Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Dreaming in Minnesota

Yesterday I went to a rally for the Minnesota DREAM Act, a bill that would give undocumented high school students who attended high school for three years in Minnesota to pay resident tuition at state colleges and universities here and be eligible for scholarships. From what I can tell, the bill has a lot of support in the state legislature, but Gov. Pawlenty has threatened to veto it. His argument: undocumented kids shouldn't have rights that residents of other states don't have. It's an incredibly disingenuous argument - these kids live in Minnesota, and they didn't choose to come to the U.S., they came with their parents. Plus, denying immigrants access to college almost guarantees that the brighter undocumented kids will be denied higher paying jobs, a twisted logic that helps anti-immigrant politicans continue to justify claims that immigrants don't contribute to society.

Anyway, the 700 or so high school students that attended the rally and meetings with state legislators were awesome. A group of students ran the rally and training, and I went around with five 9-10 graders to talk to two legislators from rural Minnesota. One of the kids was an immigrant (legal) and the rest were white Americans. Even though they didn't know any immigrants that wouldn't be able to go to college, it was amazing to see how passionate they were about the cause. They actually convinced one the legislators to support the bill (he was new and hadn't heard much about it), and the Republican (undecided) also really listened and took the kids seriously. It made me really hopeful about the Dream Act - how can you tell a group of kids that you don't want to provide opportunities to all students, regardless of how they came to this country. I know it's a very small piece of reform that has a lot of bipartisan support (and it still hasn't passed at the federal level, although a number of states have), but there was so much energy among both immigrant and non-immigrant students that has the potential to spawn a real movement for change.

Alternative department rankings

Thanks to Nordina for pointing out this article to me. It's an alternative ranking system for individual departments in US universities that is devised by a for profit company called Academic Analytics. While every ranking system has its flaws as well as its strengths, this highlights the fact that we need some sort of internal ranking system for Malaysian universities, both public and private, so that we can have an idea of how these universities are doing vis-a-vis each other, even if the initial rankings / methodology has its flaws.

I think that a private company with the collaboration of a newspaper e.g. the Star would be best placed to do something like this. The government such as the MOHE can compel the unis to provide the stats but it is too encumbered with its internal politics and inefficiencies to produce something concrete. Remember the ranking / grading system for the private colleges? This was from September, 2006 and we still haven't heard anything from the ministry as of today.

Anugerah Academic 2006

I was told to check out this award by a friend. The details are below.

From the website:

AAN bertujuan memberi pengiktirafan kerajaan yang tertinggi bagi pensyarah Universiti/Kolej Universiti. AAN akan menjadi satu pelantar bagi mengiktiraf serta menyanjung para akademik negara yang telah menaikkan serta mengharumkan nama negara di persada kebangsaan dan antarabangsa.

There are 6 categories in these awards:

Anugerah Tokoh Akademik Negara
Anugerah Penerbitan Makalah Jurnal
Anugerah Penerbitan Buku
Anugerah Inovasi dan Pengkomersilan Produk
Anugerah Seni dan Kreativiti
Anugerah Pengajaran

I think it's a good move by the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) to recognize the accomplishments of local academics who have done work that has gained national and especially international recognition. But it's not so encouraging to see the Ministry list among international accompolishments, winning 'prizes' at international exhibitions (such as I-TEX) which Tony has rightly critized, alongside more legit prizes such as the Carlos J. Finlay Price for Microbiology (UNESCO), the Young Scientist UNESCO and the King Faisal Award.

It is also encouraging to see that lecturers from private colleges in Malaysia are also eligible for these awards with the exception of the "Anugerah Tokoh Akademik Negara" award. Private colleges and university colleges can be / will be, in my opinion, as important as public universities in pushing the research agenda in Malaysia in certain fields and the accomplishments of their lecturers also need to be given due recognition.

One of the things that I don't quite like about the conditions of application is the need to obtain the approval of the VC / Rector / President of your college / university (atau wakil yang diperturunkan kuasa). While I can see that the intention was so that the highest authority in the university knows about the work of potential nominees and can back them, this also can create unnecessary bottlenecks as well as discouraging those academics who might not have such good relations with the VC / Rector / President and might not want to jump through this loop. Why not make the head of the faculty or of a department eligible to be one of the 'recommenders' as well since these people are more likely to know the impact and importance of the work of one of their peers / fellow lecturers?

While one should be careful not to turn this into a self-glorification exercise, I think awards such as these, if vetted carefully, can highlight important work to the larger public who otherwise might not have heard of such accomplishments.

I'll keep a close eye on this when the results are released. The applications closes today (Feb 28, 2007).

The Knucklehead Of The Day

I guess the name of the alleged perpetrator was withheld to protect the stupid guilty: PITTSBURGH -- A local mother is outraged after a teacher allegedly gave her 14-year-old daughter a sexually explicit poem.It's called "How Do You Make Love to a Black Woman?"The Murray Accelerated Learning Academy teacher reportedly gave the student the poem after class.The poem includes graphic language.The

Carnival-Carnival

The 108th edition of The Carnival of Education (hosted this week by Dr. Homeslice) has opened-up this week's roundup of exhibits from throughout the EduSphere.For extra EduCredit, see what the homies are up to over at this week's edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling. --------------------------See our latest EduPosts.

Today's Non Sequitur

And I thought that only stupid spoiled slutty young would-be American "artistes" such as the lamentable Paris Hilton and that possibly certainly certifiable whackjob Britney Spears boasted of going knickerless in public.Veteran British actress Helen Mirren has proven that notion to be incorrect.Didn't someone once mention that our Transatlantic Cousins were supposed to have better manners if not

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

HPAIR Conferences 2007

The Harvard Project for Asian and International Relations (HPAIR) invites you to participate in our annual summer student conference in Asia.

HPAIR is a partnership between the students and faculty of Harvard University, offering a sustained academic program and a forum of exchange to facilitate discussion of the most important economic, political, and social issues relevant to the Asia-Pacific region.

This year, the event will be held between August 17-20th in Beijing.

HPAIR's international conference has emerged as the largest annual Harvard event in Asia and the largest annual student conference in the Asia-Pacific region, attracting a wide variety of distinguished speakers and future leaders as Harvard's student outpost in Asia. Past speakers at our conferences include former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, Singapore President S.R. Nathan, Secretary-General of ASEAN Ong Keng Yong, and former Japanese Finance Minister Heizo Takanaka.

Both delegates and papers are welcome! The theme will be Engaging Asia: Discourse and Dialogue. More details are available on their website. You can also make your application online before March 15th.

The Workshop Topics include:
  • Economic Growth in Asia and its Effects on Society
  • Comparative Notions of Leadership
  • Understanding Security Issues in East Asia
  • Inequality and Social Policy in Asia
  • Asia's Information Society
  • Popular Culture in Asia
In addition, HPAIR Academic Conference will offer delegates opportunities to participate in field trips, visits to our host schools, and gala dinner.

For those interested, there is also a Business Conference (as opposed to the Academic Conference above) which will be held on 24th-26th August in Hong Kong, co-hosted by the University of Hong Kong.

The HPAIR Business Conference now invites all university students to apply to participate as conference delegates. Graduate students, post-graduate students and professionals are also welcome to apply as a regular delegate.

More information is available on the business conference website. Similarly, applications need to be submitted before 15th March 2007.

For any inquiries about HPAIR, please feel free to email help@hpair.org. Or alternatively, contact Sriram Krishnan @ sriramkri (at) gmail.com.

Giving Homework The Heave-Ho

One San Francisco-area elementary is radically re-thinking homework: A Menlo Park elementary school is saying no to homework for some of its students. The kids, and most parents and teachers like the idea.First graders spend a good six hours a day doing school work -- what they do after school should not include homework. That's the decision made last October by the principal of Oak Knoll

Carnival Entries Are Due!

Entries for the 108th midway of The Carnival Of Education (hosted this week by Dr. Homeslice) are due today. Please email them to: drhomeslice [at] hotmail [dot] com . (Or, easier yet, use this handy submission form.) Submissions should be received no later than 9:00 PM (Eastern), 6:00 PM (Pacific). Contributions should include your site's name, the title of the post, and the post's URL if

The Watcher's Council Has Spoken!

Each and every week, Watcher of Weasels sponsors a contest among posts from the Conservative side of the 'Sphere. The winning entries are determined by a jury of 12 writers (and The Watcher) known as "The Watchers Council."The Council has met and cast their ballots for last week's submitted posts. Council Member Entries: Right Wing Nut House took first place with A Rock, a Hard Place, and the

Monday, February 26, 2007

USM moving ahead?

Another sign that USM is trying to move ahead of the other research universities? Report below taken from the Star, Feb 25, 2007.

Wooing the best brains

POSTGRADUATE studies and post-doctoral research are untapped areas of opportunities for international students in Malaysia.

