Thursday, February 26, 2009

Teachers going mad teaching subjects in English?!

Couldn’t believe I’m seeing this on national newspaper:
http://www.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/2/26/nation/3352480&sec=nation

The question posed by the assemblyman, Dr Khalil Idham Lim Abdullah, is…
“The teachers themselves have a poor command of English. How do we expect them to teach their students?”

Indeed… the question is, how on earth do these ‘teachers’ qualify as educators if they have poor command of English?

An average Malaysian kid goes through at least 11 years of schooling with English as a compulsory subject. Even if this kid grew up to attend a local institution of higher learning, he’ll be exposed to lectures conducted in English, though in some classes students are given the option to answer the examination questions in Malay or English. Nevertheless, lectures are conducted in English (yes, I have the ‘right’ to comment on this as I attended a local university).

Okay, so they have very basic command of English. That’s good enough. Why are they so stressed out? The language or terms involved in the Science and Mathematics subjects aren’t rocket science level ya know (again I’m in a position to comment on this as I’m in the education publishing sector)…

And one wonders why parents send their children abroad to further their studies…
Buck up teachers! How can we let you educate our children when you’re facing such ‘phenomenal’ problem? Also, the teachers’ training and selection should be stricter to improve the education quality.

Now, I better get back to my 2-methylbuta-1,3-diene…

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