Interview with Murad Mohd Noor

Murad Mohd Noor
Originally uploaded by Maverickysm.

ABSTRACT FROM INTERVIEW WITH MURAD:

Q: But isn’t the Education Ministry coming up with plans to improve the overall situation in national schools, such as the move to teach Mandarin and Tamil as elective subjects? Or the teaching of Mathematics and Science in English?

A: It is like patches — you have an old shirt, you put a lot of patches. All these new patches and at the end of the day you are still having an old shirt with new patches. What I’m saying is have a new shirt.

Inspectors now go round to see how teachers teach. Why don’t they change that — to whether the students learn or not? Go to the schools, ask for the examination results and look at the boy who got As and find out how he got them.

Teachers can be brilliant but if your child is failing in all subjects, so what? Change the emphasis from teacher teaching to student learning.

Teachers become outdated as they are trained because new skills and knowledge are coming up. We will be left behind. Don’t allow it to be that the children are not learning despite going to school. Now you can see people sending their children for private tuition. It is a feature now. Private tuition should only cater for those who can’t cope with education — they do remedial work.

We react to advancements, we never become the agent of change although that is what education should be.

I am not happy about education being politicised. It is too highly emotional, highly politicised and sometimes you lose educational values. There should not be too much politicking in education.