The spoil of our highly successful education system

Very few students in my physics class dare to express their thought openly, even in the online forum. It is indeed a very curious fact that, in general, our university students are effectively dump and disappointingly obedient. One who thinks intensively will manifest their mental activities by having much to express. The muteness of our APEX university students must to a certain extent reflects the lack of brain activities going on between their ears. Even if some do have the residue intellectual resource to think, they will dare not opine either in the class room nor privately to their lecturers. Our obediently mute young generation is the spoil of our highly 'successful' education system which produces only high quantity of canned products that excel in nothing but following instructions. Bravo.

There are, however, surprises once a blue moon where some not-so-obedient rare breed turn vocal and make public (mostly via the online open forum) or private complains (usually via email and sms text) about my teaching and my style of teaching. But mostly I live a much trouble-free and peaceful life, thanks to our successful education system and the tradition of authoritarianism among the university lecturers, with approximately zero person-time making `trouble' by voicing out their opinions or querying me during lectures.

As a matter of principle I am always glad to know whenever a student dares to voice out his grumble openly against the apparently silent background.  For example, at times I got stuck when performing calculation on the board or making confusing statements during the lectures. What I got as a feed back from the audience is usually indifference, despite constant reminders given to the class to raise questions. Once there was an apparently annoyed student in an online open forum complained he/she is confused by my erratic teaching style. I was made pleased by this complain as finally someone dares to stand out to tell me what they think. As a matter of appreciation for his/her bold attempt I response instantaneously on the forum that “i invite u and the whole class to contribute to our collaboration in this process of mutual learning. this would be a more constructive way to rectify the matter then merely complaining about the confusion i have aroused”. However, such occasion, in which our pampered university students voice out their thought concerning the way a lecturer conduct his lecture is so rare that I can recall it with vivid clarity. As an illustrative gestimate, my experience as a lecturer in the only APEX  university in Malaysia shows that on average I hear less than ~ 0.1kB equivalent of statements or questions raised by all the students in the lecture hall  per semester.

My constant observation leads me to conclude that our 'highly successful' education system has produce high quality canned-like students who can `learn' only if they get spoon fed. This is a mentally challenged generation who easily lost their way when challenged by any question slightly different from the model answers they memorised for exam. They are like some one who is used to wear only 'Bata' sport shoe daily but turns out to be too scared of making any step when the shoe is changed from Bata to Nike. They get stuck when being asked exactly the same question presented in a slightly varied way.

As it is happening in most of the cases in our university education, genuine academic learning seldom takes place, only blind memorisation. Students may score high marks by answering all those closed-ended problems from lecture notes perfectly. But seldom they have the minimum capacity to explain the simple reasoning behind them. Well, many lectures are to be blamed as well because their mentality and teaching styles are just the university version of  the secondary school spoon-feeding system.

Imagine the scenario where all of the APEX university students can only answers closed-ended questions. Further imagine the scenario where all of them score full A's and graduated with first class honours because they all can answer perfectly these closed-ended questions during the exams. And they are our only 'cream' of the Malaysian society. That makes year 2012 to arrive sooner at Malaysia than the Mayans have predicted. 

惯性的悲观

在国外揾食的、深造的、移民的大马华人很多都有一个共通点：惯性地对马来西亚的华人的处境及前景灰色悲观。


但想深一层，事情都不是只有一个片面的，大马华人的境况也是不列外。然而我常见到是，身在外国的大马华裔子弟很多都制止不了自己的悲情，也丝毫不能对我们的国家作客观理性的分析。“马来西亚的局势却江河日下”或许有真的，但真实的情形并不完全如此。

马来西亚的社会思潮、政治、种族关系一直在演进中，跟过去的发展相较，有的东西还在原地踏步，有的甚至倒退，比如不公义、三权不能分立、执法滥权、、不依法、种族主义、宗教极端保守主义、贪污、人为的不公等等，讲也讲不完。  

但你也不能忽略有一些很重要的事情在演进中。比如社会中一部分的人（包含所有种族的人都有）醒觉了，开始有了更多的公民活动。言论开放了，有像《今日大马》这样的独立媒体。开始有人更多比列的人走出了种族政治、思维的框框。更多的马来人开始不认同老马时代的偏差政策及‘污统’的霸权。中下层保守的马来官员刻意偏差的行止，开始因为人民声音大了而不像老马时代那样肆无惮忌。中文教育虽然风雨飘摇，但总还算还屹立不倒。社会的财富多了，财富的分配也不像以前那样悬殊。马来人比较有自信跟其他人竞争了，开始有一些些迹象显示，一些政策开始宽松了，中央的政策也像有所开放了，带有种族歧视性的政策开始少了。总之，很多年前，很多现在发生的进步现象都是见不到的，对这点我们不能视而不见，只顾惯性舔伤。  

