This blog entry is in regards of my colleague's interesting status update on Facebook that i came across which questioned whether if the Malaysian curriculum preparing students for the real world? And if yes, which real world?
I was particularly intrigued by the question "which real world?" It was not further elaborated in that status update but from what i understand (and my familiarity of my colleague), this question is focusing on how much are we preparing our students to think from a global perspective and to deal with the REAL real world? And based on my observation on the curriculum and the syllabus, am i wrong to think that it seemed as if we're preparing Malaysian students to be good Malaysian citizens (which I'm not denying how important this is), but not as a member of the global community? This doubt of mine came about when i realized there's not much content in the textbook that touches on global issues, world histories and.. worldly stuffs. I'll get to that in a second.
Yes, i know it's the responsibility of the teacher to bring such matters into classes on their own initiatives and i really respect the teachers who did. But in regards to our teaching material, - let's focus on the textbook for this matter - are the contents enough to have ALL teachers thinking "i should have my students thinking about 9/11 incident, or oppression of a culture or a community to develop critical views of real world problems"? To put this in a view, I seemed to realize that we are teaching our students more on writing complaint letters about the lack of trash cans in a local park. Dont get me wrong. Writing complaint letters is quite "real world" but if we provide the context of students writing to be as littlest as lack of rubbish bins, what of other "real world" issues like; debating a stand, make a politically correct statement or changing the opinion of the masses?
Before you ask "dont you think it's a little too early to be teaching kids about terrorism?", well, i question myself that alot as well. But my answer to that question lies with a google search of "ESL lesson plan ideas for high school teaching". A grade 9 lesson plan requires the students to prepare a presentation based on their research of a cultural history and common misconceptions of that culture. Another lesson plan had students preparing an informational essay on historic events that changed the world and based on the essay rubric, they are to explain more of the incident, talk about how the event changed the world, and what they think of the event and how THE WORLD should learn from it based on their own opinion. Yes, these two lesson plans sound like university grade essay writing task but based on the sample of students' work; while they are not as in-depth as a university student's work should be, they showed much thoughts being put in. For the first LP, a group of students wrote on Muslim community and the misconception of Muslims being all Arabs and violent. The second LP had a student writing about Hiroshima bombing and how it stopped the WWII even if it's such "a 'terrorist' thing to do". If those students can think about all that, why do we think our Malaysian students arent capable of that?
In all, I personally see the English language as a medium for students to connect with the outside world and if we dont start debating on how much of social studies are we bringing in to the students, i honestly think our students will see English as a subject, not as a language, and a school as a place to get an exam cert not as a place to prepare them for the future.
And before i end this blogpost, here's a picture of my students that have nothing to do with the topic :D
Delaqroux Out
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