Our students need skills, never mind the system Izzat A.

Noor
December 19, 2013
Let me clarify that there is nothing wrong with our current education system but there is an
essential component that is missing which destroys the very strength of our learning institutions.
Education is no longer a process of learning and acquiring knowledge as an individual
responsibility. It has turned into a society's competition to see who gets better result to pursue
high status and prestigious careers.
It doesn't matter that the students won't live up to the expectations of the real world or their
internal compartments are poorly assembled. All we care about is that the students come off
with Grade A stamped on them. We have become unaware of the main reason we seek
knowledge and focus only on the outcome of the process.
Like any other process, the best results are the outcome of some similar and repetitive
movements, often seen at factories.
The faster we adapt to it, the better result we get. Therefore, learning is not a process of
increasing knowledge anymore but how effective can the students take the information and put
them on papers, be it that they never actually understood what they were learning all this while.
The important step to our current learning process is how fast can we make our students
memorise everything in the book. We care more about the performance measurability than the
student's individual capacity.
The lessons learned from this problem was made clear to me when I see how my sister pursues
her knowledge. My sister is undoubtedly smart. She maintains her record of 4.0 at MARA Junior
Science College and has a glorifying record of 100% in math since standard one (she will sit for
her SPM in 2014).
The problem with her is her limited exposure to activities that will help to build her
confidence. She reads and study all the time. She's lacking skills and as creme de la creme as
she is in her report book, she is not an employable candidate.
In many countries, students are exposed to social and communication skills from a very
young age through performances, competition, artistic interpretation and self
expressions.
As a result, the students' thinking skills will develop as they go along. In contrast, our
education system managed to give what we need to become just about anything in singularity,
but it has failed to provide us what we need singularly as a student to become everything at
once.
The students, on the other hand, are becoming more passive, inactive and unaware of current
issues and lacking general knowledge as they are not required to ask further and deeper than
what was set to come out in examinations.
We ask how we can raise academic standards and the quality of students we produce but we fail
to question whether they have what it takes to survive in the future.
We ask where can we find all-rounded students with the ability to speak and present themselves
well but we ignore to dig and explore the hidden talents in our students.
We ask how to create a better system to enable students to think better but stifle the process
and conditions that are most likely to produce it.

We like to believe that the education system needs to improve because it's failing despite all the
evidence that the system is blocking so many students from within. We need to remove the wall
and smash the barrier.
The ways we implement the system to students has limited their capability to obtain a wider
range of knowledge because we have given exactly what they need to answer questions in
examinations.
To prove my point, I am not good in calculation and I struggled with math in school.I spent more
time doing math exercises than I did with other subjects.
By the final month before PMR, I bought five books from different publishers for every subject
and did them all.
For the first two or three books, I have familiarised myself with the pattern of the questions and
by the sixth book, I can easily answer the questions because they have become repetitive and
obvious.
I got 8As but if you ask me what I learned in middle school, I can honestly say that I remember
nothing.
If I can propose a new element to enhance the student's learning experience, I would definitely
make everyone to do the activities that I got to do in school.
Most schools pick students who seem to be able to win competition and train them and these
students are the same faces each year until they leave school. Everyone else missed the
opportunity, so why don't we train everybody?
They don't have to like it nor do they have to compete, but they have to get through it and feel it
for themselves. By introducing skills in the learning process from an early age, students will be
able to recognise what they can do and what are their weaknesses and polish their strength to
be better.
Our students, no matter how smart they are on papers, are lacking skills in general. Thinking
skills, speaking skills, writing skills, communication skills and other skills and these skills can only
be installed and developed by giving everyone a fair chance to experience it themselves.
If you want to be a sprinter, you don't think about sprinting on the track. You have to go to the
field and run. If you want to be a writer, you cannot sit and think about writing, you have to
write.
Similarly, if we want our students to think outside what the examination questions are, we have
to make them think outside the perimeter of textbooks by doing things. We need to give them
the space they needed.
We don't have to waste another huge amount of money to investigate what's wrong with our
system and waste another million to create a new curriculum.
All of us can agree that the most cliche complaints employers said about our graduates and
students are the lack of their skills and experience and we cannot expect them to get these skills
and experience in the short months between SPM break and the beginning of university years by
working as a waiter or cashier or during a short-term internship.
We have to nurture the skills from school and is there a better way to do it if not by involving
everyone?

Note: Congratulations to all PMR candidates. Straight As or not, what's important is how you
value your knowledge.
Starting now, focus on what you want to be in the future and start working for it.
Never mind what your SPM results will be, because it only helps you to get a scholarship and fast
track (and scholarships and fast tracks cannot determine your success in future) so brush up
your language and communication skills, get a good CV, be active (not necessarily in sports) and
aim for what you really want to be.
Don't settle for anything less just because people tell you that's what you are worth. If you want
to be a doctor, and you get D in Chemistry or Biology, there's always another way, and there are
plenty of chances.
Figure out what you want to be now because this age of 16 or 17 is vital. If you spend your youth
looking for girlfriend or how to bully your juniors, you'll regret it later.
Plan what university you want to enter and prepare yourself if you aim for those in the Ivy
League.
Get ready for A-Level, SAT (or LSAT), TOEFL and IELST. If you prepare yourself for these exams,
you are preparing yourself for SPM as well.
It doesn't hurt to dig deeper when you do your revision. Instead of textbooks, get the A-level
books. They have exactly what you need, and more.
Write often and find some close and good teachers to write recommendation letters for you.
Set your priority straight, determine your weaknesses and strength. Polish up on your strength
and try to improve on your weaknesses if you can.
Figure out what you can do and what you cannot do and if you have any will to change it. List out
your dreams and see if they match with your capabilities. If they don't, would you work harder to
make it happen?
If you think you couldn't, find other alternatives and make back-up plans. By 18, if you don't
have a plan, and you don't know what you want, you are messing up your own future.
December 19, 2013.