And, according to Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) vice-chancellor Prof Datuk Dzulkifli Abdul Razak, the country needs to attract the best researchers and specialists.

“But to do this we need a better remuneration scheme.

“If we don't pay them world-class salaries as world-class scholars, no one will be interested in coming to Malaysia to do their research and those who do will quickly be demotivated,” he said.

This, he added, was essential if Malaysian universities were to nurture emerging areas of knowledge.

“In USM, for example, we are looking at developing brain science and we have the facilities and capabilities to set up a brain centre but we don’t have enough specialists in the area.

“And to attract the right people, the structure of university governance needs to be reviewed,” he said, adding that this is one of the issues being discussed with the Government.

“With more autonomy, we can break away from the public service salary band and lure the best experts.”

Last month, USM was named the top research university in the country by the Higher Education Ministry.

This is based on a five-year evaluation against eight criteria: research quality, research quantity, researcher quality and quantity, postgraduate quality and quantity, level of innovation, support such as facilities and human expertise, level of networking and internationalisation, and number of awards and recognition received.

According to Prof Dzulkifli, the university scored high marks in all eight areas used in the appraisal, which took place from 2000 to 2005.

USM received 100% for innovation, awards and recognition and at least 88% in most categories.

“More importantly, the evaluation highlighted our weaknesses and what is missing.

“We now need to do better in the next evaluation exercise. At the same time, we have to work towards meeting international research standards where the passing mark is higher.

“It gives us a good moving target in our journey to become a research university.”

USM is one of the four universities designated as research universities under the Ninth Malaysia Plan, the others being Universiti Malaya, Universiti Putra Malaysia and Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.

This status entails funding of RM153mil each for research, development and commercialisation activities.

The funds are scheduled for disbursement this year. USM is, however, already moving ahead under its own steam.

Plans to build a biotechnology park that will house incubation companies were announced recently. Estimated to cost RM30mil, it will boost the development and commercialisation of leading-edge biotechnology products at the university.

“The ministry is taking steps to move ahead with the initiative, but we can’t wait or we will miss the boat.

“So we are making do with what we have and leveraging on what we‘ve got. We hope such efforts will be a signal to the ministry of our seriousness,” said Prof Dzulkifli.

USM PhD scholarships

I got this application advertisement from a friend recently. USM was and is actually making marketing trips to the US to recruit potential PhD graduates to return home to teach in our local universities and now they are offering PhDs scholarships for Malaysians who have or are going to graduate from the US at the undergraduate level. Below are the details of the scholarship as well as the relevant link where you can download the application forms.

I received another excel sheet with the full details of the sponsorship scheme and it looks like a fair deal to me. The only thing I need to clarify is whether this sponsorship scheme lasts 3 years or 5 years. A few of my sponsored friends in the US have complained that many of the Malaysian PhD scholarships still assume that one can finish a PhD in 3 years in the US (like in the UK) which is obviously not the case. If you have any more information about such PhD scholarships, please let us know.

Universiti Sains Malaysia cordially invites suitably qualified candidates to apply for the USM Academic Staff Training Scheme (ASTS) in all areas of studies with the exception of Law. Selected candidates will be sponsored by the Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia and USM to further their studies to the Master’s and PhD levels at an institution recognized by the Public Services Department, Malaysia. Upon completion of their PhD studies, they will serve as lecturers at USM.

BENEFITS

Tuition Fees, Subsistence Allowance for candidate and family (if applicable), Cost of Living Allowance (depending on the place of study), Return Airfare, Relocation Allowance, Winter Apparel Allowance (if applicable), Book Allowance, Equipment Allowance, Thesis Allowance, Final Year Allowance, Accommodation Allowance

CONDITIONS FOR APPLICATION

1. Bachelor’s Degree (with a CGPA of 3.0 and above), or a Master’s Degree;
2. Candidates in the final year of their Bachelor’s or Master’s programs may also apply;
3. The maximum age for candidates applying to pursue both their Master’s and PhD studies is 30, while that for PhD studies is 38;
4. Candidates and parents must be Malaysian citizens;
5. Candidates must bring along original and certified copies of academic certificates and transcripts when they attend the selection interview.

Please note that degrees must be conferred by an institution recognized by the Public Services Department, Malaysia.

For further details, please contact us at
Tel: + 604 653 3366 or +604 653 3295
Email: ramlis@notes.usm.my or salina@notes.usm.my
Web Site: http://enovate.usm.my/assist

Making Motion But Making Little Progress

Joanne Jacobs:High school seniors’ reading proficiency didn’t improve from 2002 to 2005 and declined from 1992 to 2005, according to the new Nation’s Report Card from NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress). In math, less than a quarter of students tested as proficient in 2005. Since 1992, the percentage of 12th graders reading at or above the basic level has slipped from 80 percent to

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Get a job

The school of bloggers might have found a place to live in Minneapolis! It even has a garden:



Now I just have to find a job ...

Speaking of which, I took the LAST and the CST yesterday. Having heard very negative things about the New York certification exams, I was pleasantly surprised by how much they seemed to focus on critical thinking and general understanding rather than knowledge of obscure facts.

Still, I found myself guessing a lot on the CST on topics ranging from the Gulf Stream to Reagan's Contra policy. I lucked out with the essay topic, which had to do with Lincoln, the Civil War, and slavery (which I just taught).

Meanwhile, I'm working on an online teaching portfolio. In the interest of preserving my anonymity I won't link to it here, but if you already know who I am, I would LOVE any sort of feedback. Email me at theschoolofblog AT gmail DOT com and I'll send you the link. Thanks!

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Notes from a teacher/coach/ facilitator on social action

A year ago, as the ‘methods’ person, I joined a team of doctoral students and faculty engaged in social action projects with high school students at a school that has social action as part of the curriculum. That semester, we read and analyzed the groups’ notes on success and failure, surprise and disillusionment. Drawn in by the reading, I decided to jump in and facilitate a group myself. Last semester 6 groups (comprising 8-10 high school students and one facilitator in each) met at the school every week, and my group examined truancy.

The students at the school were used to having ‘volunteer coaches’ come in and facilitate projects. However, the ‘coach’ role as I experienced it was a combination of facilitation, teaching, researching, and advising on a wide variety of issues and concerns besides the project itself. The more I interacted with students, the more I felt I needed to learn about what they were thinking and feeling and how they were interpreting their roles in these projects. Were they ‘doing school’ – only a different type of school? How sustained was their interest? Did that matter? How were we defining success? To what degree were we, volunteer coaches in the school, thinking about the ethical ramifications of student activism both in and out of school.

One point that became clearer to me at the end of the semester was that students were not naïve about structural causes of oppression, but they did seek to distance themselves from the links between their personal and societal problems partially because of the ways in which this knowledge might serve to ‘place’ and ‘name’ them. The power of their personal experiences was at times denied by students because such experiences have also served to ‘name’ and ‘place’ them within status hierarchies. Such links need to be drawn out carefully and with sensitivity so that they serve to empower while providing solidarity. By the end of the semester the group had certainly done something and there was a relationship that was growing between the students and myself, and yet, a lot was missing.

After the semester ended, I went to India, attended an Education conference and met with grassroots activists in the field of education. There I found renewed inspiration for the work that I am trying to do here in the United States. I met Bunker Roy, the founder of Barefoot Colleges in India. Barefoot College (after the Barefoot doctors of China) does not credential anybody. But the college serves as the ground for social action all over India. Participants learn and train to solve immediate problems in their communities – barefoot architects build eco-friendly houses, barefoot solar engineers solve the problem of electricity and so on. I asked Bunker Roy if I could visit and learn. His reply was characteristic of the philosophy of the Barefoot Colleges– “Come,” he said, and “unlearn.” I plan on doing that this year.

Notes from a teacher/coach/ facilitator on social action

A year ago, as the ‘methods’ person, I joined a team of doctoral students and faculty engaged in social action projects with high school students at a school that has social action as part of the curriculum. That semester, we read and analyzed the groups’ notes on success and failure, surprise and disillusionment. Drawn in by the reading, I decided to jump in and facilitate a group myself. Last semester 6 groups (comprising 8-10 high school students and one facilitator in each) met at the school every week, and my group examined truancy.

The students at the school were used to having ‘volunteer coaches’ come in and facilitate projects. However, the ‘coach’ role as I experienced it was a combination of facilitation, teaching, researching, and advising on a wide variety of issues and concerns besides the project itself. The more I interacted with students, the more I felt I needed to learn about what they were thinking and feeling and how they were interpreting their roles in these projects. Were they ‘doing school’ – only a different type of school? How sustained was their interest? Did that matter? How were we defining success? To what degree were we, volunteer coaches in the school, thinking about the ethical ramifications of student activism both in and out of school.