华人在马来西亚的问题有很多层面，政治的失势和不公，充其量只是其中一个小项目。我所看到的最大的问题不是来自政府或政治，而是华族本身的思维及态度的落后、保守、不思长进，惯性的埋怨，眼光狭窄，成天只为意气之争。世界已经进入无边界时代，但很多大马华人依然喜欢划地自限，并以为自己比友族本事、高等，只懂得拿过去的痛及政策上的不公来作为不去前进的理由。这是大马华人的根本问题。  

狄更斯说：  

这是最好的时代，也是最坏的时代； 
这是智慧的时代，也是愚蠢的时代； 
这是笃信的时代，也是疑虑的时代； 
这是光明的季节，也是黑暗的季节； 
这是希望的春天，也是绝望的冬天； 
我们什么都有，也没有都没有； 
我们全会上天堂，也全会下地狱。  

你选上天堂，还是下地狱？〈== 这句话是我的，跟狄更斯无关。

小人之心

近来有人我告诉曾遇上小人老师的故事。


中六的老师，同时兼教补习班。班上有同学同时正课和补习班也上一起上的，发觉老师两份嘴脸，在补习班上尽心尽力，在正课却成为大蛇一条。老师们闲话八卦之间，偶尔收到学生背后讲述对老师不是的小道消息，两份嘴脸老师特地花了大家正课两节的时间，当众数落羞辱学生。


学校里的小人老师太多了，我对此很不屑。我认识的老师（大、中、小学的都有） 很多都活在针头那么大的世界里，眼光狭小浅窄，胸宽和见解都不能成人师应有的模范。教出来的学生，就像我班上的很多那样，也是一样眼光狭小，只懂得放大芝麻小事，忽略了其他更重要的大事。

教授知识跟学生的个人行为是不应该扯上关系的。但常听到老师把教学的‘事’跟非教学的‘人事’牵扯在一起，这样是公私不分，完全没有professional的态度。故事里的老师显然是小人一名。这样的小人，学校里跟补习班上两种嘴脸，是他自己不尊重自己在先。小人，若人家心里鄙视他，是他自己咎由自取。


但这样的经验对被当众奚落的学生的而言，却造成长远的负面影响。学生一朝被蛇咬，从此对这个世界畏畏缩缩，讲话小小声，怕鬼人知道自己讲的话会被‘旁人’听到。有人说这其实也是一种警慎戒备，为生存之道。或许这样子可以免了惹上小人的麻烦，但一个这样深谙生存之道的人，同时也失去更重要的君子的特质，豁达的胸襟，也埋没了成为忠言直谏的人的机会。 世界上小人很多，这个很多人深懂。但这不代表你必须把所有人都当小人，不然，你失去的会是一片本来海阔天空的世界。


因怕隔墙有耳，而刻意把说话的声音压低，或以旁人听不懂的语言来对话，这样的风格，并不是豁达的人的风格。在杭州念书的一位朋友最喜欢此道，用马来语跟同乡交谈，好让周围的中国人tak faham他不想让旁人听到的内容。 但在我看来这很有点不尊重‘非我族类’的意味。


我的policy是，讲得出来的话，就不怕任何人听到。若怕人传，或怕他人听的，我宁可不说。我当然不喜欢小人，但也不特别害怕面对小人。应对小人之计，以其人之道还治其人之身，我认为还是下策。真诚相待，直心面对，突破惯性对抗的框框，方为双赢之道。

所谓君子坦荡荡，就是这个道理。

If i were to have children

We (I am referring to people of around my age) all gone thru different kind of 'early education' experience ourselves. It's good to share it out so that the skill and knowledge we learn from our real life experience can be applied to our next generation, to the children in particular.

