Musings about Teaching

Am beginning to lose faith in the system. Thinking perhaps it is time to throw in the towel. People who know me laugh at me when I tell them that, saying that's not me. Lol! I guess they forget that here is a limit called 'survival' and when that is breached it's just survival from then on. We are generally expected to be conforming.. either to a set of values, image for example.

My last few months have been a rollercoaster of sorts because of a teacher bully case who was my colleague. Having believed that such behaviour should not be tolerated by anyone, I foolishly stood up. And even when the signals were there that our value system has changed, I still steadfastly voiced out for action. But still that didn't deter me because I felt kids needed an advocate... for the right reasons. And so, I wasn't too perturbed even by the fact that I was transferred by a system that went against its own for something so serious like a teacher bullying students. I guess too verbal bullying is okay... the message from all those people with pangkat seems to indicate so.

Then recently, an academic cluster of excellence school, suffered a drop in its SPM results. The drop was marked enough for certain quarters to voice displeasure. And suddenly, there was this flurry of teachers being transferred. We suddenly began hearing teachers with good credentials and from the non-bumi race being transferred from their respective schools into the cluster school. Now these were Guru Cemerlang, teachers with C2 in their CPT exams (for English), teachers who were 'acknowledged' as being good by proof of APC.... Their schools are those normal day schools which struggle with less than sterling students. The cluster school meanwhile gets selected students with excellent results in the UPSR.

This is where it gets really interesting. For years, many of us were reminded that all teachers are the same in terms of ability. But this whole incident smacks a peculiarity that defies that perception. Suddenly we have this transfers of non-bumi teachers into a cluster school who over the years have been seen a decline in its non-bumi students as well as teachers. And of course, in the process of the transfers, you have bumi teachers who had to be transferred out to make way for former. And this takes place in March, at a time all schools have set into a routine.... not forgetting to the teachers on transfer who now find their very own lives disrupted to.

Then yesterday, I saw the extra classes list. The weather has been very punishing of late. Temperatures soaring to 38-39 degrees Centigrades in the afternoons, less than desirable conditions of the class because of the lack of fans as well as the design of the school which makes it into a perfect heat trapper, in the pursuit of CGPA, there is this demand for extra class. Now why does the admin of a school demand extra classes without consulting the teachers? And even in some cases where teachers insist that they do not want to hold the classes, they are forced upon them?

Of late, Principals keep reminding the teachers that they need to carry out these Program Peningkatan (read that as forced free tuition to be given by teachers after school hours) because PPD/JPN will demand an explanation from them if the results drop. So holding a Program Peningkatan will be proof that something has been done.

And that's where too I think we miss another point. The Program Peningkatan in most schools, I suspect is not running. Teachers are too tired. Students too. The classrooms are uncomfortable. We are making kids stay back after 7-8 hours of enforced learning in sweltering heat. Holding these extra classes are just not effective without proper rest.

Teaching time during school hours... how much of that is actually happening??? How much of it is wasted? Yet we tax the teachers without realising that it's the heart of the teacher for the students that actually makes the world of difference.

The heart of a teacher, the effort put into moulding a kid and imparting values... those are the important things. Yet what I am seeing, is a system lost in its own labyrinth, one that is of its own making. A system that has been eaten away by its own policies of segregating and compromising.

An illustration. In the teaching of languages for example, a student is supposed to learn a few short stories, poems and novels. So, what is a teacher supposed to do? Teaching novel is always one of the more difficult thing to do. So what I am now being made aware is there are teachers who are clueless how to get students to read those novels. Yet the school admin breathe down hard on them to produce results. So what some teachers do is they give the question to the students before the exam, sometimes complete with the answer. Students sit for the school exams, get good scores, marks look good on the score sheet... teacher gets breathing space.

One would think that the public exam should be able to weed these students out. Yet, as a teacher of almost 3 decades, I am constantly surprised by the number of As and passes that I  seem to be hearing from students who actually do not show those qualities of a Cemerlang student. A student who has trouble writing cohesive sentences now can score A and even A+. And so, we tap ourselves on our shoulders and tell the world how great our students are and how effective our efforts are.

But that all stops when these same students enter the job market. We begin to hear laments from the market about how incompetent or unmovable these now young adults are. This shouldn't be as the students were A scorers in the public exams. Where did we go wrong? Have we compromised so much that we no longer are able to discern what quality actually is? Or are we just proverbial ostriches with our heads in the sand?

And so, in trying to maintain grades, more rote learning, more extra classes... more of everything that produces mechanical thinking and disinterest in knowledge...

We did have a good education system once... in an era without the need of PAK21 models. Those days we had thinking teachers but more importantly, teachers who were dedicated and taught. We didn't need extra class.... and we didn't turn out too badly. There weren't laments from the employers about the quality of graduates... if there were laments, it was from the graduates who lament about the market not being able to provide employment opportunities because of economic downturns......