One point that became clearer to me at the end of the semester was that students were not naïve about structural causes of oppression, but they did seek to distance themselves from the links between their personal and societal problems partially because of the ways in which this knowledge might serve to ‘place’ and ‘name’ them. The power of their personal experiences was at times denied by students because such experiences have also served to ‘name’ and ‘place’ them within status hierarchies. Such links need to be drawn out carefully and with sensitivity so that they serve to empower while providing solidarity. By the end of the semester the group had certainly done something and there was a relationship that was growing between the students and myself, and yet, a lot was missing.

After the semester ended, I went to India, attended an Education conference and met with grassroots activists in the field of education. There I found renewed inspiration for the work that I am trying to do here in the United States. I met Bunker Roy, the founder of Barefoot Colleges in India. Barefoot College (after the Barefoot doctors of China) does not credential anybody. But the college serves as the ground for social action all over India. Participants learn and train to solve immediate problems in their communities – barefoot architects build eco-friendly houses, barefoot solar engineers solve the problem of electricity and so on. I asked Bunker Roy if I could visit and learn. His reply was characteristic of the philosophy of the Barefoot Colleges– “Come,” he said, and “unlearn.” I plan on doing that this year.

Friday, February 23, 2007

Community Organizing and Urban Education VII: In Youth Action, Power Precedes Engagement, Learning, and Understanding

[To read the entire series, go here.]

[To see our full presentation on our youth action project at AERA in messy MS Word Format on GoogleDocs go here.]

People don’t do anything unless they are motivated to action first. As Saul Alinsky stated,

If people feel they don’t have the power to change a bad situation, then they do not think about it. Why start figuring out how you are going to spend a million dollars if you do not have a million dollars, or are ever going to have a million dollars—unless you want to engage in fantasy? (p. 105)
Alinsky argued that it is only when people sense they have some power to make some changes in their world that “they begin to think and ask questions about how to make the changes.” “It is,” he noted, “the creation of the instrument or the circumstances of power that provides the reason and makes knowledge essential.”

This creates some real challenges when one tries to engage inner-city students in social action projects, as we are trying to do in a project in Milwaukee. You can run into a catch-22: they don’t want to do anything because they don’t think they can accomplish anything, and they don’t think they can accomplish anything because they haven’t done anything.

In Milwaukee, we are working with students who are required to partipate in a social action project in school. In contrast with most youth action efforts, then, these youth don’t necessarily arrive with any particular desire to act or with any sense of their own power.

We are beginning to learn that one of the answers to the catch-22 may be just to have students “do something” related to an issue they have expressed some interest in. If they are interested in the police, have them tour a police station, or have them visit a children’s court. Such visits allow them to ask questions and engage with people in power, it gives them some voice, however small. And this voice may become a small kernel of accomplishment that we may be able to hang some interest in action on.

This “just do it approach” is not one that we understood at the beginning of this year, but we are planning to make it a central aspect of our methodology next year.

At the same time, we have learned that we should start only with topics around which we can imagine students taking some coherent action. The point is not to force students to do what we want them to, but to give them a sense, from the beginning, that this topic is linked directly to action—even if they want to change what that action is.

For example, last year some groups expressed interest in antagonistic police relations with young people—something all of them had some experience in. These groups stumbled around for weeks, unable to find anything that seemed to engage them and that seemed realistically achievable. We spent a lot of time sitting in small rooms having dialogues that didn’t really go anywhere.

This year, we started police relations groups linked to a planned action—that they would develop a curriculum to teach younger kids how to engage with the police. And we believe that it is in part because these students had a sense of a goal from the beginning that they began much more quickly to start actually doing something (distributing a survey, for example) than had the groups the year before.

Both of these techniques—getting youth “out there” to engage with the realities of the situations they want to affect, and defining some achievable goal from the first place—relate to Alinsky’s principle of power and learning. Only when youth have a concrete sense that they can affect some aspect of their community that they dislike is there much chance that they will begin to take ownership of a project that is otherwise just another school requirement.

It’s not rocket science. In retrospect, it seems obvious. But engaging youth in social action projects in school—however limited—is not something we usually do. And learning how to do this successfully will demand that a willingness to face up to our own ignorance.

Community Organizing and Urban Education VII: In Youth Action, Power Precedes Engagement, Learning, and Understanding

[To read the entire series, go here.]

[To see our full presentation on our youth action project at AERA in messy MS Word Format on GoogleDocs go here.]

People don’t do anything unless they are motivated to action first. As Saul Alinsky stated,

If people feel they don’t have the power to change a bad situation, then they do not think about it. Why start figuring out how you are going to spend a million dollars if you do not have a million dollars, or are ever going to have a million dollars—unless you want to engage in fantasy? (p. 105)
Alinsky argued that it is only when people sense they have some power to make some changes in their world that “they begin to think and ask questions about how to make the changes.” “It is,” he noted, “the creation of the instrument or the circumstances of power that provides the reason and makes knowledge essential.”

This creates some real challenges when one tries to engage inner-city students in social action projects, as we are trying to do in a project in Milwaukee. You can run into a catch-22: they don’t want to do anything because they don’t think they can accomplish anything, and they don’t think they can accomplish anything because they haven’t done anything.

In Milwaukee, we are working with students who are required to partipate in a social action project in school. In contrast with most youth action efforts, then, these youth don’t necessarily arrive with any particular desire to act or with any sense of their own power.

We are beginning to learn that one of the answers to the catch-22 may be just to have students “do something” related to an issue they have expressed some interest in. If they are interested in the police, have them tour a police station, or have them visit a children’s court. Such visits allow them to ask questions and engage with people in power, it gives them some voice, however small. And this voice may become a small kernel of accomplishment that we may be able to hang some interest in action on.

This “just do it approach” is not one that we understood at the beginning of this year, but we are planning to make it a central aspect of our methodology next year.

At the same time, we have learned that we should start only with topics around which we can imagine students taking some coherent action. The point is not to force students to do what we want them to, but to give them a sense, from the beginning, that this topic is linked directly to action—even if they want to change what that action is.

For example, last year some groups expressed interest in antagonistic police relations with young people—something all of them had some experience in. These groups stumbled around for weeks, unable to find anything that seemed to engage them and that seemed realistically achievable. We spent a lot of time sitting in small rooms having dialogues that didn’t really go anywhere.

This year, we started police relations groups linked to a planned action—that they would develop a curriculum to teach younger kids how to engage with the police. And we believe that it is in part because these students had a sense of a goal from the beginning that they began much more quickly to start actually doing something (distributing a survey, for example) than had the groups the year before.

Both of these techniques—getting youth “out there” to engage with the realities of the situations they want to affect, and defining some achievable goal from the first place—relate to Alinsky’s principle of power and learning. Only when youth have a concrete sense that they can affect some aspect of their community that they dislike is there much chance that they will begin to take ownership of a project that is otherwise just another school requirement.

It’s not rocket science. In retrospect, it seems obvious. But engaging youth in social action projects in school—however limited—is not something we usually do. And learning how to do this successfully will demand that a willingness to face up to our own ignorance.

The knights who say NAEP

Has cramming facts into my brain (such as the definitions of tundra and taiga) for the past week made me a little loopy, or did Beth from the AFT just endorse Core Knowledge?

Meanwhile, I have not had the chance to look too closely at the NAEP data, but I can believe that high schoolers' reading levels are comparatively low. However, I don't think the correct response to "today's students aren't reading as well as students in our parents' day" is "let's go back to teaching the way our parents were taught."

Thursday, February 22, 2007

A suggestion for content on AESA’s new website

A suggestion for content on AESA’s new website to support the teaching of social foundations courses.

This posting is prompted by my reading a very nice review, at the Education Review, of a recent reissue of Peter McLaren’s Life in Schools, which has become a social foundations textbook of sorts.

I have argued for a while that AESA should develop a resource site that compiles comments, reviews, synopses, and basic information (e.g., table of contents) of a wide range of textbooks for social foundations coursework (including sub-disciplines such as philosophy of education, history of education, etc.). The reasoning is twofold:

1) Almost half of all instructors who teach foundations-type introductory courses are not trained in the social foundations field (see Christine Shea and Carol Henry, "Who's Teaching the Social Foundations Courses?", Journal of Teacher Education, (1986), pp. 10-15. and
Christine Shea, Peter Sola and Alan Jones, "Examining the Crisis in the Social Foundations", Educational Foundations, 2, (1987); this data, by the way, is over 20 years old! Can’t anybody get a doctoral student to do a survey to update this information!?!).
2) More than 75% of all foundations-type introductory courses use standard textbooks (as opposed to individually-created readers) as the primary reading in their course (see my article, Butin, 2004, “The Foundations of Preparing Teachers: Are Education Schools Really ‘Intellectually Barren’ and Ideological?” in Teachers College Record and Butin, under review [send me an email if you want to see the data]).

