The Malay Education
Contributed by Mohd Som Bin Haji Sulong:
This is the subject which should be close to the hearts of all Malays and in particular to orang orang Tenganung. Therefore the subject must be given the utmost attention by orang orang besor Tenganung most of whom I dare say are from Skoloh Sultang Slemang. Most people agree that the education the Malays are getting is not producing the kind of Malays or Malaysian citizens that we want. In fact it is not wrong to say that education has failed the Malays. It has failed to produce successful Malays. No doubt it can be argued that there are large number of Malays studying and getting degrees from the universities and Tenganung have produced best UPSR results year after year for some time already. But where do the Malays end up? We need only to look around us to see how many Malays are making it in the various professions and how many are working, just working in the Public Sectors. How many Malays are making it in the business? In short we produce many graduates but are not making an impact in the socio-economic landscape of the country.
And so the Malays relatively remain as they were. We are where we were. Where do we go wrong. I think we Malays must find out within ourselves if we are getting the proper education. I do not think opportunity in education is the issue. We need the correct education an education which can make us competitive. We cannot blame others or potential employers if we find it difficult to get a job in the private sector. Many a time we hear comments that the Malay graduates are generally docile and passive, cannot mix around and possess little communication skill. These qualities produce a human being with an inferiority complex thus making us uncompetitive.
They say that people must have the courage to forget things they can’t change and change the things they can and to have the wisdom to see the difference. We Malays should give attention and apply such words of wisdom to the Malay education. We must have a definite objective to produce a competitive graduate. This means he must possess a high level of communication skill.
I think having a good command of English is the starter to it all hence making us competitive. If this is acceptable then we must increase the exposure to English in the schools as well as out of schools. Increasing the learning of English after SPM is too late; it must begin much earlier – as early as possible. Khajeang Tenganung kabor nya banyok pitih sangat le ning. Why can’t we spend a bit of the billions to raise the level of language skills for budok budok Tenganung so that in the generations to come we will be respected as the state that produce the most graduates from Oxford, Cambridge, Yale and Harvard universities.
Mohd Som Bin Haji Sulong
SSSS Class of 61
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Related postings:
The Sulaimanians 
perhaps malays lack of a value which i think is important; evaluate and improve ourselves. be optimistic (now i realize that is not just 1 value that we lack of),our pros and cons. when we make mistake, we usually just wondering why it’s happening but not finding a solution or hoping someone would make it for u. indeed, we believe more on the failure possibility or negative site of something rather then try to make the winning possibility happen. well, it’s not like we lose anything trying…this is the word that i always heard; ‘kan dh cakap, sia2 je kau buat’ the thing that we learn along the way is most important. well, i believe that humans learn better when they fail. it took me about 18 years to realize that values…
we should think like DR mahathir..Now we all so passive and lazy!!we can actually..
[…] now residing in UK – for the photos. And for the recent articles – thanks also to Mohd Som Haji Sulong (and photos too) and Rosita Mohd Yusuf (and her article from the school magazine). The door is […]
Talking about having a good command of English- During my time in SSSS from 1965-1969, every subject were taught in English except for Malay and Agama, Now every subject is in Bahasa Malaysia except for English. Then the English Language teachers were mostly trained in Kirby and Brinsford. So, that makes the difference.
[…] Malay Boys – MCE 1961 Besides the photo of the Malays girls of MCE 1961, Mohd Som bin Haji Sulong also shared the photo of some of the Malays boys from MCE 1961 […]
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