Reward dedication not politics

by P Ramakrishnan

If Malaysian educational policies are in a mess, as many Malaysians believe them to be today, it is not the teachers whom we should blame.

For the Malaysian educational system’s unenviable and worrying state, it is the ruling coalition’s politicians we should thank.

To begin with, it has always been the politicians who determined what Malaysian education was all about. From painful experience we now know that Ministers of Education come and go, but too often their personal whims were translated into indefensible policies that almost stayed forever.

Especially in primary and secondary education, where the ability of our young is critically shaped, there has rarely been serious and open policy discussion, let alone meaningful consultation with the teachers.

Policy Or Balloon?

Instead, one man’s fancy can suddenly become the basis for far-reaching policy change. Today we have the example of the move to emphasise the importance of the English language. On 6 May, 2002, Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad publicly floated the idea of reintroducing English-medium schools ‘if the people want it’, as if the people had a choice. Four days later, the UMNO Supreme Council rejected this idea but recommended that Science and Mathematics be taught in English starting from Standard One.

Hence, in the Barisan National mode, the Prime Minister floated a political balloon one day, his UMNO Supreme Council punctured the balloon a few days later … but suddenly a suggestion by a political party – albeit the ruling party – becomes new policy that overturns longterm teaching practice. So, now, Science and Mathematics will be taught in English next year.

Did it occur to any of these planners of our future to seek a public debate or discussion of a policy that they had so hastily formulated? Did it occur to any of these top leaders to consult the educators before mysteriously wrapping up their decision-making process?

As a former teacher with over 30 years of teaching experience, I can confidently testify that it is exactly this kind of haphazard decision-making that has brought ruin to our educational system and damaged its credibility.

Look Back In Anger

Let us think back on the Kurikulum Baru Sekolah Rendah (KBSR) that was implemented in the early 1980s. The KBSR was introduced as a pilot project in 87 schools. Everyone who was involved was assured that KBSR’s effectivemess would be evaluated at the end of the first year of its trial implementation. This assessment of KBSR, we were promised, would be seriously conducted to determine its suitability for nation-wide implementation.

The promise came to nothing. Before anyone could benefit from a systematic evaluation of its supposed effectiveness, KBSR was implemented nation-wide with disastrous consequences which deserve recalling.

Strange at it may sound to people who think new policies and new systems must contain real substance, KBSR at its core entailed endless meetings and meaningless paper work. In theory, KBSR monitored each student’s progress meticulously: every skill that was taught and every bit of proficiency achieved by an individual student was recorded.

In practice, that was what KBSR was about: records, more records and better records! Typically a teacher was compelled to keep careful records to convince officialdom that he or she was a hard-working teacher. The demands of KBSR record-keeping were such that many teachers placed ‘files before students’, attended meetings instead of classes, or completed enormous amounts of paper work in their classrooms.

From an educational perspective, the teachers shouldn’t have bothered. The paper work accomplished nothing. Nor was anyone truly concerned with it. In the end, even if most teachers and bureaucrats had to pretend otherwise, KBSR was just a mammoth but demoralizing bureaucratic ‘project’. Introduced with much fanfare, KBSR ended up being full of sound and fury signifying nothing!

Moral Education Or Joke?

Take a much publicised aspect of KBSR – the introduction of Moral Education which was presented as a commendable effort to inculcate good values among students. When it came to examinations, however, Moral Education became a joke. No student was allowed to fail the subject even if he or she didn’t deserve to pass. The ridiculous rationale for this unconscionable assessment was that a student was immoral if he or she should fail in the subject! How anyone in any position of responsibility could reconcile this absurdity with the high-sounding pronouncements on KBSR’s Moral Education is best left unexplored here.

Yet, had anyone in a position of power sincerely wanted to, he or she could have heard all about the teachers' KBSR woes. For instance, the June 1990 issue of Guru Malaysia, the organ of the National Union of the Teaching Profession (NUTP), noted that, ‘The actual cause of the poor performance is the weakness or failure in the implementation of certain aspects of the KBSR system at various levels right from the top.’

The NUTP was being diplomatic! The teacher training colleges were ill-prepared for KBSR. The syllabus wasn’t available to the colleges which produced the teacher-trainees who handled KBSR classes. To add insult to injury, a new syllabus, which had nothing to do with KBSR, was introduced to the colleges.