There is thus an obvious and unmet need to provide good information for new instructors by which they can decide amongst a wide range of textbooks. Such a site would thus allow for comparisons, allow instructors to read about how others have used the texts, potentially provide sample syllabi from instructors who have used the texts, and reviews that help the instructor realize the limits and potential of particular texts. AESA could send out a call to all members asking for their suggestions for textbooks to include. A nice component of this is that any and all authors of foundations-type textbooks would of course (and legitimately) want to self-promote their own work and would most likely have a large amount of resource information that AESA could then post.

An obvious follow-up aspect of this, for a forthcoming post, is that AESA should then also create a resource site for instructors wanting to develop their own course reader…

A suggestion for content on AESA’s new website

A suggestion for content on AESA’s new website to support the teaching of social foundations courses.

This posting is prompted by my reading a very nice review, at the Education Review, of a recent reissue of Peter McLaren’s Life in Schools, which has become a social foundations textbook of sorts.

I have argued for a while that AESA should develop a resource site that compiles comments, reviews, synopses, and basic information (e.g., table of contents) of a wide range of textbooks for social foundations coursework (including sub-disciplines such as philosophy of education, history of education, etc.). The reasoning is twofold:

1) Almost half of all instructors who teach foundations-type introductory courses are not trained in the social foundations field (see Christine Shea and Carol Henry, "Who's Teaching the Social Foundations Courses?", Journal of Teacher Education, (1986), pp. 10-15. and
Christine Shea, Peter Sola and Alan Jones, "Examining the Crisis in the Social Foundations", Educational Foundations, 2, (1987); this data, by the way, is over 20 years old! Can’t anybody get a doctoral student to do a survey to update this information!?!).
2) More than 75% of all foundations-type introductory courses use standard textbooks (as opposed to individually-created readers) as the primary reading in their course (see my article, Butin, 2004, “The Foundations of Preparing Teachers: Are Education Schools Really ‘Intellectually Barren’ and Ideological?” in Teachers College Record and Butin, under review [send me an email if you want to see the data]).

There is thus an obvious and unmet need to provide good information for new instructors by which they can decide amongst a wide range of textbooks. Such a site would thus allow for comparisons, allow instructors to read about how others have used the texts, potentially provide sample syllabi from instructors who have used the texts, and reviews that help the instructor realize the limits and potential of particular texts. AESA could send out a call to all members asking for their suggestions for textbooks to include. A nice component of this is that any and all authors of foundations-type textbooks would of course (and legitimately) want to self-promote their own work and would most likely have a large amount of resource information that AESA could then post.

An obvious follow-up aspect of this, for a forthcoming post, is that AESA should then also create a resource site for instructors wanting to develop their own course reader…

Rogue Academics

In an aptly titled opinion piece, "The joke's now on Malaysia" by the Star's Group Editor in Chief, Datuk Wong Chun Wai, he cited many instances of religious over-zealousness by our country's administrators as well as the leaders of PAS which is making Malaysia the brunt of international jokes.

However, there was one example which caught my attention, which I've not picked up any where else (if someone has the full story to this, let me know ;)). Apparently a dean from the business faculty of a top Malaysian public university "makes alleged spot checks during lectures to check on the dressing of female students."
Students who he perceives are wearing tight T-shirts or blouses are singled out. At least on one occasion, they were asked to bend down to see whether parts of their bodies would be exposed.
OMG! In any self-respecting university of the modern world, the act will have constituted sexual harrassment which will only mean a disgraceful end to his career. Many have been fired for doing or saying much less!

As rightly pointed out by Datuk Wong, "a university is not a high school and it is not the dean’s job to worry about students’ dressing. It’s their academic performance and his – whether he has produced enough research and articles for international journals – he should be worried about."

Or maybe the dean is just performing research for his new business or management study on the impact of tight T-shirts and exposed bodies (after bending down, no less) on female purchasing patterns.

This Dean should certainly be sacked. And he should be made to apologise publicly to the students and university. Anything less will just be a disgrace to the Management and reputation of the "top university".

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

50 degrees + sunny + February break ...

= I am in such a good mood right now!

Even the fact that I've been spending my free time this week studying for my 8 a.m. content specialty test (aka, what the hell is a Visigoth?) on Saturday hasn't dampened my mood.

National Education Blueprint - Hiccups Already?

Ok, this is one time I can't find the reference back to the article which I read in the local papers a few weeks back. So, I'm going to blog it off my memory (if someone finds the relevant article(s), please let me know).

One of the key programmes to make National Schools an attractive choice for all Malaysians, particularly the non-Malay community, is the option of taking Chinese or Tamil language classes. This is clearly stated as a key objective in the recently launched National Education Blueprint for 2006-2010. In the Chapter 6 of the blueprint entitled "Strengthening National Schools", it was a key performance indicator that 150 national schools will offer Chinese Language as a subject, while 100 will offer Tamil Language programmes beginning 2007.

However, as reported in the local press, these targets are far from being met. Apparently, the Ministry of Education is still facing various problems in its implementation, including sourcing for the necessary teachers, preparation of syllabus etc.

This isn't the first time that the Ministry has announced a delay as well. The policy to offer the mother tongue languages in national schools did not originate in the blueprint, but much earlier in April 2005. Then, it was announced that the programme will actually commenced for all national schools on January 2006. However, as blogged here, the Ministry subsequently announced a postponement of the programme to a later date.

Now, despite the recently published Blueprint with a more modest objective of 150 schools, the Ministry of Education under the leadership of Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein has failed to deliver again.

The plan to change the teaching of Mathematics and Science subjects to the English language was executed (albeit with plenty of teething issues) within a period of 6 months. Now after more than 20 months from the date of the official announcement, Chinese and Tamil language programmes are still cooking in the oven.

This raises several questions with regards to the Ministry of Education:
  1. Is the Ministry even serious about offering these subjects to attract more non-Malay students to national schools, making them the schools of choice for all Malaysians? The continuous delay does not give confidence to Malaysian parents that the Ministry is keen on such an outcome for it has shown little or no urgency.

  2. And if the Ministry is indeed serious about it, then surely, there needs to be a major revamp of the ministry leadership for they have then demonstrated absolute incompetence in executing their tasks and responsibilities.

  3. What then is the likelihood of success for the National Education Blueprint, if the Ministry officials cannot even get one of the key quantitative task done properly, when there are many more difficult qualitative goals to achieve? Some other problems was blogged here earlier. Other immediate key performance indicators for 2007 includes ensuring no one is left out of the education system (see Kian Ming's post on Primary School Enrollment), increasing the number of teaching assistants, extending the pre-school education system, strengthening the selection criteria as well implementing the "fasttrack" programme for headmasters and senior assistants.
As highlighted in a few earlier posts - the Politics of Reform and Initial Impressions, the critical success factor to the Blueprint, whatever its contents, will be in the implementation plan and delivery system. Without reforming the delivery system, putting in place proper "change management" programmes, no blueprint or reform agenda will ever be successful.
I've yet to see such a plan being put in place.

Elitist?

OK, I'll much rather not having to blog about this for I fear stirring more controversies. It's certainly not the first time that we have been criticised as elitist, and I'm certain it's not going to be the last. However, the latest one in Kian Ming's post also raise quite a few other issues which certainly deserved a response, for I believing it will otherwise, certainly be detrimental to those whom we seek to assist.

The anonymous commentor (assuming its a 'he') argued that if he were to "tell all Malaysian STPM holders with straight As or GPA 4.0 to apply for admission to Oxford, more than 99% will be disappointed."

He's certainly wrong in this case.

I don't have the latest statistics at hand, but I wouldn't assume the data would have changed that much. In 2004, there were 12,235 applicants to Oxford University, 25.9% was accepted. Even with popular courses with Malaysians such as Law and Economics & Management, the acceptance rate was 19.1% and 13.8%, certainly a far cry from the alleged 1%. Science courses had significantly higher acceptance rates.

Similarly, in Cambridge where 14,682 applied that year, 22.4% were accepted. For Law and Economics, the acceptance rates were 15.1% and 14.7% respectively. Why should our best STPM students fare that much worse than the 'A' Level students in the United Kingdom?

In my case, the results for my 'A' Levels was certainly far from straight As. But that did not stop me from applying and getting in. Hence, why should our top students not bother applying to the top global universities?

If you'd like to argue that I had a decent dose of luck to get in, I'll not disagree either. But that is the very reason why Malaysian students should apply. If one doesn't even bother applying, one can't even "get lucky"!

This is very misconception about the top global universities which the bloggers here have been trying to debunk. It is not to say that all top Malaysian students should go to say, Oxbridge or Ivys. If you love Accountancy for example, you might be better off in London School of Economics (LSE) (it's not offered at Oxbridge) or if you prefer Agriculture, you might want to evaluate Nottingham or Reading. But certainly, if you think you'd like to study at Oxbridge, then certainly don't let their supposed reputation deter you from applying.


