Stripping the Malaysian education system: good or bad and how can we make it better?

I want to talk about the education system in Malaysia. Nowadays, the buzz word seems to be critical thinking and when I attended a recent medical education summit, everyone was talking about it. They say things like "our students lack critical thinking" or "we need to develop critical thinking in our students'' but what do we actually mean?

It is possible to just one day wake up and start to think....critically? I don't think so. Critical thinking is a process of thought that starts with actually thinking about things, having the necessary information and understanding the information, making sense of it all and then, start questioning whether that information is right or wrong, good or bad, agree or disagree; and if one agrees why do you agree and if one disagrees, why do you disagree?

Like when we read a piece of news or article, do we just read and then absorb the facts or do we read then start to question, why did the writer say that? is that really what happened? why was it reported in that way? Actually most of the time it is more like a person read something and then goes..."Do you know that so and so did this and that?" and when you ask "Really? how did you know?" the answer will be "Well, I read it in the newspaper" as if the newspaper is like an encyclopedia of facts. If you read something it must be true. Well, truth is the only thing that we read and is 100% true is Al Qur'an and the sayings of the Prophet (SAW) that has been reported as sahih.

We need to accept that the problem in lack of critical thinking starts from childhood and the education system. In school, children are expected to memorize facts rather than to actually discuss and question the things that they learn. The objective is simply to pass exams rather than to develop a thinking process. The teacher gives the class information, the class copies it down and then regurgitated whatever information was given onto a test paper. Then, how do we expect these same students that have grown within such system to suddenly speak out their mind in class, question the lecturer and come up with out of this world ideas?

I often get frustrated when I try to teach my son his school subjects because I felt restricted by the rigid syllabus and text books. I think the Malaysian education system is very systematic and to a certain extend it is good. It does help students to focus, to develop discipline and to be organized. I don't think we should completely change the whole system to one of British style where there is no clear syllabus and too much freedom on the part of the children to express their opinions without real knowledge or guidance. We need to keep the good aspect but to enhance on the other aspects that are lacking. Syllabus is good but there is no need to make it too rigid. I don't agree with text books as they restrict knowledge. Text books are different from reference books. Text books give you information on what you have to know. Reference books give you information on what you want to know.

I was trying to teach Malik science last weekend and I got pretty bored and confused myself. It was about plants and grouping of plants according to external features. It talks about plants having leaves that are oval, long or irregular shaped but sometimes these things sort of overlap. Anyway, I decided to take the children out for a walk around our beautiful condominium compound where there are lots of trees and plants. I started pointing to all the different trees and getting Malik to describe their external features, even the babies started to join in. That was definitely more fun... and we visited the fish at the fish pond and even went to the corner shop to get some ice-creams.

I think keeping the syllabus and a systematic approach to education is good but there has to be some flexibility rather than rigidity. Get rid of textbooks and allow the teachers to engage with the students. The ministry of education can provide guide books for teachers and all the topics the teachers need to cover for that year. However, get the students to collect information and to think about things. You can use workbooks, activity books, audio visual and the internet to stimulate the mind. For example, the plant thing you can get the students to do a weekend activity of just looking at plants and see how they can describe the plants such as the colour, leaf shapes, soft or hard stem, flower or non-flowering etc...they can jot these things down in a one-page activity book. The exercise only took me and the children half an hour and we had a treat after wards! Then, back in class get the students to discuss what they have discovered and the teacher can then give the students the correct information. Just imagine if we do that in our 9 years old! You can envisage how their thinking will develop once they become 19 years old and ready to enter university. I can't wait to get those kinds of students.

Teachers also need to be aware that some students who are labeled as 'disruptive' behaves in that way because they are bored. These are usually very bright and intelligent young boys who have so much energy and they can't handle the slow and boring pace of the classroom. I mean I'm not saying all disruptive children are geniuses. Some truly just have behavior problems. However, it is important to change the classroom environment to make it more engaging for the benefit of all students. To get students to be critical, first you have to allow them to think and explore rather than to simply be passive absorbers.