We see frequently that there are many different kind of people having different abilities in learning, e.g. an animal … sorry, an animal doctor friend of mine, Cheow Kong, has a photographic memory that he can remember all the jargon in biological textbooks and all the names that he comes across, Someone else like BoX HooX (X = a, b,...z) , another friend has (as legend has it) 'phonographic memory' that he can recall all the details of naked ladies he has come across. for my case personally i don't recall names in detail, but i tend to only grasp the major ideas. remembering name's detail can be helpful when dealing with problem solving issues in commercial line or during exam, e.g., u can impress your boss or customers with all the minor details when doing a presentation or brokering a deal. but this does not guarantee u to solve the problem at their hearts. recalling names or minor detail is more related to things that has to be handled with immediate action, e.g. in exam or in face-to-face dealing with customers or bosses. but some people over do it until they think pure memorisation of such kind of naming details are everything, so much so that they miss the point of understanding the whole picture or the core of the problem. so, if u can't recall all the details, u don't need to take it as a major disadvantage. the advantage that one gains by able to memorise all the name and details aren't that great, despite they can be helpful to a certain extent. for many serious problem solving tasks, the ability to think, reason, to make logical manipulation and being creative are far more essential. u call call up the names and minor technical details anytime 'at a click away', anyway. i read an interesting article in newsweek sometimes ago, reporting the complain of an english professor in a book that youngsters these day has nothing in their minds, and they cant spell correctly, or recall some essential names and common knowledge that everyone are supposed to know in say, 20 years ago. however, the writer of that article argued that the english professor has not taken into account the other side of the story properly. the youngsters may has less memorised knowledge in their brain, or spell words correctly, however, they have developed an even more powerful skill that old generation does not possess: the youngsters these day are much more skillful in finding and organise new information that was previously unknown to them with the knowledge in IT they acquire. in this sense the youngster's power is even greater than the old generation. Old generation, while emphasises on gathering knowledge into their brains, the y-generation prefers to keep these knowledge in the net and 'retrieve' them in the event they need them. Can u see the difference btw these two generations' way towards the way of how to handle 'knowledge'? in a way the y-generation way is more powerful than the old generation's bcos the y-generation can retrieve, in principle, infinite amount of info required, whereas old generation relies too much on the knowledge in their heads. the main difference here is the skill to acquired the required knowledge when needed (e.g use spell check tool while typing with computer). in other words, the y-generation trades the accumulation of knowledge with the ability to retrieve these knowledge from external sources (a.k.a. internet/computer). Well, the above argument on the y-generation may apply only in the context of the western societies, since the article i read was in Newsweek. I doubt that the y-generation in our society, particularly our university students, has developed such kind of information search skill apart from online-gaming/frenstering/face-booking/twittering.

Objectively speaking, i would say one must accumulate knowledge as the old generation does, and at the same time master the skill to retrieve information externally. to me 'retrieval' of information yourself is a very essential skill, which many people, primarily the local university students are lacking. e.g. when someone don't know how to build a webpage, he ought to know how to get the right answer by searching the internet or the right references. these is the kind of skill we all have developed along our career. one of the most important soft skill any student shud acquire is how to search info him/herself correctly. most of the time this kind of skill is just a matter of common sense, but to many, such command sense does not even occur to them, thanks to our spoon-feeding education system and over-caring parents.

if i were to have children, i certainly will do the following: To encourage them to read as much as possible. i read the article send to me earlier by the old mathematician friend that in taiwan the education system forces students to go deep into one phrase or one article or a book, making sure that student know all the details of the grammatical structure, the definitions and details of that article. as a result, students' continuation of learning is interrupted often because they have to check dictionary. but the most serious drawback is the student not having enough time to read more. Whereas, in western countries, students are encouraged to read widely and wildly. the emphasis in the west is not to know a book or an article in depth for exam purpose, but to read as broadly as possibly, and in due course, the students somehow can organise themselves the usage of words and language. i must say i totally agree with this approach. well, that is in taiwan and in the west. in malaysia, i dont think students are encouraged to read, but instead are encouraged NOT TO READ by loading them with exams and homework. During my time in Chung Ling High School, Penang, we are supposed to read a book in a month or per semester (or something like that). but no one cared. students end up not reading, and the school end up not caring whether u read or not. the reading project are just kept as a 'showcase' but never imposed efficiently. i dont think the system has changed much now. here in the netherland i hear Christ, a graduate student in TU Delft, told me that in high school students are suppose to read a book per month or twice a week, and such a reading is a must for the students in high school. in taiwan at least they still make a student to read a book per semester. but in malaysia ...? the school teachers may tell u that formally the school encourage reading and has lots of showcase proof that such encouragement is being enforced. but in practice i really doubt this to be the case.

i recall that when i was around 8 or 9 years old i started reading, and all the details of the all the books i read went into my mind. i can even recall the first and the last chinese character of the book i read 《绿野仙踪》. that shows a child's mind is very powerful. i owe much of my later academic development to reading. i started reading only when i was 8 or 9 years old. children these days are a lot more blessed, as their parents like a loong and wal leong feed their children with book since age of 2 or 3. i recall my mom used to scold me for bringing back/buying books, as these '输' (book,  as pronounced in cantonese has the same pronunciation as the word 'lost' in cantonese ) has bad connotation and they collect dusk in our ill-condition living space. and since my family was not financially not  wealthy then, spending money on books were considered 'luxurious', hence not encouraged by my mom and grandmom. but fortunately my dad is a wise person, and gave me the money to buy books. i thank him greatly for his generosity and wisdom despite that we were not rich then.

