amanda teoh

life is fascinating

Weakness in Malaysian education system

Posted by: amanda on: July 7, 2010

Seeing first hand in Malaysian education system myself and now seeing my children going through the same system, I believe there are significant weaknesses in the system.

Students often are required to memorize facts and formula in their classes. Often teachers gave a lot of facts and formula for students to memorize.  The students will then be tested with the memorizing skills through multiple choice questions and short answer type of questions.  How many smart people do the system produce each year?  How come there are no smart Malaysians who invented the newest car, the newest technology.  All we see is students who are really good in memorizing facts/formula while do not know how to apply their skills to solve tomorrow’s problem.

Another related problem is students are often asked to learn how to write exams instead of learning. How many parents send their children to tuition centre hopefully they can do well in exams.  How many teachers teach their students how to write exams instead of passing knowledge to the students.  No doubt doing well in exams are important, but it should not be overlooked since doing well in exams does not guarantee one’s success in their lives.

Ranking system is another big problem. Students are ranked each year among their grade and they are placed in classes from the highest score students to the lowest score students.  I think the rational is to facilitate teaching when all students in a class is of about the same “standard”.  This maybe a good idea, but what about students who are late comers, who does not excel well in later years.  These students will be placed in lower ranking and in lower grade classes.  They may not ever have a chance to come back (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streaming_%28education%29).

Another problem of the education system is the huge amount of school works being assigned to students each day. Students are required to do lots of homeworks.  I know my daughter may take 3-4 hours a day to do homeworks and she is only 8 years old.  Homeworks is good, but too much does not make your children smarter, in fact, it is taking the time away from them to study and to do other outdoor activities.

However, the root cause of all the problems is the higher education entry requirements. To get to form 6, one has to score many A’s in SPM and a minimum of C in Malay.  Once a student got into form 6, he/she spent two years studying it, and if he/she gets a good result in STPM, he may be admitted to local university.  This sounds fine in theory, but it is the biggest flaw in the system.  Assuming that the student met the minimum requirement to enter university, he/she may not get admitted to the faculty he/she likes to pursue due to the infamous racial quote system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issues_in_Malaysian_Education#Racial_Quotas_in_Universities).

I do not deny that pressure students receive from parents are making the matters worse.  Parents are so focus on exams and it is not uncommon to see my daughter’s classmates get punished by their parents for not meeting their standards.  However, the major reason for this competitiveness are caused by the higher education entry requirements, huge school workload, ranking system at school, and teaching methods.

Other links:

爱渐渐离开 and 给我你的爱 by 原梓霏

Posted by: amanda on: June 29, 2010

Love her songs



白头到老

Posted by: amanda on: June 28, 2010

what a good way to start a weekend #weekend

Posted by: amanda on: June 26, 2010

OK … the weekend started really well: we all went to the beach across from our house to walk.  I do not know remember I do this often — running with my children on the beach.  They thought that they could beat their mom easily, haha, they forgot that I’ve been jogging a lot in china.

It is so rewarding seeing them playing with themselves, running around, so happy.   The beach used to be a lot cleaner and a lot less people.  When I grow up, there was no these hotels on the beach.  The closest hotel was Novotel (I think it used to call something else, cannot recall its original name).

It is also so nice to see mom and dad walking slowly side by side.  I think they deserve all the personal time they have.  They worked so hard all their lives, and now they can enjoy their lives. Throughout their lives, they went through a lot to raise all 3 of us.  Especially Dad is coming from a very poor family, he worked all of his life to get to this point, I always admire him!  He is my hero.

Sis: Dad suggested to visit you in Nov/Dec school holiday.   It is a good idea, I will join if they are going.   You need a bigger house!!  And we want a real chirstmas tree this year, a big one!

please rob me #pleaserobme

Posted by: amanda on: June 22, 2010

The idea of this post came from my beloved sis.  She was complaining that her husband was so crazy about mobile phone and location (GPS type) service that he tells the world (internet) where he is everywhere he goes.  This may sound cool, people knows where you are all the time.  I can see this be really helpful when

  • thieves go online to check whether the owner of a particular house is gone on vacation so they can take their own sweet time to “move” your belongings on your behalf
  • your boss wants to know exactly how long you are having lunch while claiming you’re meeting client at their office
  • your children want to know when parents will get home to stop them from watching tv, playing games, etc
  • your coworkers want to know where you are so they can provide evidence to your boss you come to work at 10am and leave at 3pm
  • your husband/wife wants to know where you are (that might not be such a bad idea)

OK, there are so many *good* reasons to use this type of service.  Why not everyone using this service?  I’m predicting that soon there will be new website tells thieves which house to rob or where to kidnap a rich people.

Instead of looking at this type of service of publishing your location, we should look at it differently — how about “please rob me”, “please kidnap me”, “please follow me”, etc.

cameron highland trip and more

Posted by: amanda on: June 18, 2010

OK, the trip was not too fruitful (literary).

We did not leave till around 12pm, thanks to my lovely dad.  He went out with my brother that morning to seberang and told us to pick him up there.  We (2 cars) got there around 10:30am, but my dad was busy.  So we waited and waited.  We ended up waiting for him at a kopitiam, had lunch there, and he finally showed up close to 12pm.  My mom was embarrassed, but in laws were understanding. We got into the hotel around 4pm.  It is a slow drive.

