Good Luck Everyone!

All classes for this semester had ended officially and we had a great experiences on all the classes and gain lots of new knowledges. From this ethnic class, we had learn about ethic relationships and the importance of race relationship. Different races, religion, colour skin and so on should not be our obstacles to build relationships among others. As Malaysian, we all are the same and should be treat as one family...

Well, final examination is coming soon.... At here, I wish to say that: "Good luck for the exams!" ...O(∩_∩)O...

Suggestion and Recommendation for Educational Policy

There are a lot of studies conducted by academics at top universities around the world on the impact of “central exams” and their effects on the educational achievements of the students. Most of these studies however almost always conclude that central examinations have substantial positive impact on the students. Abolish examination is not an effective way how we can generate expert generation especially toward engineering and medical that was higher ranking in industries nowadays.

First of all, the Ministry of Education should conduct a more scientific or quantitative study to determine the effects of examinations on a student and his or her achievements before taking the hasty and drastic measure of abolishing examinations only to suffer irreversible damage to the quality of our education subsequently.

Furthermore, the government should offer more scholarships to the students as a tool to motivate the students in studies and benefits more and more students. The students will like more energized is studies and in the same time they need to struggle hard to hit the target. In the same time, these may also help to produce more experts in different fields.

Nevertheless, the government should increase the local university seat availabl and take note about the Quota issue which 50% is under quota, to make Malay and bumiputra satisfied and the rest seat should open to elite selection. This action may help economic and technology growth, like science major and improve efficiency especially in secondary to bring up more elite student that pass the university enter level.

Educational Policy

Educational policy generally is defined as the collection of laws and rules that govern the operation of education systems. In Malaysia, our education is overseen by government ministry: the Ministry of Education for matters up to the secondary level, and the Ministry of Higher Education for tertiary education.

Education can be occurs in many forms for many purposes through different type of institutions. The education is including the early childhood education,  kinder garden, primary school, secondary school, universities, graduate and professional education, adult education and job training. Therefore, educational policy can directly affect the education people who engage in at all ages. The educational policy analysis is the scholarly study of education policy. Examples of education policy analysis may be found in the academic journals such as Education Policy Analysis Archives. [1]

Eventually education plays the important role in implanting the idea of “One Malaysia” which unites different races and have them contribute to our country.  It provides us sufficient reading materials and allows us to access the extra information via internet. It also benefits us by providing some incentives for our excellent achievement in education.

The decrement of standard in every year caused the education policy becomes more transparent and not effective as previous years. It also affects the students as they don’t need to study much to pass the exam. It pulls down not only the image of education system, but also the image of the nation. As it requires and expects an individual to give out his 100%, it might be quite impossible. To develop a world class education not only focuses in Malaysia education but looking forward to the more advanced country as the reference or benchmark to achieve the target.

Other than that, the ministry have sent numerous missions to study i.e.  “smart schools’ e-learning, community college system but nothing ever happens upon their return. The Ministry of Education have Malaysian Students Department is almost all countries but what do they do. With the amount of money spent by JPA, MARA and other agencies Malaysia could have easily built enough universities and colleges to cater to 20 times the number of students that they sent overseas. But we do not have the talented instructors to teach the latest courses. Right now most of the teachers and instructors in Universities and Colleges in Malaysia were once unemployed and took up teaching as an alternative to being unemployed. Thus the lackadaisical attitude and poor quality of teaching pulls down the standard and quality of education in Malaysia. If this situation continues to happen, it is very hard to achieve the mission.

Besides that, the level of English has fallen. We have one huge population of Malaysians whose English skills are poor to non-existent, and a smaller but sizable population whose English skills are very good. The main reason most of our schools and higher leanings fails at preparing students to use English properly, and that most of our teaching institutions fails at preparing teachers to use English properly. Many students probably cannot understand enough English to follow the lessons given in English, and most teachers probably don't have good enough English to give those lessons. It is hardly to say that English can bring up the overall quality of English if we have teachers with poor English often teaching pupils with poor English.

            In conclusion, our country mainly focuses on competing to be on top of another country rather than focusing and improving the quality or standard of an important element like education. For example, if we improve a quality of a product, its marketability will increase automatically. Same goes to education, where quality matters in order to standardise our education system. But, Malaysian leaders and educators do not like to be reminded of this; instead they would prefer us to focus on the fact that we are still ahead of countries like Indonesia, Bolivia and Peru.