With that out of the way, there's only one other point to highlight. The commentor argued that he "will not be surprised if it is true that Tony and King Ming have been harboring discrimination against universities, which are less than their norm."

First, I dare say this on behalf of Kian Ming as well, we have no such prejudice. I've personally hired graduates from ranging from Oxford and LSE to Monash and Melbourne to UM, USM, UKM, UPM, MMU and UTM, and as far as I'm concerned, I have no issues with them at all.

So, why do we tend to focus a little more on the top schools? Very simply because we have been there and we would certainly like to help more Malaysians get there. We are realistic enough to know that we cannot help every single student in Malaysia (we try through the discourse on educational policies in Malaysia). Besides us, we certainly need others (including the Government) to play their parts and roles as well.

Tiara, for example, does a good job at trying to promote alternative education. If you have something useful to add to our readers, we'll be more than happy to publish it here (as we have done before). For us, we really just want to share our knowledge and experience (for what's its worth), to others who might find them useful. ;)

Let's Carnival!

The 107th edition of The Carnival of Education (hosted this week by History Is Elementary) has opened-up the midway with a variety of exhibits and sideshows from across the EduSphere.Round-out your Educational Experience by seeing what the homies are up to over at this week's edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling. --------------------------See our latest EduPosts.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

An Observation On Our EduTimes

Why is it that so many would-be EduReformers (who are so quick to criticise our public schools) would never consider going into a classroom and actually work with children themselves?We weren't the first one to notice....Some of us who do serve children on a daily basis continue to be amazed at the horde large number of non-teaching teaching experts that are out there.Maybe it would do many of '

The limitations of collaboration...

While I think it's good that the UK is keen on fostering stronger ties with Msia in the higher education sector, collaborations should not and cannot be one sided. Probably as important, is that collaborations should not and cannot be driven totally by governments, or in this case, Malaysia's government.

The Star's education supplement reported, over the weekend, on the visit by UK's Minister of State for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education Bill Rammell.

The highlight of his visit was the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to foster collaboration, partnership and exchanges in education between the UK and Malaysia. This MoU was co-signed by Higher Education Minister Datuk Mustapa Mohamed, whom Rammell also met with privately.

It was good to hear that Rammell hoped that the number of Chevening scholarships given to Malaysians would be doubled in the near future. I know that this scholarship has benefitted many Malaysians who would otherwise not have gotten the opportunity to do a Masters level degree in the UK.

It is sometimes easy to see that for many of these so called 'collaborations' to turn into a one sided deal, usually benefitting the UK counterparts more than the Malaysian counterparts.

For example, while twinning programs has opened up many opportunities for Malaysian students to obtain a UK degree at a reduced cost and / or not to leave the country at all, UK universities basically gives out these 'licenses' to print degrees at little expense to itself, in return for much needed revenue for themselves (which they cannot raise domestically from their British students).

Also, having Malaysian students do their PhDs in the UK gives them the exposure to more established research cultures but is a massive drain on government resources since many, if not most, of these students are government sponsored.

I think that there are two principles which the Malaysian government should keep in mind when thinking through these collaborations:

1) The UK government doesn't have as much 'coercive' power as the Malaysian government in higher education matters
2) Much good can come from private rather than government collaboration

Firstly, it is important for our government officials to keep in mind the fact that the UK government does not have the same kind of control over their universities compared to the situation in Malaysia. The 'coercive' power of the UK government over decisions such as university curriculum and the appointment of VCs or their equivalents are almost non-existent compared to their Malaysian counterparts. While they do have some budgetary oversight over the UK universities (school fees for UK students are subsidized by the government), this component is decreasing in its importance as school fees (or Top Up fees) increase for UK students and the % of fee paying students from abroad (mostly from Asia) increases.

So, for example, it is much harder for the UK government to implore its top universities (such as Oxford or Cambridge) to, for example, accept less than stellar PhD candidates from Malaysian universities or to offer subsidized school fees for these candidates. In Malaysia, it is much easier for the government to allocate funds to subsidize students from, let's say, the Middle East or Bosnia, and to ask our local universities to accept some of these students as PhD candidates even if their academic standards fall short.

The worst thing the Malaysian government can do is to throw money at these UK universities in the hope that some of this money would somehow 'rub off' on the Malaysian public universities. For example, making a 500RM million 'donation' to the University of Cambridge from government coffers would be a terrible misallocation of valueble public resources.

Secondly, the Malaysian government has to recognize that perhaps the best thing it can do is to empower private actors to collaborate and produce results instead of trying to 'drive' the results by itself.

For example, I happen to think that the decision by the Msian government to allow the University of Nottingham in Malaysia was a good one. In fact, it's probably better, in the long term, than having all these twinning programs because having a full fledged research university based in Malaysia has more potential to build up a research environment within the country and has more possibilities of 'leakage' or 'spinning off' into the local economy / education / research sectors.

So while having this long list of potential collaborations under the MOU might look good, the Ministry and Minister of Higher Education would do well to know the limitations of the UK government as well as its own limitations.

Forms of collaboration
- Exchange of educational staff, experts and students
- Encouraging students to study in the other country through providing more scholarships
- Developing bilateral programmes in technical, vocational and higher education fields
- Facilitating the training of educational administrators and teachers
- Studying opportunities for credit transfers between recognised institutions of higher learning in both countries and mutual recognition of academic, professional and vocational qualifications
- Exchange of educational materials as well as organising relevant exhibitions and seminars
- Providing mutual assistance in the fields of information and communications technology, language teaching, mathematics and science
- Exchange of ideas and experiences in educational policy between advisers, officials and legislators

Carnival Entries Are Due!

Entries for the 107th midway of The Carnival Of Education (hosted this week by History Is Elementary) are due today. Please email them to: historyiselementary [at] yahoo [dot] com . (Or, easier yet, use this handy submission form.) Submissions should be received no later than Midnight (Eastern), 9:00 PM (Pacific). Contributions should include your site's name, the title of the post, and the

The Watcher's Council Has Spoken!

Each and every week, Watcher of Weasels sponsors a contest among posts from the Conservative side of the 'Sphere. The winning entries are determined by a jury of 12 writers (and The Watcher) known as "The Watchers Council."The Council has met and cast their ballots for last week's submitted posts. Council Member Entries: Bookworm Room took first place with San Francisco Has Bigger Scandals Than a

Monday, February 19, 2007

Blogroll updated

It's been a really long time coming, but I have finally updated the blogroll. Thanks for keeping us company up there on the sidebar!

Saturday, February 17, 2007

The Politics of Reform

I've written recently the importance of "delivery" with regards to the success of the National Education Blueprint 2006-2010. Well, Prof Joan Nelson, a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre of the Smithsonian Institution, who specialises in the politics of policy-making, policy reforms and institutional change, pretty much agrees.

Prof Nelson, who is also currently the Pok Rafeah Distinguished Chair in International Studies at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia argued that while it's "heartening" to know that we are making efforts in upgrading our education system,
"[the] history of efforts to reform and improve education is replete with cases of well-meaning, well designed measures that were implemented only partially, or were seriously diluted in the course of implementation, or were put in place but later reversed."
Hence while stakeholders recognise that better education is top priority, many of those "directly involved in the public educatino system - bureaucrats, teachers, headmasters and principals, and also much of the higher education establishment - oppose reforms that would shift control over resources, change relationships, or increase pressure to perform."

Of course, politicians adds to the already complex situation. They face a "time consistency problem" as the cost of reform is usually immediate while the benefits come much later. This has clearly been the case in Malaysia where the education reform programmes changes as frequently as the changes in Ministers.

The latest National Education Blueprint replaces the former plan by the former Minister of Education, which was also meant to stretch to 2010. At the same time, the recently appointed Minister of Higher Education, did not hesitate to dump the report completed no more than a year before his tenure to conduct a brand new study.

Hence as rightly pointed out by Prof Nelson:
...realistic and effective means of carrying out institutional change often receive much less attention than goal setting and the design of policy.

The most widespread solution is to throw more money into the system - hiring more teachers, and buyin gmore books and supplies. But money is not enough; institutional changes are crucial.
Our respective Ministers in charge of our education could do well to take heed of Prof Nelson's advice. The question then is, whether the strength of the political will required is there to make the necessary and often difficult institutional changes to ensure that our goals and targets are met.

Homophobia and defensive teaching

The other day, in the middle of class, one male student called another a "faggot." I gave him the evilest eye I have, and he seemed genuinely shocked and confused by my reaction.

On another day during advisory, my cooperating teacher split the class into two teams and had them do the trust-building game where you have to get every member of your team standing on a small platform at once. One team was an even mix of girls and guys, but the other team was almost all male. While the first team succeeded by grabbing onto each other and carrying each other on piggyback, the second team refused to do anything like that because it was "too gay." (They lost.) I asked my CT later why he didn't say anything at the time, and he said, rightly I now think, that it's an issue that requires a much bigger conversation.

