How on earth do they do it? How did she manage to score 20 As in her recent SPM exam?? Honestly, I find it really hard to believe. During my time, which was 5 years ago, the top SPM scorer was a girl who scored 17 As.
So what will it be in the next 5 years? Someone who scores 23 As? And then 26 As in 10 years' time? Haha!
Each year, during results announcement time, we are bombarded with news of top and straight-A scorers in the newspapers. No, wait! The number gets higher each year. Looks like we're being surrounded by geniuses!
I'm not being cynical but logical here. Are the students that smart just because they can obtain distinctions in their exams? People even wrote in to newspapers expressing their belief that the marking standards have become too low.
If it's so easy to become a top scorer now, then I wish that I had been born 5 years later!
ETA: Yikes! Looks like there's a reporting error in Bernama. It's written that the 20 As student is a boy. She appears as a girl in NST.
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Hi Josette
ReplyDeleteMy wife is an English teacher at a secondary school. What she tells me on a daily basis about directives from the "top" are shocking, eg. instructions not to fail the students, that if you can't give them marks based on the substance of their work, then you give them marks based on format, handwriting style, etc. Or pass them if you think they look like they tried. A pass for effort, so to speak.
That's the Malaysian education system today. It's all numbers, forget substance and quality.
In the end, they're only cheating themselves.
What!! Can't blame oso..The education ministry 'ai bin'(want face)..
ReplyDeleteThe reality is, even they got cgpa 4.oo in Universities, they still need to find job like their peers. Gaining excellent result is important, but most important is being able to meet life's challenges..Just me two cents worth..
+I do agree that the standard is getting lower, even thou my results are still very low, but I still thk they shudn't mess wif the grading, coz it would be unfair to the students that tried hard if the targeted marks are lower, unfair too if they increase the rate, coz unlike common believe that the government lower all the scores, there are sum subjects of which they increases the grade, so so, I juz dun get why can't we be graded by on a one and only grading system without changing it according to statistic juz so that more can score better...
ReplyDeletehahaha...lucky u..17As, when it was my years, the best talk about is 11As, yikes! am i that old, demmit! huhuhuhu....
ReplyDeletepolitics has played a role in determining how successful a ministry is in their areas since the very beginning, in my times the education minister was Najib...imagine how successful the result that year had to be to prove that the ministry is doing an "excellent job"...
...but, i just cant comment whether the grading process has became more lenient or not as i'd like to keep things on the positive side..
maybe the girl is that brilliant (be it understanding or memorizing) the actual result may only be known when time passes by, lets just leave the clock ticking and see what song it chimes later.
and again i do think that there might just be a really brilliant people once in a while as if there's no such rules, there shall never be people such as aljabbar (algebra), einstein (no examples needed) or maybe da vinci...
hmmm... i thank you Josette for such a thought provoking post, it did get my rusty brain moving again. just what i needed.
arigato gozaimas.
!^_^
"support jambulism"
can't blame others.we should blame ourselves
ReplyDeletereadingmonk: That's terrible. Whatever happened to quality?? So the teachers have no power/right to fail the students even if they deserve it?
ReplyDeletesakaigirl: We have a new minister for the ministry now, we'll see what other ideas the come up with. True, a 4.0 CGPA ain't good enough. They need to prove and show that they're hardworking, smart and capable.
+Penthius+: I see...do you mean that they have different kinds of grading for different papers? Ouch. Not good.
kodok jambul: But it's silly to simply pass students in order to show that the current edu system is effective! In the end, it's the students themselves who'll face the consequences. I guess those straight A kids need to realize that straight As don't really open doors that easily.
Deep: :D