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

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

On 20 Dec 2002 at 17:58, Vincent Lee wrote:

> > In Asian culture (and maybe some other cultures)
> > being a doctor is a 
> > very respectable profession. Its like you're one
> > above the others. 
> > But looking at other cultures (hint: let's get
> > exposure), you notice 
> > that doctors are just as well respected as police
> > men or bus drivers 
> > (how much respect do Malaysians give to our police
> > force, or even the 
> > bus drivers?)
> 
> On this note, I am not sure if this is the voice of
> majority, may be my social circle of friends are
> unique.. but most of my friends have respect for any
> professions..... As long as a person don't cheat,
> bully, etc to gain unlawful means.... no one should be
> despised..

Are you stating that your social circle of friends *are* the 
majority?

Glad to know that you have a unique bunch of friends that respect 
everyone. But in an earlier post, you mention that "grades are too 
important".

Remember what we're debating here, so let's not get off tangent 
either. I quoted you verbatim, yet you say your social circle of 
friends respects (and by this I get you treat) everyone equally - 
good grades, not so good grades, or bad grades. 

> > Is this actually the case in the Malaysian education
> > scene? From what 
> > I have heard, and from even what I have seen from my
> > peers, it's a 
> > far cry from all the analytical skills we want our
> > graduates (from 
> > school) to have.
> > 
> > Does he learn the rules (or memorise it?)? Does he
> > understand the 
> > concept (or is he told to memorise the concept?) ?
> > 
> > With a sponge-like memory, he can be quick, but is
> > he efficient to 
> > our workforce? Probably not. Practice does make
> > perfect, but 
> > committing to memory forcibly does nothing positive.
> 
> I grew up in malaysia, went thru the malaysian
> education system..... and I have seen many friends do
> the same.

From your writings, I guessed as much. Which was why I hinted that 
some overseas exposure may generally help broaden your thinking. 
Don't get me wrong, I'm not faltering you or anything, but even 
spending a while in an overseas working environment, will give you a 
different outlook of life. Spending a little time in an overseas 
education system will do the same to you.

If you notice, the folks like Eng Sin and Meng have spent time 
overseas, and their outlook is different. So open up your mind to new 
ideas Vincent. 
 
> Are you saying that,
> "students who can memorize a lot, do not have
> impressive analytical skills"?

Yes. If you learn by rote, you will have very dismal analytical 
skills. Only if you are taught to analyse (and not memorise) will you 
ever get into the habit of analysis.

> In my humble opinion,
> "students who can memorize like sponge, can memorize
> well"

Yes. If they are sponges, that's all they'll ever remain really.

> "students who do not have analytical skills, do not
> have analytical skills"

Nope. Analysis is something that happens based on practice. If you 
are taught to not analyse (but memorise), you'd never be good at it - 
or in later years when you come to the workforce, you'd have a tough 
time at learning. 

But nothing is impossible. Everyone eventually learns to analyse.

> "students who can memorize like sponge, may or may not
> have impressive analytical skills"

What exactly are you trying to say here? This is of course a 
generalisation, as each individual has his/her own skillsets.

> Since we agree that practice makes perfect, I will not
> continue on this one. Analytical skills need to be
> nurtured and practised too. It is not born. If a
> person don't use it often, he/she will lose it. 

Yup. So you do *agree* with me when you say that "Analytical skills 
need to be nurtured and practised too". 

Guess what? Learning by rote does not nurture or enable one to 
practise this skill called analysis. Only telling students to analyse 
from the beginning will enable such a skill.

Giving them what they need to remember for an exam is not the way to 
go. The idea is to teach them what they need to know, and get 
students smart enough to realise what they need to recollect, and go 
into the exam and apply it (only after analysis).

Going to a tuition class, memorising the past year questions and 
answers, et al, is certainly *not* the way to go. I'm not sure if you 
follow Singaporean news closely, but I have a general interest in 
that country as I travel there often enough - there was a Standard 6 
PSL (I could be incorrect in the term, but its about there) exam that 
parent's weren't happy about at all. There were questions in there 
that weren't exactly taught to students, but if they had used their 
analytical skills and applied what they had learnt, they'd have 
solved it.

