Maszlee, please stop introducing more subjects

Photo credit: https://spinalresearch.com.au/heavy-school-bags-biggest-pain-neck/



By Stephen Ng


Comment: With every new Education Minister, there are new subjects introduced.

Maszlee Malik is no difference. Despite call by parents to revamp the entire school curriculum, Maszlee appears to be adding more subjects to the already heavy laden kids.

Like his announcement about the UEC, I wonder if any "holistic study" has been carried out before he announced it in parliament, especially on getting feedback from parents.

I doubt it! This has never even been discussed with parents, but we are hearing it in parliament that Civics will be re-introduced in schools. According to him, this will include a topic on anti-corruption which will be taught in schools, beginning the third quarter of 2019.

Yes, as parents, we agree that our kids should learn to say "No" to corruption at an early age, but just adding one chapter to the Civics book lacks what I consider as serious revamp to the Malaysian education system.

I can assure you that, along with the new subject, there will be an additional book to increase the bag load of our children.

Already there are already books on Music, Moral Studies (Pendidikan Moral), Traffic Safety (Keselamatan Jalanraya), Health and Physical Education (Kesihatan dan Pendidikan Jasmani), Architecture (Reka Bentuk) and Information Technology (Informasi Teknologi).

At secondary school, they would have accumulated at least 10 subjects! According a friend of mine, his son is now studying in Singapore on scholarship. For O'Levels, his son only has eight subjects to study, compared to 14 to 15 subjects if he were to remain in Malaysia for SPM.

I frowned when I saw that my son has a book on Pendidikan Jasmani. I always thought that physical education is in the doing, rather than learnt in a classroom environment.

This is one top of the core subjects such as the languages, science, history, geography and mathematics. Bags are heavy as a result!

Besides this, schools are also making it mandatory for children to buy more workbooks that is allowed by the Ministry of Education.

I should say this is the failure of the ministry to enforce its directives on the control of workbooks. Even Maszlee is not hands-on or going to the ground to ensure that the directives are being followed through.

This should be the responsibility of the district offices, but their failure to enforce the directive is also conveniently overlooked by the State Education Department.

All the way to the Director-General, this issue of heavy bag load is not being addressed adequately. Maszlee has failed to meet our expectations to solve the bagload issue.

Honestly, I do not see what is the big difference between Civics and Moral Studies. They are like twins. Good moral values will lead to civic consciousness. So, why introduce a new subject when there is already moral study as a subject in schools?

I would recommend that, instead of producing more books, teachers should use the period on moral / civics study to learn public speaking, debates and drama. Having Speakers' Corners without efforts to expose the children to public speaking is just meaningless.

While learning these skills, the moral values can be easily incorporated into the speeches or public debates. For example, kids can be told to speak up against corruption.

For the older kids, they can also debate on whether corrupt politicians must be punished severely, as it is done in China.

There are a thousand and one themes that kids can be encouraged to work together as teams to make the moral or civics lessons more interesting, without having to carry the books to school!

This is what I hope our new minister can carefully think through to implement.


END.