What do you think of the cause of Malaysia' poor education system according to Microsoft Malaysia's national technology officer Dr Dzaharudin Mansor?
Whilst it's true that British colonial education systems in their various colonies were geared towards producing civil servants, police and military officers who would follow orders of their colonial master, however being a Microsoft man, his views are quite likely favourable to the American education system.
However, do American school students perform better, when other aspects such as discipline, study ethic and so forth are taken into account?
For instance, in Malaysia, students of Chinese-language vernacular schools are often regarded as being better than students in Malaysia's national schools.
Also, students of mission schools such as the Lasallian schools believe that they are a cut above students from other mission schools, secular-oriented schools and national schools, even though the curriculum and teaching methods in these schools are largely based on the British colonial education system, with an Irish and French touch.
However, whilst the American education system and teaching methods may have enabled U.S. leadership and dominance in computing and information technology, however Britain and the rest of Europe were responsible for major inventions and innovations which came out of the industrial revolution, whilst today, Germany and Europe are leading in developing technologies and systems for the Fourth Industrial Revolution or Industry 4.0, whilst the Japanese, whose education system is said to be very much based upon rote learning and memorising facts, yet produces some of the most economical, yet quality and reliable cars, as well as consumer electronics and some professional electronic and optical equipment.
China today is leading the world in the number of patents in the Fifth-Generation (5G) cellular communications technology and in high-speed trains, whilst students in Singapore, which shares an almost identical British colonial legacy as Malaysia regularly come tops in PISA test scores.
So how true is Dr. Dzaharudin Mansor's assertion that Malaysia's education system and methods inherited from the British colonialists is responsible for the "lack of creativity" in our students compared to American school students in general?
Or have our education standards declined due to Malaysia having embraced some of the American teaching philosophies and methods in our school system?
Whilst I generally agree with Dr. Dzaharudin Mansor that Malaysians, and South-East Asians in general lack creativity and imagination, however there are other reasons for this as well besides our British colonial legacy.
I believe that these other reasons include legacies of our culture, traditions, lack of availability of funds to finance research & development activities, lack of domestic market demand for Malaysian-made products, and the dominance of hardware, software, systems and solutions by giant foreign multinationals upon the mindset of Malaysians.
The Free Malaysia Today article follows below:-
Education system doesn’t inspire creative thinking, says Microsoft man
FMT Reporters - September 28, 2019 11:46 PM
PETALING JAYA: A national technology officer with Microsoft Malaysia has lamented that the education system does not inspire creative thinking and stifles innovation.
Dr Dzaharudin Mansor said Malaysia’s education system followed the “300-year old colonial British system”, which he said had the aim of producing officers to obey orders so that these officers could be sent to countries controlled centrally from England.
However the United Kingdom had since moved away from such a system and had introduced relevant courses which were more suitable for the current work demand.
“However, Malaysia still continues the colonial British education system which does not inspire creative and critical thinking.
“We are not taught to challenge the status quo and this is one of the reasons why our culture of innovation is not maturing,” he said at the “Asian Tiger 4th Talk” organised by Akademi Harimau Asia yesterday.
Also present was Dr Azree Shahrel Ahmad Nazri, the president of Artificial Intelligence Malaysia.
Dzaharudin said the future of learning lay in “flipped classrooms” whereby students will be taught with the help of computers. He explained that in a “flipped classroom”, students watch lectures and take part in discussions online.
Students would come to classes only to focus on higher order thinking and more complex aspects of learning guided by teachers.
“Teachers, on the other hand, ascend from teaching to engaging with students on more sophisticated learning. This is when teachers can challenge students to be more critical thinking and creative.”
Dzaharudin said the job market, especially in the technology industry, was being disrupted by smaller and agile companies.
“We need to change our mindset to stay ahead of disruption.”
END
Taught with help of computers!!!!
Hee hee, ha ha, ho ho! Perhaps you may first want to donate some PCs to my old school's ICT learning lab, which is short of enough working computers for the ICT students, before proposing such hifalutin stuff such as "flipped classrooms".
I've had to suffer the psychological torture of having to cover too many of such conferences, seminars and presentations since I began writing about ICT in Malaysia 25 years ago and more often than not, most grandiose proposals on stage remained within the four walls of the splendid and opulent conference and seminar halls.
Going by what I was told about e-learning and computers in education during the early days of Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC Malaysia) initiative, every schools student would have a computer on their desk by now.
However, having visited my old alma mater each year since 2010, I have seen no computers on desks in the classrooms, which look just as they were when I was there, whilst the science lab looked exactly the same as it was 50 years when I was a student there, except for the addition of an overhead projector.
C'mon guys! Give me a break. I wasn't born yesterday.
Yours truly
IT.Scheiss
