PPSMI. Reversing Teaching of Mathematics and Science to Malay

Someone asked me why I didn't blog about this. Well I hardly have the time to maintain this site now that most of my attention is directed towards my automotive industry blog.
But I am quite amused by the whole PPSMI drama. Personally I find this to be a non-issue.


If these goons are really concerned about their children's education, then they are barking at the wrong tree. Firstly, if you are stupid and lazy when classes are in Malay, you are going to continue to be stupid and lazy even if the classes are thought in English. Reversing the policy is not addressing the root cause of the problem - that your kids are really stupid and lazy.

Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2007 results.
Average mathematics scores of eighth-grade students, by country: 2007
Chinese Taipei 598
Korea, Rep. of 597
Singapore 593
Hong Kong SAR, 572
Japan 570
Hungary 517
England 513
Russian Federation 512
United States 508
Lithuania 506

Average science scores of eighth-grade students, by country: 2007
Singapore 567
Chinese Taipei 561
Japan 554
Korea, Rep. of 553
England 542
Hungary 539
Czech Republic 539
Slovenia 538
Hong Kong SAR 530
Russian Federation 530

Look at the list of top ten countries in science and mathematics aptitude. How many of them are English speaking? Of course, Chinese language reference materials is abundant and Chinese speaking countries like Taiwan (Chinese Taipei), Hong Kong and China easily rivals United States in terms of academic papers published and intellectual properties registered. So yes it is fine if you want to teach the subjects in Chinese. But even if the subjects are thought in Malay, what's the issue? Aren't most Malay language technical terms directly translated from English? Like I said, if your kid is stupid and lazy when the subject is thought in English, he is still going to be stupid and lazy irrespective of what language the subject is now thought in.

Science and mathematics are subjects that are best thought with more visuals and less text. The language medium of teaching is not the primary concern. We just have a lousy education system compounded by a government which encourages propagation of mediocrity within a particular ethnic group. All that money spent on reversing the policy and reproducing Malay language based teaching materials is not going to be help them any one bit. Stop barking at the wrong tree at look at your teachers instead. Public university lecturers and public school teachers are more concerned about implementing mini-Taliban like policies than propagation of knowledge. That is the main problem.

Positively Hopeful vs Being Naive

History is a reflection of past events from which we can learn valuable lessons; lessons which can guide us to avoid certain pitfalls that befell those in the past. One of the countries with the longest recorded history is China. By reading Chinese history, many valuable lessons can be learned.

If many of our present-day politicians care to read a bit about the history of this particular country and remember the lessons of its history, they would have equipped themselves well as a first step to become wise and great leaders.

From the 17th until the early 20th centuries, China was ruled by the Manchus, a tribe from present-day Manchuria. The dynasty was known as Qing.

Some of the earlier emperors of this dynasty were great rulers. Under the rule of the second emperor Kangxi, third Yong Zhen and fourth Qianlong, the empire reached its zenith and ruled over a vast territory extending from Xinjiang to present-day Mongolia.

However, beginning from the later part of the reign of Qianlong, Qing rule began to see the rise of rampant corruption and self gratification among the officials as well as royalty. This resulted in social unrest and deprivation.

The Manchus practised a dual appointment system in which a Han and a Manchu would be appointed to almost every position in the central government. The Han would do the work, and the Manchu would oversee the Han.

In the 19th century, because of rampant corruption, there was economic stagnation which in turn resulted in social strife, a decrease in food production and starvation of the people.

Many people in the coastal regions, like the provinces of Fujian and Guangdong, left the country to seek a better life overseas, in Southeast Asia and in America. They became the forefathers of many of the present-day Overseas Chinese.

Foreign powers, sensing an opportunity to sell their goods in exchange for goods made in China such as ceramics, tea and silk, wanted China to open its ports to allow trade. Chinese merchants however would only sell their goods in exchange for silver, whereas the West sought to have alternative payment schemes such as opium in exchange for the much sought after Chinese products.

AT that time there was no such organisation like the present-day WTO or GATT. When there was no agreement, force would be used. So when China started to ban opium in the early 19th century, the British sent in their gunboats.

The Opium War, which China lost, resulted in China signing an unequal treaty (Treaty of Nanking) allowing the opium trade and ceding Hong Kong to Britain, besides having to pay a huge amount of “compensation”.

Opium did great harm to China. Many of its people ranging from royalty to high officials to ordinary merchants were addicted, resulting in even more rampant corruption and a very inefficient system of government since everyone would spend a great deal of time each day smoking and enjoying opium.

There was unimaginable poverty and many peasants died. Social strife eventually led to the rise of a rebellion led by a Christian Chinese, Hong Xiuquan.

This rebellion began with the promise of a better life for peasants and its egalitarian ideology promised that all land would be shared by peasants.

