SPM...TOP SCORERS ??
Just a couple of weeks ago, the much-awaited results of SPM last year were officially released..
According to the statistics, it was reported to be the best overall result of SPM as compared with all of the previous years. It boasts of close to 4000 candidates scoring straight A's, with approximately 1000 or 25% of them scoring straight A1's. All of a sudden, it seems like we have never failed to achieve marked improvement in terms of academic results EVEY YEAR in Malaysia. One just gets the impression that the best and the brightest or the so-called cream of the crop are just about everywhere and anywhere at all in our country.
As a matter of fact, i've pitched on the idea of writing an article about this particular issue for quite a while. A lot of questions have been buzzing in my mind alongside it as well.
Are we in this position because the education policy that's currently in place is indeed so freakingly efficacious that it never fail to produce results ?
Does it underpin the widely speculated fact that the marking scheme od the examination is getting more and more lenient all the time?
or is it that the malaysian students nowadays are so superb academically to the extent that so many of them manage to score straight A1's ?
Don't get me wrong, i'm not trying to disparage any parties or undermine the efforts of those scoring brilliant results, nor am i trying to equivocate like what those politicians normally do.
I know how it's like striving for straight A's as i've been through it. However, i just can't help thinking that it somewhat reveals a weird phenomenon or what i would describe as a dilemma that lies beneath it. I guess it's just a common target of the fellow students nowadays to ''score as many A's as possible'' :
Something like 14, 15, 16 subjects? bring it on...the more i have, the better i am..
Call me sarcastic, i actually think that the more A's one scores doesn't actually depict one's true academic ability. I suppose with the current education system that we have back there, it just reveals what an ''exam machine'' you are . When it comes to real and practical life, when it comes to the point where true potential really matters, we lag behind. Just take a look at this SHORT CLIP here. It's a small machine that my german frens created out of scratch ...and that was during the first semester of my engineering studies ! I remember feeling like a parasite because of my lack of contribution in designing the device. Frankly, i cant see any of the so-called top scorers of us having the ability to do that in the first semester.
I also remember being told last time to memorize those so-called beautiful phrases and trying to apply the same phrases in every single essay. I have to admit that most of the time, it was successful in impressing the one marking my essay and subsequently helping me to score good grades. There're some classic phrases that i used to apply frequently which go like this:
''Sinar fajar kegemilangan telah mengobori tanah air selama xx tahun. Kita sebagai anak watan yang bernaung di bawah jalur gemilang haruslah mempunyai semangat yang berkobar-kabar ...bla bla....jika tidak, wawasan 2020 hanya akan menjadi satu utopia yang tidak dapat dikecapi. ''
I used to be proud of the fact that i managed to write something as beautiful as this. But nowadays, looking back to it, there's practically nothing to be proud of actually. I just memorised the phrase without appreciating its meaning. I scored solely because i managed to memorise the phrases like the one mentioned above. Similarly, if u wanna score in science subjects, do past-year-papers ! chances are, similar questions will most probably come out again.
Hence, i would say that the current edu. sys doesn't really encourage creavity or the correct learning way, but rather, it endangers the real potentials of our students.
Worse still, it seems like nowadays everybody is trying to take as many subjects as possible without really knowing the direction that he/she is supposed to take. The main priority is to score as many A's as possible, and i just can't see how the common perception will change to otherwise in the future, well, at least for the next few years.
Enough said, i might sound a bit radical, but at the end of the day, everyone is entitled to his/her own opinions. Do tell me your view on the matter too dude's ! :)
According to the statistics, it was reported to be the best overall result of SPM as compared with all of the previous years. It boasts of close to 4000 candidates scoring straight A's, with approximately 1000 or 25% of them scoring straight A1's. All of a sudden, it seems like we have never failed to achieve marked improvement in terms of academic results EVEY YEAR in Malaysia. One just gets the impression that the best and the brightest or the so-called cream of the crop are just about everywhere and anywhere at all in our country.
As a matter of fact, i've pitched on the idea of writing an article about this particular issue for quite a while. A lot of questions have been buzzing in my mind alongside it as well.
Are we in this position because the education policy that's currently in place is indeed so freakingly efficacious that it never fail to produce results ?
Does it underpin the widely speculated fact that the marking scheme od the examination is getting more and more lenient all the time?
or is it that the malaysian students nowadays are so superb academically to the extent that so many of them manage to score straight A1's ?
Don't get me wrong, i'm not trying to disparage any parties or undermine the efforts of those scoring brilliant results, nor am i trying to equivocate like what those politicians normally do.
I know how it's like striving for straight A's as i've been through it. However, i just can't help thinking that it somewhat reveals a weird phenomenon or what i would describe as a dilemma that lies beneath it. I guess it's just a common target of the fellow students nowadays to ''score as many A's as possible'' :
Something like 14, 15, 16 subjects? bring it on...the more i have, the better i am..
Call me sarcastic, i actually think that the more A's one scores doesn't actually depict one's true academic ability. I suppose with the current education system that we have back there, it just reveals what an ''exam machine'' you are . When it comes to real and practical life, when it comes to the point where true potential really matters, we lag behind. Just take a look at this SHORT CLIP here. It's a small machine that my german frens created out of scratch ...and that was during the first semester of my engineering studies ! I remember feeling like a parasite because of my lack of contribution in designing the device. Frankly, i cant see any of the so-called top scorers of us having the ability to do that in the first semester.
I also remember being told last time to memorize those so-called beautiful phrases and trying to apply the same phrases in every single essay. I have to admit that most of the time, it was successful in impressing the one marking my essay and subsequently helping me to score good grades. There're some classic phrases that i used to apply frequently which go like this:
''Sinar fajar kegemilangan telah mengobori tanah air selama xx tahun. Kita sebagai anak watan yang bernaung di bawah jalur gemilang haruslah mempunyai semangat yang berkobar-kabar ...bla bla....jika tidak, wawasan 2020 hanya akan menjadi satu utopia yang tidak dapat dikecapi. ''
I used to be proud of the fact that i managed to write something as beautiful as this. But nowadays, looking back to it, there's practically nothing to be proud of actually. I just memorised the phrase without appreciating its meaning. I scored solely because i managed to memorise the phrases like the one mentioned above. Similarly, if u wanna score in science subjects, do past-year-papers ! chances are, similar questions will most probably come out again.
Hence, i would say that the current edu. sys doesn't really encourage creavity or the correct learning way, but rather, it endangers the real potentials of our students.
Worse still, it seems like nowadays everybody is trying to take as many subjects as possible without really knowing the direction that he/she is supposed to take. The main priority is to score as many A's as possible, and i just can't see how the common perception will change to otherwise in the future, well, at least for the next few years.
Enough said, i might sound a bit radical, but at the end of the day, everyone is entitled to his/her own opinions. Do tell me your view on the matter too dude's ! :)
posted by Teong Hee at 9:17 PM
8 comments
