parents sometimes in adulthood. (We forget God because we feel we are self-reliant). Love is faith in action, meeting the needs of Eat.

Her narration also caused me to ponder and reflect some what. After all, this is a book written by a woman in search of an identity and the meaning of her life to her. Typically, a woman is expected to marry, focus on the family; basically she loses her individual identity in a manner of speaking. She even assumes her husband's name! But the emancipated woman of this generation finds it hard to confine herself within those boundaries created by the marriage institution... I guess I found this reason one of the most appealing reason why I enjoyed reading this book. The identity search... you see, for a woman for centuries past, marriage plays a vital role in determining her identity...

Where faith is concerned... there is always this bit of soul searching that we go through. For some, the soul searching starts early, for many it begins as we approach the end of our journey... but I think most of us do some soul searching at some point.Many years ago (if feels like a lifetime ago), as a first year university student, I, too did my soul searching, reading into various 'holy' books - (Bhagavad Gita, Teachings of Buddha, Quran, works by philosophers of the Renaissance period and even parts of the Upanishad). Some of the readings were course work. Others were reading by choice.

So did the author find her balance??? I don't know, though she seemed happier at the end of her book. Each of us would like to think that we do but the final chapter is often not written till the coffin is nailed and sealed.... and no one has come back to this side of the divide to tell us what is beyond that.

Book 41. Definitely a good read. Might want to catch the movie if I have the time - Julia Roberts. 8)

Miss X and Mr Y

Chromosomes at play and this is biology. When you have X and X you get a girl. An X and a Y get you a boy. That's how they tell us boys and girls are made.

Then bring in a little Math and you realize that there is a constant and a variable. The constant here is X and the Y is the variable. In a nutshell, looks like we need X in the world. X is the girl in everyone of us. Yup! Every guy has a girl in them.. LOL!

And it is a no wonder that guys today are spending more time at the hairdresser. Nope, barbers are out! Many guys actually balk at the thought of going to the barber. I even have friends who say they won't send their sons to the barber cos they don't cut well. And you have guys who go for facials too now. There are tons of skin care products which cater for the XYs. The girl in every guy is coming to the forefront now. It's a latent thing, biologically substantiated too. LOL!

I've also noticed many teenage boys and young men looking more and more girlie these days. I sometimes find myself making remarks how 'pretty' those guys look. I guess the XXs are also finding such feminine looking guys appealing too. I wonder whatever happened to the macho and rough image....

Anyway, guys looking like gals. I guess that's another round of revolution we're going through. 100 years ago, it was the other way round, gals started to wear the pants (literally, LOL!) and look where we are now. Perhaps this is the beginning of another change; we'll soon be seeing guys staying at home, full time dad, househusband while their wives wears the pants of the family.

The order that we know twisted.... yet again. So Ms X has become a little more of a Mr. X while Mr. Y has become more of his other X. Nurture has a lot to do with that too as mothers these days spend even more time with their sons than the preceding generation. Busy generation we are!

Syok sendiri...

Latihan Dalam Perkhidmatan or LDP - teachers must attend at least 42 hours ( I think, it could be 48) starting this year. LDP is supposed to improve your professionalism, quite a noble objective. But that's where it ends cos most of the time, I find the courses they give quite boring and impractical.

Many of us more than met the minimum hours needed this year but that did not stop us from being forced to attend yet another course on a Saturday! .. we've a term for it; paksa-rela. LOL! Going back to school on an off day certainly did not appeal to many of us but we had no choice because we were told to write a show cause letter if we did not attend.

It was a course on Asset Management... of no use to me since I'm just an ordinary teacher. And they called in the same guy who a couple of years ago told us that in order to help Bumi companies, we should give them the tender even if the price given is not competitive, even if it's higher than its competitors by a ringgit a unit... so much for accountability of public funds. Never mind if we do not get our money's worth. Integrity, accountability, efficiency.... glossy words but not practised! So, it was a switch off the minute the voice started droning.... yet he is thought as someone who is very good at what he does. That's how system works. We don't go by efficiency, we go by crutches cos we applaud those who continue to make sure the patronage system remains alive even if it costs us more tax payers money. We bleed ourselves cos we think it's a right. And you wonder how come Malaysia is losing out on competitiveness??? Sheesh!!!!

And what was supposed to be a 2 hour talk ended an hour later! So much for good planning. The world of officialdom is not so time-minded after all. It is very stretchable.... poor time management! Time is asset, no??? Guess that's also poor asset management.... LOL!

Syok sendiri... bosses, speakers and even us attendees. This particular LDP provides each group a different kind of syok sendiri. And it was a most unproductive Saturday morning, at least for me. I'm sure some people found it helpful but it was not my cup of coffee cos it had no relevance for me.

Weeding....