References

[1] “Education Policy,” 2010, [Online] Retrieved at October 25, 2010. Available from: 

       http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_policy  

Survey Analysis

Above is the results analysis of our online survey. There had been 50 people took part in our online survey. For question 1, the result shows that there are 26 people (52%) satisfied with our country nowadays educational policy as today educational policy may have fulfilled their requirement of educational and many of them may have got some benefits from the policy. Meanwhile, there are 24 people (48%) not satisfied with the educational policy. This may cause of they have been given unfair treatment from the government education, for example a student fail to get government scholarship although they get straight A’s in their STPM or SPM. From this issue, it had driven the disagreement on parts of the people and they are unsatisfied with the educational policy.

For question 2, there are 32 people (64%) think that the mission will be succeed while 18 people (36%) think that the mission will fail to achieve. The reasons why people think of the mission will be achieved may because they are confident with the education ministry of the government and they believe the educational policy of the government will sure lead the mission to a success. Minority people are still not so confident and support the government educational policy as they think that the mission will not be achieved. This condition may due to lack of awareness among the community which they do not take note about today educational policy and they are lack of information on the education policy which lead them don’t have much confident on the educational policy. In spite of, their mind may also being affected by the negative issues of the educational policy.      

Our next question is about do we get any benefits from the educational policy. From this question, we can see many people answering YES. The percentages of answering YES are 80% (40 people) while only 20% (10 people) answering NO. This result shows that most of the people are getting benefits of our educational policy nowadays and they enjoy the policy as they have got what they want through the educational policy. Nevertheless, get some people say no may due to the some issues of educational policy which is happening.  As we know, the Ministry of Education is currently studying seriously on the proposal to abolish UPSR and PMR examinations in order to improve the standards of education and to create more “thinking” students rather than those relying purely on 'regurgitation' to pass examinations. However, this policy may not really help students to improve themselves and they even will become lazier as more examinations are abolished and they no longer need to study hard for the examinations which they can straight away continue their study easily without any exams.

Question 4 is about survey the opinion on the educational policy in our country will produce more experts in different fields or not. From the result, there are 52% (26 people) do not agree with the educational policy in our country because, they argued, if the educational policy in our country is effective enough to produce experts, why the students in our own country sent abroad merely to further their education in their respective fields. They also argued, students who studying abroad is easier to get work in their own country. Moreover, most of them get more lucrative salaries than those who had studied in their own country. This means that the educational policy in our country still have something to be improve. Government should seek measures to ensure that educational policy in our country is good enough to be proud of among our own people in Malaysia especially students, so they would no longer to further their study outside from Malaysia.

However, there is still 48% (24 people) from the survey agree with the educational policy in our country. They believe that the educational policy in our country is still effective to produce more experts in different fields. In my opinion, most of them think that, an excellent person starts from the bottom of where they come to know what education is. What I mean here, an excellent person starts from primary and secondary schools. If they are not good enough or not an excellent person in their schools, then how come they will be sent abroad just to further their study? As we can see also, the students from foreign countries, like Sudan, Indonesia, India, Arab and other countries, there is some of them tend to pursue their studies in Malaysia. This shows that, educational policy in Malaysia still effective to produce experts in different fields.

For the last question, there are 52% (26 people) have chosen for less attention on students' facilities. This happen because students need many facilities for their study. Students will know about real world when they know what they are really dealing with. For example, laboratory should prepare equipment that is in good condition for student to make experiment or project. The environment of study also should be improved so student feels more exciting to study. the facilities being suggest here are more reference in library, nice view on their places of study, good instructor to know how to handle any instrument and so on.

The 2^nd highest percentage of 22% (11 people) goes to lack of patriotism in students to serve their own country. Students is lack on this factor because discourage to feel proud of their own country. This happen because many problem have occurred in this country. Political issues, racial issues, and many more have made negatively perception on student’s side. Our government should bring attention to young generation to love then serve their own country. It shall be effective when the problems of country solved wisely, and all citizens could have their own specialty.

Next is followed by no incentive or less scholarship offered for the excellent students which get 18% (9 people) response. When there is incentive or gifts for excellent student, the student will more dynamic to achieve on to be good students. The people's money should not be wasted to spend on something that is not producible and can be use on this cleaner way. On the other hand, teaching staff salaries got the less percentage that is 8% (4 people) chose. the student is the one who drive their own way. do they want to go to the peak or fall trying nothing and be useless in the end. they should not depend fully to the teaching staff to feed knowledge to them. That is why the water is not filling in the tank.

