Modern Education

I went outstation—to Keningau—and stayed the night in a budget hotel. Late this morning, I got a call from Mia. She reported that JJ had received her exam papers, and then gave me the respective scores.

I drove back to KK in the afternoon and reached home at around 5pm. Then I went for a short 5km run, came home again, had dinner, shower and now finally have the time to blog about the modern education system which my JJ is cursed to go through for the next 10 to 15 years of her life.

Now many of you who know me well would know that I am essentially a perfectionist in most of the things I do. Don't get me wrong—I'm not saying that I am perfect! Far from it! Whatever I do, I'd try my best to be very, very meticulous. I can be a pain in the neck to many people, because I'm very fussy and often insist that things are done exactly right. If I had it my way, I would like my JJ to grow up with that attitude too. But to be honest, I don't expect her to become anything like me at all. I can see it from now—that she is not that type.

Well, anyway, having gone through her exam papers, I'd like to share some interesting stuff with my readers, i.e. the kind of things they emphasise on in schools these days.

First up—a bit about her English paper. Of the 3 languages JJ is learning in school, i.e. English, Malay and Chinese, I'd say her English is many folds better than the other two. Yet her result was a big surprise to both Mia and I. She got only 86.5%! So I was particularly eager to know what went wrong. To my disappointment, I found out that she was careless enough to miss the entire last page of the question sheets which carried 10%. Oh well, I guess I'll have to work on this carelessness problem somehow. But where did she lose the rest of the points? And this is where I'd like to share one question with you all:

G. Rearrange the words to form correct sentences.

mother's / My / is / name / Joyce.

Well, it's been almost 40 years ago since I was in Primary One, and I can't remember if we had anything like this back then. Looking at this question, I can just imagine that it's like a stroll in the park for my JJ. When I was at her age, I knew hardly any English word. But anyway, I would probably write the answer like this:

And the following is an example of what I had typed out from my word processor (font: Consolas). I chose this particular font because there is a point I'm trying to make here.

Anyway, if you were the teacher, how would you grade this answer? The sentence is correctly constructed from the given words in the question. All the words are spelt correctly too. Would you say my answer deserves the full score for this question?

OK, now look at my answer again (first picture). What do you think about the first letter in the sentence? I'm referring, of course, to the letter "M" of "My". Can you find anything wrong with that "M"?

Now compare that "M" with that of the word processor (second picture). What do you think now? Still nothing?

Well, unfortunately, had I been there to answer this question, I would have failed miserably. Because my "M" is not a capital "M" in spite of the fact that it's written almost twice the height of the letter "y". The reason, according to JJ's teacher, is that the middle portion of that letter should go all the way down to the same level as the outer "legs" of that letter.

And here's how JJ wrote her answer. You can see on the extreme right "-1" in red ink, indicating how she lost a mark for this question. Absolutely ridiculous! This is the kind of knowledge she's getting from her school.

Next up—Bahasa Malaysia. Look at the following picture and consider question no. 14. The first thing I noticed about this question is that even the sentence is wrongly constructed. A better construction of the question is like this:

Bubuhkan imbuhan meN- pada kata dasar "lawat". Jawapannya ialah _____.

So which one is the correct answer—A, B or C?

As you might already guessed by now, my JJ is not so good in her Bahasa Malaysia. She is struggling to learn the language. While attempting this question, I bet she wasn't even sure what's the meaning of "lawat" (I hope she won't get it mixed up with the word "liwat"). Anyway, imagine that you don't really know the language, what would your logical guess be?

This was JJ's thought process. The question instructs her to add "imbuhan", meaning word extension, e.g. "ING" or "ED" in English. And it's very specific too—it says add "meN-" to "lawat". But the trouble is that none of the 3 options has a "men" at the start. So how to choose? The first 2 options are with "me", but the last option has a "mem" at the start. Still not good enough, but at least "mem" is the closest to "meN". So JJ chose "C", and of course she got it wrong!

Now the question we ask ourselves is: What's the "meN-" all about? It looks very much like a straightforward instruction to the kids to simply add MEN to LAWAT. Yet that is not what the teacher had intended. But then how come the "N" in the "meN-" is a capital letter when the "m" and "e" are both small letters?

Well, JJ found this question unfathomable, and so she asked mommy to explain to her. But mommy was at a lost too. So she asked the teacher to explain.

Here's the explanation by the teacher:

The "N" in "meN-" refers to a variable. The teacher said it is akin to an "integer" in maths, but I prefer the word variable. It's like saying X + Y = 6, where X and Y are the variables—the unkonwn values. The correct answer is of course "A", i.e. MELAWAT, where N = LAWAT.

I think someone should really look into our current education system. Perhaps the teachers should at least learn how to set questions properly. With what they're doing right now, I wonder if they're causing more damage rather than good to our children. What's your view on this?