Bila Ku Renung - As I Ponder

Teaching and learning the English language has been a major problem in rural schools in Malaysia. Low performance in this language has led to the poor performance in public examinations, especially in the Primary schools. I believe that some effort should be taken to remedy this problem. The Ministry of Education had introduced so many programmes to improve the teaching and learning of the English language. Then what are the reasons for the poor performance till this day. Why hasn't the proficiency of the language improved. Being a former educator myself I find that, the teachers are themselves not proficient in the language. There is an uneven distribution of English Language teachers to schools. You could even come across schools with excess English Language teachers ( urban schools ) and schools without a single English Language teacher ( rural schools ) posted to the school. We know that ONE of the reasons for the poor performance in the language in rural schools is due to shor...

I would like to share my experience when I was working as a Curriculum Supervisor in a District Education office. I'll relate to you these experiences briefly. Case 1: Reaching a rural school at about 10.40 am. That is 10 mins after recess. I saw teachers walking leaving the Staff room in a hurry towards their respective classes upon seeing my arrival. I guess they were shocked to see a district supervisor visiting their school. Well, what does that shows? Teachers are not going to classes promptly. They must have been doing this often. Anyway I am positive about it. Maybe its a coincident for that particular day. After seeing the Senior Assistant, the Headmaster was not in, I went to the school library. My god! what a horrible condition the library was. I was shocked to see the dusty room, empty book shelves, the untidy and disorganized library counter. The reason given by the library teacher was, "I'm sorry, I 'm busy teaching, so I don't have time to take care o...