“Lack of Ambition” in Malaysian Education System

Fallacy of objectivity : lack of motivation / ambition / urge.

While some scholars or pegawai would say that this statement is a fallacy itself, I beg to differ. Yes, I do agree that our education system was created in line with United Nations Millenium Development Goals, Rukun Negara, etc. and all other policies.

But how much do we emphasize on the student’s ambitions? While some may refute and say that teachers in school motivate students to have ambition, again I agree ONLY partially.

Don’t we understand the meaning of ambition and the effort we put it as we work to achieve our ambition?

Some examples of ambition and motivation in practice:

1. Play traunt or ponteng sekolah to go and play pool or play games cybercafe.
2. Run on sports day to get the gold medal.
3. Keep on messaging a girl to flirt her.

All the examples above are simple scenario faced by Malaysian students. But please take into consideration that all these are based on “objectivity”, to get something out of it, they put in their effort wholeheartedly.

Nowadays, everything is based on “A”. Get lots of “A”s and you can get a good place in university. In the end we university students watch helplessly as our peers complain that they do not like their courses, they wish they have never taken this bachelor degree, this is not they are cut out for, they don’t like medic, etc.

But shouldn’t we take examples of students who strive to be doctors because they are inspired by their parents/relatives and because of their objective in becoming one, they could learn wholeheartedly and contribute to the nation because of understanding their profession?

To prove my point althought it is based on value judgement, try and ask any students in our public universities and ask whether they “still remember what they learnt during the previous semester and what use was it to them”. They will tell you that they just get an “A” and leave the subject as it is.

Many will do the following:

• Sell their textbooks to juniors (oh yes, we don’t need to refer to all the books we bought, we get A, we have everything in our head)
• Cherish the “academic transcript” rather than the acquired knowledge

Then what is the meaning of devising a degree when we do not put good use to what we have learnt?

That would be a worm’s eye view of why we have unemployed graduates which do not fulfill the capability of the industry: lack of ambition / ambition of just getting A -> failure to learn and apply knowledge -> can’t solve problems of the industry.

Now I understood why the corporate leaders preferred overseas graduates during their meeting with the minister of Higher Education and Vice Chancellors at Bank Negara 3 years back. While at that time I stood to defend Malaysian students, now I changed my perspective to agree with these corporate leaders.

Surely profitability and efficiency in a company has no place for graduates who couldn’t put their knowledge into practice. I rather pay extra for a better employee than pay normal for a troublesome and stupid employee. (I would put this statement into exception for training unemployed graduates as it’s tax deductible. Again, its based on profitability)

While some may disagree, I have been through this path and some of us do agree that we do not apply any knowledge learnt when we work.

If we keep this up, surely Malaysia has a problem realising vision 2020. Something I regret not to understand until now. If I have only realised, I would have wrote a paper on it for my National MPPK President to discuss with the government during his meeting with Ministry of Education.

Too late, but not too late to put my thoughts on words.