So, let your children read, and deprive them of the opportunity to play video games or watch TV. people thing watching tv makes children to learn, and video gaming train their reaction. i personally do not agree. if the children dont watch tv, they will get engaged in other interactive activities, from which they learn more. the learning outcome would be particularly good if parents spend time teaching them. since we were poor, we dont have tv when i was a kid, nor is the tv program appealing when we bought it later when i was 8 years old. so i did something else at the spare time, and learned to be creative. allowing tv program to teach children language or knowledge is much inferior than what the children can learn by engaging in other interactive activity. people who make use of tv/video game as a major tool to educate their children are those ppl who are lacking of wisdom, or themselves don't have the correct knowledge of how learning could happen. these parents are people who are superstitious in 'high tech' stuff, having no understanding of the long term impact of tv and electronic gaming on their children.

if i were to have children, the most important thing i would want my children to learn would be language and expression power. in fact i would also make encouraging creativity as a major emphasis as well. i would not emphasis on 'what-is-the-capitol-of-Peru' kind of 'by fact knowledge', math or computer skills that they could pick up themselves in school when their times come. i would also emphasis to develop their love to learn and to read. our education system actually makes our children to hate reading and learning. in the west what i see is that all adults love reading, and love learning. in our society, our children generally know much more than their peers in the west, bcos our children must learn hard due to the pressure imposed by the system. once they graduated and no more subcum to the system, no one reads anymore. i would say > 90% of my students in the university do not read other than text book/soft magazine/news paper (prove me wrong and I will be absolutely  pleased).

i bet u really don't want your children to be like those students of mine who hate reading and learning. but if u dont take any proper action to educate them correctly, the trends of our society and education system are going to make them to 'flow along the natural course' to become a hate-to-learn person.

The mathematician wrote again

The old mathematician friend wrote again, as a response to an email I wrote to him and Ah loONg earlier. I find what he said to be quite meaningful and worthy of being shared with many others. I reproduced what he wrote here (with some minor modification).

The mathematician wrote:

" The main problem is that Malaysian youth do not understand or know what is "the TRUTH of Life and its MEANING". In general, Malaysians used to think that the true meaning of life is to make their life meaningful and to make good use of it. They judge how good their present lives are by using some kind of 'quantitative standard' vaguely known as 'the Good Quality of Life measurement'. In general, Malaysian standard of acceptable so-called Good Quality of Life is based on (1)Money, (2)Status, (3)Level of Education (4)Job and etc. These are quantitatively measurable  things, hence people use these to compare among themselves. For young children, in general, their standard of comparison is simpler. They usually adopt  "Performance in School" such as  (1)Exam Result, (2)Performance in Sport or others School Activities as their standard references.

These kind of measurement has been long been practiced and is treated as the Golden Rule. In general, a lot of Malaysian adult treat (or think) materialistic life more important than intellectual/spiritual life. So are children care more about their school performance (all kind of results in school) than their quality of understanding/knowledge. When I got an A in Quantum Mechanics in my second year of UM (taught by Tiem Leong), I though I am good in QM. The feeling of getting A was so good (why I feel good ?). However, as a matter of fact I know nothing about QM. I can see that a lot of people is living for the sake of how other people look upon them, and seldom we see people care about the real meaning of life. Imagine that all of a sudden people realise what are the most important things in life. So are the children can realise the importance of reading and enjoying the beautiful moment of their childhood. Imagine our society begins to reduce the habitual practice of comparing among one with another. Imagine we don't feel too disappointed when a child doesn't  perform in certain school activities or examinations but treat the failure as an enhancing experience of life. If that day ever happens, we surely will enjoy our lives much better.

I must thank TL again. I lost a piece of Jigsaw Puzzle in my present life when I was a youngster at around 15-25 years. He helps me to find this important part and put it back into my life. Hence, my life is free from a lot of suffering. Thanks again.

Recently, Ah LOoNG gives me an opportunity to meet a good book《专心》. It is a very good book. I would like to seek permission from Ah LOoNG whether I can borrow this book to read."

The above was the opinion by the mathematician friend.