So in light of all these incidents, I've found myself engaging recently in "defensive teaching" when it comes to this issue. In our current events class I intentionally excluded articles on gay sheep and John Amaechi. I just didn't want to, or know how to, respond to the homophobic comments which would certainly come up.

Yesterday, we had a big debate over whether to use this image when talking about the causes of the French Revolution:



One teacher felt that the kids would not be able to handle it; they'd be hooting and hollering so much that they'd miss the point of the image. Another felt that they'd certainly remember this image and therefore the concept.

I'm leaning toward not including it, just because I don't know how to handle their certain homophobia. But by not including it, I'm denying them something I believe has educational value, and also the opportunity to deal with this issue.

But is my CT right? Is it impossible to let students know that it is simply NOT OKAY to say some of the things they routinely say in class about homosexuality without having a major conversation? And in the meantime, should we just avoid it at all costs? What hope do I have of changing kids' minds when this is an acceptable Super Bowl ad?

Has anyone had any success with this?

Friday, February 16, 2007

Wonkitorial Comment: New York's Santa Spitzer

New York's governor Eliot Spitzer is promising some $1.5 billion in additional funding for that state's troubled school system.Actually, the $1.5 is the first installment of a projected increase of $7.0 billion over the next four years.It's just too bad that Santa Governor Spitzer doesn't also address a basic, more fundamental problem that needs to be solved before New York's schools can make the

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

On just an ordinary day like today

I have to give a shout out to this post (via this post) on a day like today, when, fortunately, we had ample heat and no leaking radiators, but unfortunately, the doorknob fell off the door, locking us in the classroom.

Research Centres in the UM

This post is inspired by one of the comments in Tony's post regarding the recognition of degrees from Beijing and Tsinghua universities by Malaysian authorities. The comment was:

"The 'Institute of China Studies' just outside the UM is just an almost empty building for years! I passed the building everyday to work and see almost no cars or inhabitants inside!There are many such CENTRES sitting in the campus doing nothing...just a FORM but no substance"

My impression of many of these centers is that they were set up for political rather than academic reasons. For example, the Institute of China studies was set up for the following reason and this was obtained from its website:

"The setting up of the Institute of China Studies (ICS) was proposed by the present Prime Minister of Malaysia Dato’ Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi after his visit to China as the Deputy Prime Minister in September 2003. The Ministry of Higher Education of Malaysia then directed the University of Malaya to prepare a proposal, leading to the establishment of the ICS on 5 December 2003."

In scrolling through the 32 research centers at the UN which can be found here,
I noticed a center call the 'National Antarctic Research Centre (Antarctica)' and that it was established sometime in 2002. I also recalled Dr. Mahathir visiting Antartica before he retired and segments of his own handheld video was made into a National Geographic documentary. When exactly did he visit Antartica? You guess it, 2002.

The following is a 'quick and dirty' way of assesing whether these research centers are 'active' or not. I checked through all 32 research centers on the UM website and tried to locate weblinks for each of these centers. While having its own website is not necessarily a good prediction of research work, it does give an indication about how serious this center is in promoting itself and the work which it is doing.

The UM research center website only produced 3 weblinks to 3 research centers out of 32 (Centre for Biotechnology in Agriculture Research (CeBAR), Centre for Civilisational Dialogue, Institute of China Studies) and the link to the Center for Civilisational Dialogue doesn't work.

For an additional check to see if there are websites for these individual centers which might not be listed in the page I was looking at, I googled these individual centers. I found 4 more centers which had their individual websites - the Clinical Investigation Centre, the Centre for Nanotechnology, Precision and Advanced Materials, the Centre for Research in Applied Electronics and the Centre for Xenobiotic Studies (SUCXes).

In regards to the content / quality of the research highlighted by these websites, I leave it to the better judgement of the experts in these areas.

I also found websites which were under construction for 6 of these centers, all under the Center of Research in the Faculty of Engineering:

The Centre for Emerging Biomedical Technology (CoEBET), the Centre for Energy Sciences, Centre for Innovative Construction Technology (CICT), the Centre for Signal & Image Processing, the Centre for Separation Science and Technology (CSST), and the Centre for Transport Research (CTR).

Which means that out of 32 research centers, only 6 have their own websites which are up and running. In fact, the Institute of China Studies, by its website at least, seems to be the one center which actually does produce some research. It has a bunch of visiting scholars there and the two guys running the show (Dr. Hou Kok Chung and Dr. Yeoh Kok Kheng) have a list of related publications out or in the process of being published.

This just goes to show that we are very good at launching many of these centers with great fanfare (usually with a big name politician or two) but not so good at doing the follow up work which is to conduct ACTUAL RESEARCH! Which reminds me, when exactly is Jeffrey Sachs going to come to Malaysia to take up his position as the first Royal Ungku Aziz chair in Poverty Studies?

Supporting Descartes on Facebook

Thanks to Sriram (NUS) for starting the following group on facebook - "Support for the Descartes Education Counselling Centre in Malaysia". You can search for it in the 'organization - non-profit' section or just cut and paste the name of the group above. So for those of our readers who are on facebook, please join the group. Maybe Tony should also get a facebook account now that non-students can also join?

The Carnival Of Education: Week 106

Welcome to the 106th edition of The Carnival Of Education! We are delighted that the Midway has returned home.This Valentine's Day collection of exhibits from around the EduSphere represents a very wide variety of political and educational viewpoints. Unless clearly labeled otherwise, all entries were submitted by the writers themselves.If you have a website and are interested in hosting an

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Jaguh Kampung and Boring Students

I came across this column in the NST by Zainah Anwar today and I thought that I should reproduce it for our readers to read now (and also for later when the NST link expires, hope I won't be sued for this).

I'll just make a few points of my own in reponses to some of her comments:

Firstly, I think that she's spot on in regards to the Malay 'kampungs' that sprout up not only in the Midwest universities (I'm thinking Purdue, Indiana, Illinois at UC, Wisconsin) but also any large state university in the US which has a sizable Malaysian population (USC in California comes to mind). I can probably think of universities in the UK which are like that - Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Warwick, Nottingham, Sheffield and most London universities come to mind. But it's not just Malay 'kampungs' but also Malaysian 'kampungs' especially in the universities where there is a sizable population of non-government sponsored(read: non-Malay) Malaysian students.

But I don't think that these 'kampungs' are necessarily bad. It's much easier to interact with fellow Malaysians in a foreign country than a foreigner. It's also much easier to ask for help, stay or room with, makan with, travel with, a Malaysian than a foreigner. And, for the more diverse universities, it's probably one of the few times when students of different races can unite behind a Malaysian 'identity' since the issues of racial differences seem to be less pronounced abroad compared to at home. I remember how showcasing various aspects of Malaysian culture during a Malaysian 'nite' at the LSE gave me a sense of pride in regards to being Malaysian.

Where I think these 'kampungs' can have a detrimental effect is when it prevents us from interacting with non-Malaysians and getting to know the culture and the people of the country which one is studying in. This effect is particularly detrimental at the PhD level when interacting with colleagues in the field, regardless of nationality, becomes very important in developing one's ideas and for future research collaboration. It would not surprise me if a Malaysian PhD student who goes to Liverpool with his family (wife and two kids let's say) can settle in very comfortably in one of these 'kampungs', have minimal interaction with non-Malaysians including one's fellow PhD students and professors in the university, come back home to Malaysia after three years with a PhD but still has a poor command of English, have not had any research collaborations with other non-Malaysian colleagues in the university, have not travelled anywhere outside the UK, have not eaten in an English pub, and so on. To me, this really defeats the purpose of going to a university abroad.

While my experience in the UK and here in the US wasn't necessarily an exemplar of 'internationality' (if there's such a word), I did make it a point to get to know non-Malaysians. I was in the Christian Union at the LSE and went to a very diverse church in the middle of London and got to know many Brits and other internationals through these settings. I got to know quite a few British Muslims who were of South Asian descent as many of them were actuarists and one of my Malaysian roomates was an actuarist. I would go down to Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park occasionally to listen to the diverse array of speakers there. I travelled as far east as Turkey and as far north as Iceland.

Here in the US, I've spent time hanging out with my fellow PhD students, some of whom are American, others who are not. I don't really have the option of being in a Malaysian 'kampung' here at Duke given that there are only 2 other Malaysian graduate students and something like 10 undergrads, who are spread over different parts of the campus and who do their own thing. I've been to my fair share of Duke basketball games, watched the Superbowl on TV, watched a couple of NBA games live (I'm a sports junkie), travelled to the US heartland (anyone been to Tusla, Oklahoma?), been to DC tons of times to do work with a research collaborator there, and so on.

This certainly has made my life 'richer' and allowed me to learn more about different cultures and different ways of thinking and of doing research.

