A Basket-fool of ... A's

I can't agree more with an article published in the Star paper today. It's all about the 'quantity' of A's scored in exams.

Year in year out, Malaysia students make headlines, getting attention from the media of how many A's they have scored in exams, three times a year, at least. Why three times a year because we have UPSR for the Primary Six, PMR for Sec 3 and SPM for Sec 5 ('O' Level). If A's are used purely to judge a student's ability or intelligence, I have no doubt it is not a true reflection at all given Malaysia low standard education system.

What is the passing marks for scoring A's? Are they vary for every different subject? E.g. English, Science, Math compare to the "extra" non-relevant subjects such as foreign language or religious studies. I say this because it has not been proven how it is done or worse still the way it is done has not been made transparent. Help me to understand if you know.

It makes me wonder....every year students are getting more A's than the last, ballooning up to 18, 19, 20 and it is counting in SPM!!! How is that possible? 21 As means 21 subjects! It is certainly a shocker to me and also sounds STUPID.

My father could read and write Mandarin, English and Bahasa Malaysia but only educated till LCE level - those days. Today, you got students with A's that can fill up a basket at SPM level ('O' Level) BUT cannot phrase a proper sentence in English. Don't ask these high scorers to speak English because your funny bone might be tickled pink! Know what I'm sayin'.

Thanks and no thanks to our education system, policies makers, dumb politicians, overzealous national language guardians, etc. Whatever you call these people - they really fit the tag 'dumb and dumber' anyway. I would bet they may not even let their children finish education here - most end up overseas!

Come on, what is the relevancy of such many A's??? Isn't it quality counts over quantity at the end of the day? What counts is your spot-on ability to impress your interviewers. E.g. if one can speak good English, use correct tenses or grammars, phrase a complete sentence that your listeners can understand, it says a lot even without the many A's. Some can't even do a simple math calculation but call himself a degree holder. Huh!

If we don't practise matriculation and continue to harp on QUOTA i.e. reserved places for the Malays, it is futile to score a basket-fool of A's for show. If we don't allow competition, let the best compete with the best, it is meaningless. If we keep on flip-flopping our education system, worse still back-tracking it, changing it at whim and fancy, what future does our children have? What kind of future leaders does our country want to produce, etc.?

A BASKET-FOOL of A's, you bet we have it every year! We are going to break more Malaysia Book of Records in quantity of A's scored in national level exams. Surely but bodoh-ly (stupid)!