Instead what happened? The students complained to their parents, and 
the parents complained to the board. But the board stood strongly and 
firm that the students should have used application and not expected 
to have learnt by rote. I think the Board made a wise decision as to 
not strike out the question from the marking scheme. Very few of the 
students generally scored for that question. 

Same applies here. Only thing is that the SPM/STPM board is lenient 
because of the National Agenda. And nope, I'm not going to go into 
this, with regards to how folk seem to be chucked under the ISA for 
simple mail forwarding. Gosh our nation has a bunch of skewed 
thinkers.

> Again, if you talk about history, memorizing isn't
> just remembering each word in the text book, or have
> photographic memory. I think, smart students do well
> in exams because they ANALYSE what is important, what
> is not important, and practise on understanding of
> physics, maths etc... may or may not be from text
> books. etc..

But the exam system allows them to look at past year questions and 
answers, memorise them, and generally get "smart" results. Not to 
mention, the amount of tuition the students attend, is shocking. What 
are they learning at schools?

I was told when I took my L's for the driving exam - don't bother 
thinking, just memorise the book's answers and you'd do fine. 
Unfortunately for me, I don't believe in memorising, and I've had 
driving experience from before, so I took the L's without looking at 
the book. I may not have gotten 50 upon 50, but I surely did pass my 
L's.

(hey, that's the only Malaysian based exam I've ever taken in my life 
;) hehe. seeing the quality, i'm glad.)

> by the way, I think practice != memorize.

Enough practice on the same question in the past year book, and 
you've memorised it.

> A simple example is badminton game, the players need
> to practise in order to play well, but they cannot
> memorize the games... you may then argue that
> badminton game is not academics. In my opinion, you
> may memorize formulas, you may memorize tables, but i
> think there's not way to memorize when it comes
> solving certain questions.

These are the certain questions where the sheep are separated from 
the cattle. The sheep will complain, the cattle will be glad they 
learnt to analyse, and not memorise.

A badminton game is dynamic. These exam questions are static. 

> I have no doubt that in typical exams, there are
> questions meant for people with brain but lazy to
> study (common sense questions), there are questions
> that reward stupid but hardworking people who memorize
> everything, there are also questions that reward
> people who practise a lot, hence have the speed to
> complete certain questions quickly, there are also
> questions that require thinking. So, to say that all
> questions require only memorization is not that
> true...

Agreed. Not all questions require only memorisation. But to pass, and 
score a good grade even, "learning by rote" is the way to go in the 
Malaysian system. Talk to the SPM leavers and ask them how much 
memorising they did at their tuition classes, etc..

I just did not long ago, and this is my humble report to you.

> > I put it to you: would you rather have an employee
> > that scored a pass 
> > in a subject say for algorithms, but still remembers
> > all the 
> > pseudocode, etc... or would you rather have an
> > employee that scored a 
> > distinction in the same subject, but he just
> > memorised the code, in a 
> > language he was being taught it in - say Java (okay,
> > bad example, say 
> > C or something)?
> 
> I would have an employee who never studied algorithm,
> and yet can think out of the box to produce an
> algorithm. I would also get en employee who can learn
> quickly, understand quickly, and be able to deliver. I
> am not worried if they have a pass, or a distinction
> in algorithms.

If you had an employee that never studied the already existing 
algorithimic basics, and yet can think out of the box to produce an 
algorithm, you're going to be having someone like Djikstra as an 
employee :) 

In the OSS world, we're encouraged to build upon existing work. So 
having someone that's not in sync with the current world is probably 
not an employee you want.

How OSSIG related is this argument? Not very... So maybe we want to 
continue this in a private discussion, unless there's a show of hands 
of folks enjoying this thread.

Anyways, I'm just going to digress a bit on the Subject field. "STI 
News" Firm discovers good IT help hard to find". I never got to read 
the original STI News post. But looking at the topic in general, and 
my arguments, as with Eng Sin's and Meng's seem to stand. 

--
Colin Charles, byte@aeon.com.my
http://www.bytebot.net/


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