The rebellion, with popular support against a regime that was tyrannical, discriminatory, weak and corrupt, quickly spread. The rebels also used the ethnic card and adopted the slogan of “Banishing the Manchus and restoring Ming (Han) rule”.

At its height, the rebellion occupied many provinces south of the Yangtse River. In fact, many of the richer parts of China, especially Jiang Nan including Suzhou and Hangzhou, were under its rule. The rebels occupied Nanjing for 10 years. The leadership proclaimed the formation of a kingdom called ”Kingdom of Heavenly Peace or Tai Ping Tian Guo”and Hong became the first emperor or Heavenly King, when the objective of throwing the Manchus out was not even half achieved.

Initially the leaders of this rebellion adopted certain reforms such as the dismantling of the landlord system .All arable land was confiscated from landlords and distributed to peasants to be shared. Funds taken from the rich were also shared among the poor. Foot binding was banned.

However, after the initial success, complacency set in. Many of its leaders were given the title of “huang” meaning “king”. There were South King, East King, West King and so on. Each became a regional warlord and conflicts among these leaders were common. There was also no proper system of government. In fact the whole region was ruled mainly through its army. Governing was often through the proclamation of certain orders containing religious connotations, proclaiming Christianity over the entrenched Buddhist-Taoist-Confucianist philosophy.

Internal conflicts led to a purge of capable leaders, factionalism and corruption. There was no attempt to rule with an organised government and in the words of the renowned Chinese historian Qian Mu, “no government institution was set up in their 10 years of rule in Nanjing”.

The leaders themselves, including Hong Xiuquan, retreated to a life of pleasure and luxury, and forgot about what they had set up to do initially.

In the end, the Qing government adopted certain reforms and its army was able to turn the tide and slowly recovered all the lost territory and the rebellion was put down.

Why did this rebellion fail when initially it was able to garner such big support and became an almost unstoppable force?

Well, for one thing, once the leaders tasted initial victory, they stopped their advance and forgot about their mission. Instead, they tried to stab each other in the back, quarrelled among themselves, and sidelined those who were capable. Their administrative skill was at best mediocre.

The initial gimmick of having a fair and egalitarian society quickly became rhetoric only when they indulged in self gratification and lived in luxury and comfort, instead of consolidating their forces and conquering the rest of China.

They became as corrupt as the government they set out to replace. Even worse, they failed to put in a reasonable form of government.

Excerpts taken from Lessons from the Taiping rebellion

Sounds very familiar to post- March-8 2008 Malaysia? Harapan Rakyat? I don't think so. There is a fine line between being positively hopeful and being naive. Then again, I need to add that there is also a thin line between being worldly-wise and being a hopeless pessimist. O' Lord show me the path...I am damn sick of that self-proclaimed racial chauvinist Indian interest group, that stupid Chinese trying to scores votes of uneducated villagers over that foul smelling and polluting pig abattoir, that idiot Saudi wanabe who irritates the hell out of every educated person. Don't understand where do these people get their faith to put any trust in them running a country together.

All marketers are liars

Seen on a lift lobby of a business suite, on one of those flat screen LCD TVs showing ads that nobody is interested in.

"Lift advertising is highly effective because it targets a very specific group of people", Steven Chang, ZenithOptomedia China (or something like that...)

Probably the most useless quote of I have ever seen in recent time. How did this ad agency come to the conclusion that only a very specific age group / ethnicity / income level takes lifts in this freaking huge office suite? A quick glance at the lunch hour crowd reveal that the people coming in and out of the lifts is so diverse. Typical marketer's bullshit.

My background and personality type makes me being slightly averse to marketers / advertisers by default. So I may be a bit biased. But I really can't understand how can anyone sit through a conversation with a marketer / advertiser before their internal "bullshit alert alarm" starts going off the scale. And I really do not understand what do those people with fancy titles like "strategic brand consultant / strategic media planner" really do.

I find that the reason companies pay advertisers so is because everyone else is doing it, and everyone of those "brand consultants" is preaching a very persuasive message that they need to spend more to create disruptions in the life of others. Because that's what advertisers do - create disruptions to get your attention. So companies are afraid of being left out. CEOs and middle level managers sit in their cosy offices all day and have very little ground level understanding of their market and their customers. They rely on secondary sources of information - fancy Powerpoint slides and Excel reports. They have this inferiority complex in them that they have to shout louder than their competitors - to hawk their goods in the market.

Couple of weeks ago I was made to sit through a half-day long workshop on brand communication. I don't even know why am I made to go, but I had to. So there I was sitting through slides after slides of different metrics of measurement used by creative agencies and even more quotes from supposedly famous people in the advertising industry (whom most of us outside it couldn't really be bothered to know), stating the very obvious. It's funny how people will start quoting you if you have a fancy title to your name, doesn't really matter how stupid it may sound. A meaningless statement stating the obvious will suddenly start to look intelligent if it has a famous name and a fancy title behind it. Wow I learn something new today - I didn't know advertising is about telling people that you exist / what you sell. Duh!

