Further to my earlier post on deciding which school to send your child, here is Part 1 to it on Sekolah Kebangsaan Schools in Malaysia, highlighting the good, the bad and the real life stories.

I attended a Sekolah Kebangsaan from Primary One to Primary Three ONCE UPON A TIME. I was a St Mary’s Girl, but that was WAYyyyyyy……..back in……..crap, should I tell you the year? That would reveal really how old I am, wouldn’t it? OK, let’s just say, a very long time ago. Like in the late 70s. Don’t be shocked.

Being in a Kebangsaan School was great. Then. It still had it’s ups and downs, but generally we were happy kids, learning……I remember vividly always missing the Bas Sekolah when I was in Primary One. For some reason, the bus driver always missed me! Could it have been because I was so tiny? And thankfully, KL was still relatively safe then because the school gates were open and anyone could have taken me, really. I’d wait for hours till the late evening when someone would come pick me up from school. I remember being the only kid left at school. Sometimes there were one or two others. Once, I was so sick after school (left behind by the bus again)I was throwing up everywhere on the school grounds and remember this lovely classmate (I can’t even remember her name now) helping me. I remember being in a class of close to 50, the teachers not really knowing us by name, but it didn’t matter so much. I had friends, we played high jump with those rubber band ropes and I would charge this Indian girl (Mayami? Minami? Can’t remember her name) 20-50 cents every time she asked me to complete her homework. School toilets weren’t first class and stank most of the time, but we survived. We had concerts, ate at the canteen (those days 20 cents for a small bowl of plain curry mee!) and did our homework. I remember always being the first to the third girl in my year, just because I remember my mother saying something about it, but all that meant nothing to me then.

At Primary Four, my parents moved me out to a local private school, which you will hear about in another post.

That was my experience of a Sekolah Kebangsaan at Lower Primary.

In this day and age however, after countless changes (seriously, can someone do some research and check how many book changes there has been since my days in Primary One???), the experience at a Sekolah Kebangsaan is quite different. You are still just a number (unless you really make yourself known). The concerts they hold are still of the same quality (20 years later) so that hasn’t changed either. The uniforms haven’t changed, nor have the facilities……but the two most single things that HAVE changed? They are the teachers and the syllabus. The good old crop of traditional teachers (who graduated as MCE students with English as their Primary language) are all old and retired. There is a whole new batch of teachers who are just not the same. In fact, starting from my brother’s year onwards, if you make an assessment on the level of English and students as a whole from that generation who graduated from Sekolah Kebangsaan, they are of poorer quality than my batch, for instance. Just look around you.

Why has this happened?

For one, the standard of English dropped because the whole syllabus got converted into Bahasa Malaysia and although many of us still speak and write decent English, the steep descent of the English language learning began some time in the nineties. And then a lazy life culture promoted lazy teachers, low teacher wages further demotivated teachers, and now, we’re crushed with the domino-ed snowball effect that rolled down upon us and OUR kids have to suffer for it. Yet, the people who are in charge of these decisions are not affected. It really isn’t fair.

Now, we have stories of teachers being absent from school a whole lot and when they are absent, there is no replacement teacher so the kids are just left to their own devices. Even if there is a teacher to ‘watch’ them, she is merely there to ‘watch’ them and this is all precious time wasted. There are stories of gangterism, teenage kids as young as 12 bringing knives to school, drugs, bullying. There are cases of male teachers who are sex offenders STILL teaching in schools that your children go to, I kid you not. At even the BEST Sekolah Kebangsaan in the country (for I’m not sure which year, last year? year before last? Anyway, they’re pretty high up there all the time), the English teacher has been known to ask parents if they could converse in Bahasa Malaysia instead. It’s appalling. The Ministry of Education acknowledges that the standard of English of teachers in their schools are rubbish and seriously, I think the plan is to keep the Rakyat DUMB. The dumber the people are, the more the Government can manipulate the country without question. What do you think?

Further more, what do your kids learn with the lackadaisical attitude of many teachers at Sekolah Kebangsaan? Apart from the actual Malaysian syllabus that teaches you NOT to think (well, hardly), stereotyping concepts like you can only eat bread for breakfast, women grow into housewives and how Datuk Jimmy Choo and our cosmonaut are household names (which if and when you knew more, you would really beg to differ) etc; your kids will also pick up the LAZY attitude of teachers (for those that are) and the kampung way they speak (with all due respect, this is not acceptable in international business) and other ‘care less’ (tidak apa) attitudes that Government School teachers portray. Of course, anyone can portray such attitudes. Remember that.

There are very, very few GOOD Government School teachers these days. If at all, they are from the ‘old’ batch of teachers who by now, have almost retired. Find me a good Government School teacher from the ‘new’ batch and I will make sure she gets known.

There are good points sending your kids to a Government School with the top being that it probably allows for the most financial freedom! Secondly, your kids are forced to mingle with students of all walks of life which is not to say that this cannot happen if you so choose to expose your kids to the same. But certainly being around kids with broken school bags will make a child feel more fortunate even if a bit although I must say these days, even in Government Schools unless you go to the Government Schools in rural areas, you hardly come across students who are really poor.

A recommendation from an old school Government School teacher is that if you can afford to, you’re probably better off sending your kids for an education where you can be assured of teacher quality. From what she has observed, teachers today do not have the same goals as before in the 1960s and 70s and do not have the childrens’ absolute best interests at heart. The Government does very little to change this and if indeed you need or want to send your child to a Government School, then make sure you are strong with your values systems at home because it would be far fetched expecting the school to bring up your child with strong values. And as far as an education is concerned, it is up to you as parents how ‘educated’ you want your child to be. Again, don’t expect too much from a free Malaysian education. In the 1980s and early 90s, yes, you could have gotten a decent one. In this new Millennium, no, you will not get the same and that is a fact.

Of course, you have the very rare occurrence of a Government School scholar, but it is just that. A rare occurrence. And that’s not to say your child cannot be one too. All it takes is DAMN HARD WORK and a lot of brown nosing.

Just to give you some perspective, I graduated from the Bartlett School of Architecture (best rated place by the Guardian UK to study Architecture) in London of University College London (currently ranked Number Four in the global rankings of world universities, changes all the time but always amongst the top 5) with an architectural degree, yet I could not get a place in one of the local Malaysian Universities here for a post-graduate degree. Why in the world did I want to pursue a further education locally? Boyfriend reasons la….young and stupid then. Continuing a PhD in the UK would not only have cost my Dad lots more cash, it would also have caused me separation anxiety from my then boyfriend. *now everyone will want to know which boyfriend this was, haha*

The Architects’ Journal once did a poll of the top 100 UK Architectural practices, asking British employers whom they thought were the most desirable graduates and UCL came out tops. 95 places are given each year to students around the world including the UK for Architecture alone and half of these students drop out or change courses by the end of the first year. When I graduated, I was part of a 40 member team and the only Malaysian. There was one other Singaporean (my best friend, Samantha) and another girl from Hong Kong.

I would like to say that all this top University thing is hogwash to me, because you could be from Harvard and be an idiot and you could be from nowhere and still be incredibly amazing, but there probably is a little substance how they do their rankings short of the dean sleeping with the said body. That happens!

My guess is that out of all the applicants for the local University that I applied to, I was probably qualified enough to be offered a place, don’t you think? So why did they NOT offer me a place?

I had the wrong name.

They were done for the quota of non-Bumi applicants for the year. I kid you not.

 

 

 

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