It wasn’t only KBSR that became policy without prior consultation with the classroom teachers who are the real practitioners and implementers of educational policies. Integrated Science and Modern Mathematics shared KBSR’s fate of being introduced without adequate discussion with or proper feedback from educators and educationists. Should anyone be astonished then that the teaching of these subjects couldn’t stand the test of even our lax Malaysian time?

Meanwhile, other badly needed measures are half-heartedly implemented. As an example, we aren’t any nearer the full implementation of a system of single-session schools than when their introduction was first mooted. Here we don’t need lengthy debates on the compelling advantages of single-session schools in our kind of tropical climate. Yet how many single-session schools still await implementation, not because ours is a poor country, but the political will to realize the proper set of priorities in education just isn’t there.

And Those Who Can’t, Teach?

Perhaps only when policy-makers are directly held accountable for the failures of their ill-conceived policies, or their abject failure to implement good policies, will they be inclined to consult with those who have more experience and wisdom in the field.

But the situation won’t change so long as the attitude of our top leaders is summed up by Dr Mahathir’s jaundiced perspective on teachers. Dr Mahathir has always been very fond of saying that ‘Those who can do, those who can’t teach’. He must have infected most of his political and bureaucratic subordinates with a lack of regard for people who help to nurture the minds of young Malaysians.

If one were not contemptuous of teachers, if one listened humbly to them, one would hear their frustrations and understand their demoralization. Unlike the teachers of old – including Dr Mahathir’s own father – most hard-working and dedicated teachers today feel that they receive neither recognition nor just compensation for their efforts.

Their workloads are heavy because smaller classroom enrolments are still a pipe dream, talked about for decades without resulting in measurable improvements. The teachers know that smaller class sizes are basic to higher quality education, more attention to students and better preparation by teachers. But they’ve come to realize that no one’s seriously solving this basic problem of ‘teaching excellence’.

Siapa Selalu Bodek

Nor are teachers’concerns addressed by the system of performance evaluation that goes under the name of Sistem Saraan Baru (SSB). Just one decade into its implementation, SSB has caused harm to the teaching profession. There is a lot of anger and frustration among deserving teachers who have been bypassed for promotion and other benefits under a system they commonly call Saya Suka Bodek.

It is widely perceived by teachers that SSB rewards the grovelling cronies of heads of schools who abuse their authority under SSB to reward loyalty and obedience. As with the trend of centralized authority in our political system, heads of schools tend to show off their power, as happened at a staff meeting I attended when SSB was introduced.

When my Guru Besar spoke of his power to determine a teacher’s annual increments, he practically boasted, ‘Even your relationship with the head counts.’ For this Guru Besar, and many like him, if the widely told stories are even half accurate, the teacher’s work is no longer a matter of conscience, and the teacher’s reward has little to do with genuine perfomance.

After decades of teaching, of exchanging experiences with numerous colleagues and personal reflection, I even consider now that good teachers stand a better chance of being properly recognized if they are directly and democratically assessed by their peers and their students for certain awards, such as Tokoh Guru.

Tokoh Guru And Transparency

Right now, there is no transparency to the Tokoh Guru nominations and awards. Hardly anyone knows how the candidates are nominated and what criteria are set for their selection. Hence, when the Tokoh-tokoh Guru are announced, their selection frequently surprises both their peers and their students as too many of the recipients are not known for notable contributions to the cause of teaching.

It appears that the Tokoh Guru honour has been habitually reserved for former heads of schools at the expense of teachers who have served the profession selflessly. Were it not so, many Brothers and Sisters from the mission schools would have been conferred this honour because of their unsurpassed dedication to the noble calling of the teaching profession.

Our educational system has not been appreciative, generous or caring towards the really good teachers who have put in years and years of dedicated but poorly-remunerated service. To observe this truth – a problem that remains uncorrected although many Ministers of Education have come and gone – is not just to express the selfish interests of the teaching profession.

It is to sound a warning about the state of demoralization of the teaching profession which puts at risk the well-being of our children and the future of this nation. Our politicians who love to monopolize decision-making should be forewarned. They may make policies, but ‘Teachers make the school, and the students make the nation’.

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