I've not done weeding for quite a long time but today, I did, after visiting a friend's mom. In the last 2 weeks, I've started going back into my garden again, cleaning up the pots, clearing the dead leaves, etc.... And I found out that I enjoy the solitude that came with it. I could think. Life has been a blur of rush. My son tells me that I am constantly up to something and he gets flustered cos I'd be reminding him to do this or that....

So, this afternoon, after I changed the string of my trimmer, I decided to do some weeding. There was a slight drizzle but it wasn't heavy enough to wet me. The rains in the last few days have made the ground soft and pulling those weeds out didn't need much effort.

And my mind began to think.... Weeding and life... When Other Half and I renovated the side of our house, one of the things we did was to take our contractor's advice and put in a layer of sand for our compound. He ordered red sand for us so that our grass would grow better. He over ordered and we ended up with about one foot of red sand laid in our compund! Weeds would have a hard time rooting themselves the soil beyond the one foot deep sand. 8) We planted carpet grass and in those early years, we'd diligently pull out the weeds. But fighting against the weeds is a hard battle. They keep coming back with a vengeance. One way of slowing their advance is to make sure that our grass grow well. The red sand was good for their growth... and though we had some problems every now and then, the weeds were well under control.

That was until some years back, when we noticed that the snakes would come at certain time of the year. So, we started to put sulphur as deterrent.... I've had many encounters with these creatures and they still make me squirm. Little did I realize that sulphur is acidic and over the years (my own negligence cos I didn't check on my sis-in-law who was happily spreading the sulphur) the grass by the fence began to thin out and in some areas, they actually died. And the weeds began to have a gala time growing in those areas.... turns out weeds are really hardy and not totally put off by the acidic nature of the soil. So, they grew....

Weeds... you can never get rid of them cos if your neighbour's compound is full of weeds, it's just a fence away from invasion.

Life.... we too have weeds in our lives. Weeds are like bad peer pressure or negative company. Weeds grow too. They are also green. If you use a trimmer and trim it real short, from far, the compound looks kinda nice too. But they're not nice to step on cos some have thorns which will hurt your legs. Some throw your planning of your compound into disarray with their odd shapes and sizes and different growth spurts.

Like weeds which grow easily, bad practices are easy to pick up, easy to let it grow and overwhelm our lives. Weeds if given half a chance will overwhelm an area in no time...

Our fight with the weeds is made easier because of the groundwork we put in earlier (the thick and fertile sand) but even though groundwork was made, without the proper maintenance and vigilance, the weeds still had a field day. The damage control and repair is very hard on the knees and back..... 8( And weeding is a job where you must get your hands dirty. The dirt finds its way to your nails and can stubbornly lodge themselves there. Was thinking about the challenges of raising kids as I thought about this. We may lay good foundation but if we don't monitor, our kids might still stray.... etc, etc.

There were many more thoughts which went through as I weeded. I ended up with a small bag of weeds. The drizzle got heavier and I went in to make a cup of tea to go with my book (Eat, Pray, Love); it was nice sitting on the swing, reading, accompanied by the sound of running water from my fish pond, and chimes from my need-to-change wind chime, caressed by the cool north wind which blows at this time of the year.... It's a nice change, going back to the greens... especially at this time of the year, when sitting outside is possible.

Free Computers...

Gathered this from the announcement made over the PA yesterday. It seems quite a number of students at school will be given free laptops! Some prerequisites; parents must earn less than 3K, students have no record of discipline problems at school, good results (meaning in the top 3 classes but where I am students in the 3rd class can be quite weak academically) and no computer ownership at home.

Free laptops... what will kids do with them? Without a broadband connection, there is a strong likelihood that it will be turned into a gaming console. I mean, how likely will the parents spend money on internet connection, unless free ownership of a laptop becomes an impetus to subscribe. Cos without it how fun can it be for a teenager to be 'playing' with a word processor or spreadsheet. But one might argue that he might be hooked onto graphic designing and editing... but that's a long shot.

Free laptops... will that mean more visits to places with wi-fi connection? Will this encourage a new spate of lepak-ing, at those places offering free wi-fi connection?But perhaps this is good to help menjana ekonomi for the upscale kedai kopi? So is it safe to assume that kids will be spending more time hanging out of their homes? After all with a laptop in hand, what is to stop a MPOG rampage?

And parental control. Kids can always tell parents they have no right to tell them what to do with the laptop. After all, "school give wan". Parents might have extra headaches dealing with their kids.

Free computer... I've no idea whether the kids must keep the computers at school or have the freedom to take them home. But if it's the latter, I wonder what 'educational' value there is. I wonder about accountability too... The last time the gahmen gave the PPSMI teachers computers, many of them ended up as gaming consoles for their children too... 8)

I don't even give my children their own personal computers to use. They use the main unit in the hall, in plain sight. I think the tumultuous teenage years will pose a big challenge to monitoring. Laptops are way too mobile, way to easy for secret viewings. And it's easy to hook up to the Net via the mobile phone too. There are various packages available now for short term use.