But are there any policy 'prescriptions' which can try to correct this mentality? I think there are.

Zainah correctly points out that the culture of 'surveillance' among these kampungs are detrimental for encouraging people to think beyond critically. I've also heard that there are 'indoctrination' programs for JPA scholars before they go aroad to inculcate the feeling of 'loyalty' to tribe and country. Instead of running these kinds of programs, why not try to instill the sense of 'adventure' and 'interaction' for these scholars? Or at least not try to indoctinate them into thinking that there is only one way for them to think and act.

For PhD students, instead of requiring them to come home immediately after they complete their studies, why not allow them to take a few years of no pay leave to do postdoctoral work in the countries where they obtained their PhDs? This way, they can be encouraged to build research networks and benefit from an overseas research culture before they come home (assuming that they do want to come home after experiencing academic and research life in an overseas institution).

I'm sure there are others but I'll stop here for now. Enjoy Zainah's column below:

Zainah Anwar on Friday: Don't curb students' enthusiasm
09 Feb 2007

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OUR students in the UK are, oh, so shy, so unassertive, they keep to themselves, they don’t mix? I am surprised that the Minister of Higher Education is surprised. This is not a new problem.

When I was studying in the US in the 1970s and 1980s, there were "kampung Melayus" sprouting on campuses in several universities in the Midwest. Friends complained of surveillance, peer pressure and anonymous letters slipped under their doors or sent home to the Public Service Department by fellow students if they were seen to be too close to too many Americans.

Even in Indonesia, our students don’t mix. A friend teaching at the Islamic University in Jogjakarta says the Malaysian students on her campus are so totally unassertive and disinterested and pursue the easiest of courses taught by the easiest of lecturers.

They avoid the many discussion groups that flourish on and off campus which bring together students and activists to discuss the latest books, ideas and debate on current issues. They would not take part in the many training sessions on human rights, democracy and women’s rights.

Actually, we the taxpayers are not getting value for the millions of our tax money spent on scholarship for these students who might as well remain in Malaysia if they only want to be "jaguh kampung".

Our young adults are losing out in a competitive world that is hungry for talent. In the end, it is Malaysia that will lose out.

In 1980, I wrote about racial polarisation on our university campuses and how some of the bright and articulate students I interviewed at the University of Malaya called it the Pantai Valley High School.

It was not the exciting, enriching university life they envisaged, but a life restricted and regulated by the Universities and University Colleges Act. In school, they had freedom to write letters to whomever they pleased, be it to make a school visit to a factory or a palace museum.

Imagine their shock when they found out that at university, all letters needed to go through the Dean of Student Affairs. And they were often reminded lest they were hatching rebellions, any unauthorised gathering of more than five constituted an offence. How to be assertive?

And the racial polarisation; everywhere on campus Malay students were with Malays, Chinese with Chinese and Indians with Indians — be it at the canteen, at the library, walking the streets from class to hostel and back.

The students spoke of how they were corralled into racial blocs by their seniors the moment they stepped into campus.

Woe betide those who stepped out of the box. An anonymous letter would be slipped under their door "condemning" them to hellfire and damnation.

My editor was so shocked by my findings that he decided not to publish the story. It does look that after 26 years, nothing much has changed.

When I recently told this story to a professor at the University of Malaya, she said she would be so lucky today to find a student astute enough to even make a remark about a campus life that is more akin to secondary school.

Most days, she says, she feels like pulling up her students by their collars to breathe life into them.

So dear minister, they are, oh, so shy, so unassertive, so not mixing with others on home ground as well. And it’s been going on for over two decades.

There is obvious awareness and concern by the country’s leadership that much has gone wrong with our education system, our socialisation and politicisation that have produced these unassertive, inarticulate, intellectually and socially disengaged, racially segregated and unemployable graduates.

Much hope is placed on the recently launched National Education Blueprint and its many promises, including the promise to produce well rounded students who will think out of the box.

A friend runs a programme that exposes students to literature, music, art, critical thinking and public speaking before they spend more of their parents’ hard-earned money to study abroad.

These are straight A students, whose parents woke up one day to realise that darling Johan and Janine who scored 11 A1s in SPM actually lack the cultural literacy necessary to succeed and get the best out of university education in the West.

My friend and her team of trainers were stunned that these students did not know a single fairy tale. An exercise to rewrite Hansel and Gretel from the witch’s point of view drew a blank; when asked if they knew other fairy tales, they did not. They had not heard of Winston Churchill even though they all got A1 for history.

They had never seen nor met a person in a wheelchair; they had never been to an art gallery or a museum, in spite of living in Kuala Lumpur and enjoying annual holidays abroad. One boy was passionate about studying aviation engineering and wanted to own an airline, but had never heard of Tony Fernandes.

Life for these kids revolved around school, tuition, shopping malls and computer games. What they did not know, they felt they didn’t need to know.

And yet, they wanted to go to Cambridge or Stanford and wanted to do well in their interviews and essays; but they had nothing much to say about themselves and their interests beyond the string of A1s for which they were rewarded and their parents applauded. Eleven A1s and not an ounce of zest to spare does not a successful life make.

At the other end of the scale, I do meet students and young people who are far from shy and disengaged. They have friends from different races and different countries, they read voraciously, they go to museums, concerts, plays, they backpack to the islands off Malaysia and Thailand and through God-forsaken countries of the world, they listen to world music, they speak their minds.

I meet young university students who dare to organise events outside the campuses, campaigning against the UUCA and dirty student elections, giving free tuition to squatter kids, cooking free food for the homeless, hanging out with non-governmental organisation activists and theatre practitioners.

These young people live their lives to the full, ever teetering on a fine balance between family, friends, fun and studies or a budding career of their choice.

What makes them different? For some, it might be class, but for most others, it is exposure.

Whether growing up in a family that eats, reads and talks together, or getting exposed to the works of Alice Walker and Maya Angelou in English class, or having a lecturer who loves the theatre and drags his students to all the plays in KL, or meeting an inspiring aging ex-student leader who wanted to join the university social club but ended up in the socialist club.

By design or by accident, it is exposure to adults who opened up their minds to other possibilities in life that made a difference to the lives of these effervescent young people.

A friend’s 15-year-old daughter complained how the teachers at school (a premier school, mind you) say no to everything suggested by the students — be it to organise a talentime (what would parents say if you kids wear sexy clothes), a Halloween party with the neighbourhood children (oh no, it’s Western culture), dance and music classes (cannot, must "jaga diri"), regular field trips to museums, orphanages, school for the blind (too many permissions to ask, forms to fill and transport to organise).

That many of the shy, unassertive students and young graduates have potential is without doubt.

The tragedy is we adults have failed them as we pour cold water over their ideas or just remain indifferent to their natural instinct to explore, discover, innovate, take risks, be different. It is our fault because we shut the doors and windows on them.

Carnival Entries Are Due!

Entries for the 106th midway of The Carnival Of Education (hosted this week by us here at The Education Wonks) are due today. Please email them to: owlshome (at) earthlink (dot) net . (Or, easier yet, use this handy submission form.) Submissions should be received no later than 9:00 PM (Eastern), 6:00 PM (Pacific). Contributions should include your site's name, the title of the post, and the

The Watcher's Council Has Spoken!

Each and every week, Watcher of Weasels sponsors a contest among posts from the Conservative side of the 'Sphere. The winning entries are determined by a jury of 12 writers (and The Watcher) known as "The Watchers Council."The Council has met and cast their ballots for last week's submitted posts. Council Member Entries: American Future took first place with Who Is George Soros?Non-Council

Monday, February 12, 2007

Overheard in Global Studies

  • One student [after taking a sip of other student's Starbucks bottled beverage]: That tastes nasty!
  • Other student: It's mocha. White people drink it.
And ...
  • Question: What did you find interesting about today's lesson [about the Bill of Rights]?
  • Student: I plead the first.

Students Using IM-Speak 4 School Speak

When doing their academic writing more and more students are having difficulty expressing themselves in an appropriate voice, reports the Associated Press: Middle school teacher Julia Austin is noticing a new generation of errors creeping into her pupils' essays.Sure, they still commit the classic blunders -- like the commonly used "ain't." But an increasing number of Austin's eighth-graders also

Descartes Education Counselling Centre

It was a little more than a year ago in December, when I first mooted the idea on this blog of setting up a "non-profit organisation for education in Malaysia". I've always toyed with the idea of setting up such an entity, a non-profit organisation relating to education for Malaysians to help "ease" some issues such as helping students in the aplication process to the top universities overseas, providing guidance on degrees to pursue as well as career or employment advisory services.

Well, now that I've disposed of my stake in the company which I formerly owned and founded, the project is finally getting off the ground. I'm setting up a non-profit entity, named (subject to approval from the authorities) Descartes Education Counselling Centre and it should be up and running come March (this year!).

