Re: [ossig] (Fwd) STI News: Firm discovers good IT help hard to find

["Colin Charles " <byte@aeon.com.my>]

On 20 Dec 2002 at 17:23, TM Tan (aka Meng) wrote:

> It is unfortunate but our educational system has a tendency toward parrot style learning. 
> Confirmity is another thing, individuality and self expression isn't encouraged. The thing is, 
> this does not seem to be a purely Malaysian thing, it seems to be very Asian. Creativity and 
> individuality seems to be suppressed in modern Asian societies.

Hmm, in that case the society can only progress to a certain limit. 
There will never be proper innovation.

> I spent 8 years in our local system and another 7 years in a foreign system (UK) and 
> there is a big difference. Our local system was derived from the British system back 
> then and hasn't evolved much. Basically all memory work....history is the best example. 
> Here it was just memorising what happened when - now how many people like history 
> lessons here ? Be honest :). History in the UK was a totally different...yes, the dates 
> were still there but more importantly the Whys and Hows of events were more important. 
> We even covered Admiral Nelson's Naval tactics in his many battles with the French and 
> Spanish and the Duke of Wellington's strategies and tactics during his campaigns against 
> Napolean...now that is *real* history and it was really interesting stuff.

I enjoyed my history lessons. Heck, I studied it British style (umm, 
admitedly, there was no Malaysian history in my education) and we 
were always asking questions. If we wanted to analyse a situation, 
we'd think of the social, political and economic reasons, and 
implications to a certain situation. And with the Why's and How's 
being asked, our essays and knowledge were never rote taught.

The A Level Examinations General Paper is another challenging thing. 
Great stuff, I think most of everyone should take it to get a broader 
understanding of the world. 

> I'm glad we have Discovery Channel and National Geographic Channel locally so our kids 
> can really learn stuff. These two channels alone are worth the Astro subscription.

Hmm... Haven't had the time to actually sit around and watch Astro, 
but from what I remember, Discovery was fairly good the last time I 
saw it (circa about a year back. heh ;) )
--
Colin Charles, byte@aeon.com.my
http://www.bytebot.net/


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