I spent the whole day playing another adventure games -- the famous Mystery of Time and Space (MOTAS). It was really cool and fun. I've completed the adventure and am now looking at other clones of the game.
My aunt is the vice principal of a Chinese primary school. She asked me a few weeks back if i wanna earn some extra money by giving tuition on English to the teachers of her school. She told me that the teachers really need help in the language. For instance, one of the teachers corrected a student's composition from "my father drives to work everyday" to "my father drives car to work everyday". Although the second sentence wasn't entirely wrong, the noun "car" wasn't needed in the context of that composition. What the teacher did was a direct translation from Chinese to English (我的爸爸驾车去做工, wo de ba ba jia che qu zuo gong).
I declined her invitation, not because i don't need extra money (actually i need all that i can get), just that i didn't have the confidence to teach them English. My English wasn't that fantastic either so how could i possibly teach the teachers?! I wouldn't wanna be liable for ruining the future of our students.
I've read and heard before about our teachers' low competency in English language. This is also one of the major problems that our government needs to address in the implementation of teaching Science and Mathematics in English for vernacular schools. I'm not against using English as the medium for these subjects. I'm just concerned that our teachers are not ready and in the end the new system may just fail to improve on all areas which it set out to achieve.
Every year, we would see the revival of the debate about the issue of teaching Science and Mathematics in English. The Chinese educationists from Dong Jiao Zhong (董教总) were among the strongest opponents of this new system.
I had 5 years of education in the largest Chinese Independent High School in Malaysia, which had also adopted the system of teaching Science and Mathematics in English, and thus was crucified by some of these Chinese educationists. As the alumni of the school (even though i didn't graduate from there), i don't feel good in seeing the criticism. Sometimes i can't help but wonder if politics isn't one of the factors in their opposition. Is it really only about the language, or is it something more?
I remember that back in high school, our school principal would always remind us of how difficult it was (and still is) for the 60+ Chinese High Schools to survive in this country. Fund raising for the school was kinda like part of our curriculum. We were also constantly reminded that we, as the students of Chinese High School, must be extra careful in our behaviours because any misconduct may jeopardize the reputation and existence of Chinese schools.
It seems rather sad that political crusade was blended into our educational system and instilled into our young minds, but on retrospect, it wasn't entirely a bad thing. Everything in this country can be molded into political agenda so what we had was just an early taste of how the real world works. Hopefully, that had done us more good than harm.
Labels: opinion