For those who are not familiar with the name 'Descartes' (pronounced 'day-Kart'), he's often regarded as the father of modern philosophy. As described in the Wikipedia:
Ren̩ Descartes (March 31, 1596 РFebruary 11, 1650), also known as Renatus Cartesius (latinized form), was a highly influential French philosopher, mathematician, scientist, and writer. Dubbed the "Founder of Modern Philosophy" and the "Father of Modern Mathematics", much of subsequent western philosophy is a reaction to his writings, which have been closely studied from his time down to the present day. His influence in mathematics is also apparent, the Cartesian coordinate system used in plane geometry and algebra being named after him, and he was one of the key figures in the Scientific Revolution.
You might be interested to know that he was the man behind the maxim "cogito, ergo sum" or loosely translated at "I think, therefore I am (or I exist)". And his philosophy was key behind the Hollywood reincarnation of The Matrix. (Yes, philosophy can be that exciting! ;))

OK, before I get too turned on and carried away by the philosophical discussion of The Matrix, let's get back to the counselling centre.

Although I see the potentials of this non-profit organisation as immense, the immediate objectives of the centre will be fairly modest. And really, how the centre grows and how many people the organisation can assist, will really depend on how much help we can get.

One of the immediate activities which I hope to organise will be to hold plenty of talks, or better described as "information sharing sessions". There'll actually be an auditorium which fits about 100 people within the premises located at Damansara Utama (the place is currently under renovation).

Examples of talks which we will be actively holding will include:
  • Talks by alumnis of some of the top global universities in UK, US, Australia etc. These Malaysians will help by sharing their experience in those universities, their application process as well as anything else which prospective students would like to find out.

  • Talks on generic topics such as entrance examinations (e.g., SAT) or essay writing techniques by successful candidates to these universities.

  • Talks on picking the right subject choices from students themselves who have taken these subjects. This is also to eliminate the perception that the only courses worth pursuing are medicine, law or accountancy ;)

  • Talks on scholarships, applications process and other related issues.

  • Talks about maximising opportunities with regards to getting employed, such as interview and resume writing skills.
There are already in existence some of these talks by colleges and counselling centres. However, these talks are often not impartial as these colleges will want you to enrol into their programmes, while the for-profit education counselling centres today collects referral fees from the colleges for 'successful' applicants. (And we know that the top schools do not collect referral fees.)

I feel that it is important to have a non-profit, impartial and independent counselling centre so as to provide the most balanced of views to the prospective student. That way, he or she can make the right choices for him or herself, based on their personal academic strength and abilities.

Moreover, I envision that the experiences shared by current and former students of the relevant universities will be way richer than the "advice" provided by "employed" counsellors, who may have the tendency to make sales pitches.

Secondly, I hope to gather enough materials to create a useful resource centre for top universities overseas. Materials such as prospectuses are often lacking, and it is my hope prospective students will be able to browse all the relevant information in the small library which I'm setting up. Of course, I will require a little effort from all of you studying overseas today to acquire the latest collateral and send them to me to stock up the library.

Finally, I'm more than happy to have the Centre act as a sort of secretariat office for any student or education-related organisation to carry out their meetings and activities. Those who are funded can help defray some of the Centre's operating cost (we are non-profit after all), while for other volunteer organisations, we can always work something out. ;) It's also an office (when we can afford to get staff) which can help co-ordinate activities such as last year's very successful "Experiences '06" event.

Now, getting back down to earth, it's back to the earlier point on how much we can achieve in helping Malaysian students will really depend on how much help we can get. I will certainly not be able to do all of the above alone. Hence, I'm now calling for volunteers who have benefited from top notch education overseas to help more Malaysians enjoy the same experience. How much time one wants to contribute is really up to the individual, but any amount of contribution is highly valued. I believe strongly that every little bit counts. Here are some of the areas (the list isn't exhaustive) which contributions are welcome:
  • Alumni of top universities sharing their tertiary education experience (current students are more than welcome to chat with prospective students while on summer vacations)

  • Subject matter 'experts', providing guidance on the subject detail as well as career options (Why should one study "History", for example)

  • Professional leaders providing guidance on industry domain knowledge (What's a career in Oil & Gas Trading all about?)

  • A pool of advisors who I can turn to, in the event information is required by a student, of which answers I do not yet possess. (For example, if someone asks about the Fulbright Scholarship, who can I write to or call to obtain more information?)

  • Students overseas who can help secure university information collaterals, such as prospectuses and application forms.

  • And most importantly, those who really believe in the cause and would like to dedicate a bit more time helping out to run the centre, organising activities, creating new ideas etc.

  • Of course, sponsors to help keep the Centre up and running will be more than welcome too. I'm obviously footing the start up cost of the centre myself, but any help with keep up with the operating costs will certainly be warmly appreciated.
For those interested in helping out, for those who care, and for those who wants more information, please do not hesitate to contact me with your details and what you'd like to contribute at tonypua@yahoo.com. I believe that a little bit of contribution from everyone will certainly have a very large impact on the future of bright young Malaysians.

The Centre will be located at 55A, Jalan SS21/1A, Damansara Utama, 47400 Petaling Jaya, Selangor. It's along the same row as Kedai Telekom, facing the residential houses.

I look forward eagerly to hearing from you guys! ;)

Sunday, February 11, 2007

China Universities to be Recognised?

The Malaysian government appears to be finally lookiing to recognising qualifications from the top 2 universities in China - Peking and Tsinghua University. It was reported in various local dailies last week that the Cabinet has agreed "in principle" to recognise the academic qualifications of the two renowned universities.

Based on the global universities ranking by the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES), both universities are in the top 50 in the world. Peking University is ranked 14th while Tsinghua University is 28th. A separate ranking system by the Shanghai Jiaotung University, placed them in the 150th-300th bracket but still within the top 40 in the Asia-Pacific region. Note that the latter system had no Malaysian universities present in the Top 500.

Hence it has always been an anomaly that degrees from established Chinese universities are not recognised by the Malaysian government. This is despite the fact that Malaysia is fairly liberal in giving recognition to much lesser universities from developing countries. For example in the medical profession, degrees from Uganda, Burma, Pakistan and Iraq are given recognition.

Anyway, it's always better late than never, and we wait to see when the "in-principle" approval gets actually "approved". ;)

More on the v-word

Utah is channeling the spirit of Milton Friedman, who was, I believe, the one who said "a [voucher] program for the poor is a poor program." It will be interesting to see what happens there.

Saturday, February 10, 2007

Soon All Government Agencies Will Be Subdivisions of the Department of Homeland Security

Critics Question Education Department’s Screening

[NYT] As a condition of his work for the federal government, Andrew A. Zucker was willing to be fingerprinted and provide an employment history. But then he was asked to let federal investigators examine his financial and medical records, and interview his doctors.

Dr. Zucker was not tracking terrorists or even emptying the trash at the Pentagon. He was studying how to best teach science to middle school students. He was stunned at the breadth of the request for information.

“To me, personally, it’s shocking,” said Dr. Zucker, who worked for a contractor doing research for the Education Department. He withdrew from the job.

For about a year, contractors say, the department has been requiring employees of the thousands of contractors it hires — many of them academic researchers like Dr. Zucker — to go through a level of security screening usually reserved for those working with very sensitive information.

Katherine McLane, a department spokeswoman, said the scrutiny was warranted because her agency had access to databases with financial data and other information, including names and social security numbers of students or of applicants to colleges or other programs. “We want to make sure that the people who handle and have access to this information are responsible, reliable and trustworthy,” Ms. McLane said.

The policy is prompting critics to question when a prudent background investigation becomes an invasion of privacy. . . .

Soon All Government Agencies Will Be Subdivisions of the Department of Homeland Security

Critics Question Education Department’s Screening

[NYT] As a condition of his work for the federal government, Andrew A. Zucker was willing to be fingerprinted and provide an employment history. But then he was asked to let federal investigators examine his financial and medical records, and interview his doctors.

Dr. Zucker was not tracking terrorists or even emptying the trash at the Pentagon. He was studying how to best teach science to middle school students. He was stunned at the breadth of the request for information.

“To me, personally, it’s shocking,” said Dr. Zucker, who worked for a contractor doing research for the Education Department. He withdrew from the job.

For about a year, contractors say, the department has been requiring employees of the thousands of contractors it hires — many of them academic researchers like Dr. Zucker — to go through a level of security screening usually reserved for those working with very sensitive information.

Katherine McLane, a department spokeswoman, said the scrutiny was warranted because her agency had access to databases with financial data and other information, including names and social security numbers of students or of applicants to colleges or other programs. “We want to make sure that the people who handle and have access to this information are responsible, reliable and trustworthy,” Ms. McLane said.

The policy is prompting critics to question when a prudent background investigation becomes an invasion of privacy. . . .