Education: My Point Of View

My fellow blog readers,

This time of the year, we Malaysians are busy facing examinations. UPSR have just finished, and they will be sitting for PMR in two weeks time. Those sitting for SPM will surely be missing their sleep by now as SPM is just around the corner. And as usual, parents by this time will control their child by the precinct of their room just to make sure their children awake, sleep, and eat their books out. These are done just for the sake of achieving straight A’s in the so called “life and death” examinations. That’s how we Malaysians perceived education. To get good grades, enrol to prestigious universities, good jobs, and good life.

Just admit it, we usually feels very much proud of having relatives pursuing their Master’s or PhD’s. And most of the times, those graduates will be churn out as what we called today “Ulat Buku”, not being able to communicate well with their communities, let alone to contribute for the well being of the human being. Well for me, I view education more than just bread-and-butter thing. Why do we learn? EDUCATION is such a big word. We educate ourselves to equip ourselves with all the skills to bring goodness to the overall society. That’s why we educate ourselves. Why do we study economics? Because we want to improve trade in our communities and thus, improve locals standard of living. Why do we study medicinie? Because we want to help, in whatever way we can, the quality of life of our community. Why do we study enginnering? Because we want to offer practical solution to human being. This is the philosophy of learning. We study and educate ourselves because we want to contribute to the well-being of human being. And this is inline with the philosophy of Muslim’s life. A muslim is someone whose tomorrows are always better than his yesterdays.

Sadly, this is not the reality in our community. We study just for the sake of getting certificates. We excels in our exam solely for the sake of getting our dream jobs. Our graduates do not offer solutions to humans problems, and in some ways, added to that problems. They are excellent in answering examination questions but fail badly in contributing to the overall society. I truly think that it is time for us to shift to Islamic education system and abandon this already sinking ship of secular educational system.