The maxim of business is no MBA level study. In fact it is so simple that it probably explains why some Chinaman tycoons who never went to university manage to make it big, real big while MBA thumping executives get caught up so badly in the credit crunch and various accounting scandals.

1. Know your market. Sounds very simple but it is amazing how little most managers understand their customers.


2. Build up your sales / distribution channel.


3. Product. It's all about the product stupid! The 3Ps / 4Ps of marketing is product product product product, and product.

How much prime time TV ad did Apple place? Which advertising agency did Google engage? Did those organic crops suddenly engage an advertiser? There will always be a place for advertising, but companies are dumping money into expensive (and annoying) ads looking for a short cut solution, without really looking into the root cause of poor market penetration - which is usually down to a poorly developed product and poor sales channel.

Top Ten Best Places to Live

Mercer Consulting is famous for publishing an annual survey of the best places to live in the world. The details of the survey however are targeted for expatriates, thus it may not be reflective of the actual sentiments of the citizens there. I know of people from some of these high ranking countries who will be wondering how can this chilly city with very lousy food be on the list.

Singapore is the highest scoring Asian city at number 26, which is really odd when you consider the fact that so many young Singaporeans are emigrating to Australia and other countries.

No. 1 - Vienna, Austria


No. 2 - Zurich, Switzerland


No. 3 - Geneva, Switzerland


No. 4 - Vancouver, Canada


No. 5 - Auckland, New Zealand


No. 6 - Düsseldorf, Germany


No. 7 (tie) - Munich, Germany

No. 7 (tie) - Frankfurt, Germany



No. 9 - Bern, Switzerland


No 10 - Sydney, Australia


Fore more results, go here.

Never Judge A Book By Its Cover

Never heard of Susan Boyle yet?
Watch the video here and be amazed (embed not possible).

This is not the first time the world has been reminded not the judge people on a surface level, and to value artists by their physical attributes. In a previous season of Britain's Got Talent, a regular cellphone salesman by the name of Paul Potts also stood up against all the critics disapproving his mismatch between his age and looks and won the 2007 season.

Watch the video here.

Terminator 4 Salvation - in the real world.

It's really not that remote. Robots killing humans are already a reality. Maybe not in a dramatic apocalyptic kind of way, but they surely don't quite obey Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics :

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

If you are an Iraqi insurgent or you are part of Hamas in Palestine, these robots are no laughing matter and you better run for your life.


Watch the thought provoking video below.

I like the ending phrase - who are the ones wired for war? Us or the robots?

Now this is one happy employee

Happy employees = Happy customers.

But there will always be that few sad souls who are forever pissed off with everything. You can see some of them in the video. Pity that they can't have any sense of humour in the oh so long business trip. But I believe these are customers who will complain and rant about everything under the sun, irrespective of what is being served to them anyway.

There is this story about Southwest Airlines CEO who believe in a counter-intuitive style of management. That blindly following the "customer is always right maxim is wrong." Instead he believes in his employees first, who will in turn naturally put the customers first. Read more on Top 5 reasons why "The customer is always right is wrong" here.

In the book "Nuts! Southwest Airlines' Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success," it was quoted :

When we run into customers that we can’t reel back in, our loyalty is with our employees. They have to put up with this stuff every day. Just because you buy a ticket does not give you the right to abuse our employees . . .

We run more than 3 million people through our books every month. One or two of those people are going to be unreasonable, demanding jerks. When it’s a choice between supporting your employees, who work with you every day and make your product what it is, or some irate jerk who demands a free ticket to Paris because you ran out of peanuts, whose side are you going to be on?

You can’t treat your employees like serfs. You have to value them . . . If they think that you won’t support them when a customer is out of line, even the smallest problem can cause resentment.

Herb Kelleher [...] makes it clear that his employees come first — even if it means dismissing customers. But aren’t customers always right? “No, they are not,” Kelleher snaps. “And I think that’s one of the biggest betrayals of employees a boss can possibly commit. The customer is sometimes wrong. We don’t carry those sorts of customers. We write to them and say, ‘Fly somebody else. Don’t abuse our people.’”

One woman who frequently flew on Southwest, was constantly disappointed with every aspect of the company’s operation. In fact, she became known as the “Pen Pal” because after every flight she wrote in with a complaint.

She didn’t like the fact that the company didn’t assign seats; she didn’t like the absence of a first-class section; she didn’t like not having a meal in flight; she didn’t like Southwest’s boarding procedure; she didn’t like the flight attendants’ sporty uniforms and the casual atmosphere.

Her last letter, reciting a litany of complaints, momentarily stumped Southwest’s customer relations people. They bumped it up to Herb’s [Kelleher, CEO of Southwest] desk, with a note: ‘This one’s yours.’

In sixty seconds, Kelleher wrote back and said, "Dear Mrs. Crabapple, We will miss you. Love, Herb.”