But above all, anything free.... will we appreciate them more? We make university entrance easier and look what's happening to the ranking of our universities. Look at the kind of graduates we're producing. We lower the required marks for our public exams and now we have so many A students that it's now very difficult to tell what quality really is. Our politicians keep telling us our standard of education is good but read around and you find that under all those glossy report, much is not well. Freebies... how many of us can honestly say that we jaga the freebies like we would the things we buy with our own sweat and toil???

And the final pondering... is anyone making a buck out of this? The same money might as well be used to upgrade the physical classrooms.

On another topic but also to do with our edu system. This is taken from another blog... and it's something which many teachers talk about, the lowering of marks to give a semblance of quality when it is actually not there.

Petang tadi saya berkesempatan minum dan makan roti canai dengan beberapa orang kawan yang bekerja sebagai guru. Mendengar daripada topik perbualan mereka, kisah dan cerita yang berlaku di dalam sistem pendidikan negara ini amat membimbangkan saya. Daripada markah lulus (passing mark) untuk subjek Sains dan Matematik yang diubah-ubah untuk mencapai target peratusan lulus sehinggalah kepada soalan UPSR yang bocor hampir setiap tahun.

Menurut seorang kawan saya ini, beberapa pelajar yang mendapat keputusan yang sangat cemerlang seperti mendapat "A" di dalam semua subjek di dalam peperiksaan UPSR mereka telah diterima masuk ke sekolah berasrama penuh, tetapi selepas beberapa bulan, mereka dinasihatkan supaya menukar ke sekolah biasa kerana didapati masih tidak menguasai asas pembacaan, penulisan dan pengiraan. Bayangkan, pelajar yang mendapat semua "A" dalam UPSR dinasihatkan keluar dari sekolah berasrama penuh kerana tahap sebenar mereka tidak menggambarkan keputusan UPSR mereka.

Menurut kawan-kawan guru ini, projek "menolong Melayu" (kononnya) ini bermula selepas pencapaian markah yang teruk di dalam subjek Sains dan Matematik di kalangan pelajar Melayu apabila pengajaran dalam bahasa Inggeris mula-mula diperkenalkan untuk kedua-dua subjek ini. Pada mulanya, langkah menurunkan markah lulus (passing mark) dilakukan hanya sebagai 'quick fix' sahaja kerana untuk mengelakkan kejutan dan menjaga air muka jabatan dan kementerian pendidikan. Tetapi amalan mengubah-mengubah markah lulus sudah menjadi budaya dan mula sebati di dalam sistem. Menurut kawan-kawan guru ini, mereka terkejut bagaimana ramai murid yang mereka mengajar setiap hari boleh mendapat "A" di dalam peperiksaan sebenar UPSR sedangkan markah kebiasaan yang diperolehi sepanjang ujian dan peperiksaan percubaan hanya sekitar 25% sahaja.

Menurut kawan-kawan guru, golongan atasan di dalam Jabatan Pendidikan amat menjaga "KPI" mereka yang berdasarkan kepada peratusan kelulusan dan juga peratusan mendapat "A". Lagi pun ini untuk "membantu Melayu", kata mereka.

Penyakit ini ditambah juga oleh satu barah yang lain, iaitu soalan peperiksaan UPSR yang bocor setiap tahun. Kebocoran kertas soalan UPSR inilah yang menghasilkan pelajar yang layak masuk ke sekolah berasrama penuh, tetapi masih terkial-kial untuk menulis dan membaca. Menurut kawan-kawan guru ini, 10 tahun yang lepas, mereka senang untuk meramalkan pelajar yang akan mendapat keputusan yang cemerlang atau yang gagal di dalam UPSR kerana keputusan peperiksaan sebenar juga lebih menyerupai keputusan ujian dan peperiksaan percubaan yang dilakukan oleh pihak sekolah. Tetapi pada hari ini, keputusan UPSR mengejutkan mereka. Pelajar yang tidak pernah lulus di dalam peperiksaan di sekolah sepanjang tahun tiba-tiba mendapat "A" di dalam UPSR.

Menurut kawan-kawan guru ini, kebiasaanya Terengganu ialah negeri di mana bermulanya soalan UPSR yang bocor. Ini kerana kertas peperiksaan UPSR akan tiba lebih awal di atas pulau-pulau yang mempunyai sekolah-sekolah. Saya tidak tahu samada polis juga bersubahat kerana kertas peperiksaan ini disimpan di balai polis.

Mampus lah kita macam ni...