Children were not impressed, they find cameron highland boring.  We did the usual site seeing, went to flowers/fruit farm, went to the market on sunday morning, had steamboat dinner (a very good one, due to cold weather), we got a few dozens of rosses, etc.  We left cameron around 3pm on sunday and did not get home till around 8pm (why took so long?  because we stopped for dinner and toilet stop).

I can say cameron highland is our special place.  During school holiday when I was form 5, husband, me, and 6-7 friends went to cameron highland for a holiday break.  As smart as we were, we did not book hotel and thanks to school holiday, we stayed in the car that night in cameron highland.  Guys always took that opportunity to gamble, and girls just chit chat in the other car.  This must be like 18 years ago.  Gosh, I’m so old now.  Soon will turn 40, 50, 60 … oh I don’t even want to think about it.

Husband went back to china thursday morning after a few days delay.  Feel a little lost when he left.   My sis told me she hates airport.  Now I can understand what she meant, I don’t like airport too.  Allow me to flash back my memory … when we were little, we love to go to the penang airport.  Whenever we were there, we always ordered coffee.  Back in those days, the only place can get coffee with liquid cream on the side is at the airport.  I love it very much.  I begin to mumble jumble, I don’t know what I am writing.  Other than a few things I hate about husband, I still love him very much.  I’ll join him soon.

About my other world cup post:  I do not watch world cup at all.  I was being sarcastic when I said “It is just an exciting game. After watching the game for 2 hours and the result is 0 – 0. So exciting”.  How exciting can it be after spending 2 hours in front of tv and the result is 0 – 0.  One might better spend the time in front of a piece of white paper and will have the same result at the end of 2 hours.

i like world cup, not. #ihateworldcup

Posted by: amanda on: June 11, 2010

OK, I am not planning to watch world cup games, I don’t even like football.  I do not know why everyone is talking about world cup.  It is a stupid game, a stupid ball chased by stupid people.  Well, I am too harsh.  The game itself is not stupid.  It is just a sport.  The stupid part is the people who watch them, betting with their hard earned money, spending time watching the games on TV.

Worst yet is everyone is cheering for err … where is the Malaysia team?  Don’t tell me you’re cheering for England or Mexico, what do these teams have anything to do with you?  Or you like the England team so much because ….. err, for no reason?

Sadly: Billions across Asia to watch World Cup

Stop talking about world cup to me, I do not like to hear anymore about it or know anything about it.  Stop telling me your team is Brazil or England.  Please leave me alone.  Get a life.

singapore trip

Posted by: amanda on: June 8, 2010

We went to singapore last saturday morning and came back monday evening.  The trip was fun, especially for the children.  We went to many places, among them, these are places enjoyed the most by the children: science centre, sentosa, and the zoo.  The weather was hot but very good for the kids when we were at sentosa.

We are going to rest for a few days and we will drive to caeron highland saturday morning, along with my parents and my in laws.  I think this trip is going to be a challenge :-)     The original plan was to go to cameron with my in laws, then my dad said he wants to join us.  Don’t get me wrong, they get along fine, but when comes to grandchildren, my mother in law and my dad are totally “furious” with each other.

Sleeping…

back to penang

Posted by: amanda on: May 26, 2010

Yes, back to penang a few days ago.  Home is home, nowhere is better than home.  The only thing that I really want to do now is to spend time with my children.

why speed limit is not needed

Posted by: amanda on: April 1, 2010

We all know that we have speed limit on expressway / highway (except I think a few countries do not have speed limit, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_by_country).  We are told that speed limit is necessary to protect us and to fine people who drive too fast.  The intention is very good.  Just imagine if no speed limit, everyone can drive as fast as they want and we will see a lot less accidents.

We know that it is unlawful to own a gun in malaysia (unless have license i think).  I know that the consequences is very bad if get caught with guns.  And I know government is doing a good job by not allowing gun to be bought or sold like buying clothes.  That makes sense since it is illegal to own one, why are we allowed guns to be bought/sold.

Why it is illegal to drive faster than the speed limit, but government allows car can go faster than speed limit to be sold?  Isn’t that easier to limit what kind of car can be sold or can be driven on our highway than trying to catch people driving over speed limit?  Isn’t that a double standard when comparing this with the gun example I gave earlier.  I know double standard by government is not uncommon, we see it every day.

http://www.swivel.com/workbooks/28053-Malaysia-Traffic-Accident-Statistics

We see in 2006, 12.81 accidents per 1000 people and 1.33 death caused by accident per 1000.  Let’s assume that speeding is the cause of 50% traffic accident death, we have 1.33 / 2 = 0.665 per 1000.  Assuming that malaysia has 27,000,000 people,  that is 17,955 lives per year.   Not to mention how many injuries can be prevented by just a simple regulation change.

I talked to my husband about this idea and he says government receives a lot of tax selling cars.  True.  If government stops doing that, they will lose a lot of money.  But at the same time, they can fire a lot of traffic police because of less accidents.  Haha.  Seriously, why can’t government requires all cars sold in the country to have a device that is preventing the car from going over speed limit.  That way, government can still earns the tax, and can still fire a lot of traffic police, and 17,955 lives will be saved per year.  This is a gain-gain-gain solution.  No?

I think malaysia needs a new transport minister.  Vote for me!

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