Friday, October 29, 2010

CHANGING EDUCATION PARADIGMS

I cringe whenever I hear our ministers and politicians talk about making our country the centre of educational excellence. Our varsities have consistently fared poorly in the World Universities Ranking (WUR). University Malaya, our premier institute of higher learning, has dropped to 207th in the 2010 WUR, UPM to 319th, UTM 320th and UKM 309th.

Yet with those kind of rankings, our Deputy Minister of Higher Education assures us that our public universities can produce a Nobel Prize winner. He certainly has big dreams. Much has to be done before that can happen.

The entire education system is in dire need of a massive overhaul. For a start policy-makers in the Ministry of Education should watch this video and learn from it. So should all of us, if we are truly concerned about our children and grandchildren's education.

What Sir Ken Robinson says here makes a lot of sense. I highly recommend the video for viewing.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, I posted the same video on my blog
http://forumiitm.wordpress.com/

It's easy to criticize the current education system? The question (or the challenge) I've posted on my blog is simply this - how do you implement the changes?

If everbody's such a supporter for new ideas and divergent thinking - come up with an for an education system not based along factory lines - What would it look like?

seniorsaloud said...

Anubhav,getting the decision makers at the ministerial level to embrace innovation will take too long. It has to be bottom up. Start with changing the mindet of teachers and teacher-trainers. They can implement Ken Robinson's ideas in their classrooms rightaway. Teachers hold the key to educational reforms. They are the ones in direct and daily contact with the students.