Racism

What is racism? Racism is discrimination or prejudice based on a race. During the 2010 Fifa world cup, the players spread a message before every game starts. The message was “Say No To Racism”. Why the Fifa and South Africa have came up with this idea because, South Africa is well known for its Apartheid issue. Apartheid issue happened when the White discriminate the black due to racism. Because of that, the black people of south Africa have really suffered a lot from this issue. In order to create awareness to the people around the world, about this racism which can destroy a community, the Fifa and south Africa came up with this message.

Let us see the situation in Malaysia. Whenever a foreign people come to Malaysia the first they say about Malaysia is ‘Malaysia is unique’ because of its multicultural races. They think we are living together in harmony. But in reality does this situation happening now?  No!! We are always having a situation where racial issues take place. Pointing finger to another race and criticising them will never make a peaceful community but will lead to a situation of angriness. For example, let me tell about a few incidents that happened that raised the racial issue among the three major communities. The first one happened in Johor, where a school headmaster allegedly called the ‘non-malays’ as passengers of this country during assembly upon launching the independents day celebration. Second incident happened in Kedah, where a school headmaster also have scolded a few Chinese students because they were eating in front of malay students during the month of Ramadan and asked them to go back to China since they are not respecting the culture of others. This sensitive incidents have raised the racial issues among the races and was highlighted in medias.

If this kind of Situation happens again and again, the 13 may tragedy might repeat again. It is very important where we get our education from. Whether it’s from our parents or teachers, it’s very important that we learn to respect all no matter which race they are from. Parents and teachers are playing the important role in educating their children to respect other cultures and stay united.

There is only one race in earth, which is the Human race. Because of skin colour and physical characteristics, we are different from each other. We as a Malaysian,(Malay, Chinese, Indian, Iban ,Kadazan and various ethnics from Sabah and Sarawak) fall under one race, which is the Asian Race.

Those who practice racism, prejudice, and discrimination need to repent. “Present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God” (Romans 6:1)

Before I end, let me end with a phrase, “UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL”.

By,

YASOTHA

LUMPUR

This video has a very meaningful storyline. It makes me think how "Tanah Air" is vital for every single person who lives in it. Somehow we do not look deep down in any matter. We do not know what will future give us. We should be one to make one peaceful life in this country. Take lesson from other country which suffer from war. We should not take granted for what we have now. The UNITY is the only solution. ~Rush~

Friendship Gain Unity

This video is about a song that gives so much meaning in my life. Everyones needs a friend, or any of you all have no friends? I am very sure everyone has a friend. This song is sang by Michael Jackson in 1972.

In the song, there are some passages which are so intresting to my heart to share with you all. Last week I have presented this song as my topic for my presentation.  Let me conclude the things that I have said in the class last week. From the song, I discovered that, we should not be afraid if before this, we chose the wrong path because, whatever we done lastly, we still has place to go, which is meet somebody who trust us the most. In additon, we should not care what the other people say on somebody we care, because we are the only person who understand them, the same meaning here, we should not look down to the others or somebody. In conclusion, if we live in large community, we need to help each other for mutual success rather than opress one another. Enjoy the song.

~FATIN~

Quote of Today

Watch your thoughts, they become words.
Watch your words, they become actions.
Watch your actions, they become habits.
Watch your habits, they become your character.
Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.

 Today, lecturer start the class by asking around of this quote... Somehow i had learned new quote today and gain some useful knowledge from the class. This quote is a motivation quote which inspire people to watch out our own every single aspects in ourselves in order to build out a better characteristic, personality and attitude ---> way to be a success person. The impression of others about ourselves is reflected by our own characters. Guys, if you all still stuck at the half way or lost in the middle of your journey of life, please wake up hurry and continue your journey with more meaningful memories and go through the correct path way...O(∩_∩)O...

By: Alice 

Ethronicianz‘s Project Video: START in Our University ---> UMP!!!

Hope you all enjoy this video clip and together struggle to make our future a better community, nation and better world! Despite the skin colours, races, religion and ethnics, UMP is a great place for us to foster our relationship among each other...


From:Alice ....O(∩_∩)O...

One Malaysia One Dream

One Malaysia One Dream? When i first saw this video clip, this question come across my mind. Do everyone really understand the message that intend to deliver to every citizen of Malaysia? Recently, quite many issues about races or ethnic happened in our community. As a multi-ethnic country, we need to communicate well with each other, have better understanding among each other and together create a harmony environment in the community. There is no colour, races, religion and other differences in Malaysia --- as we are all MALAYSIAN. For all malaysian, lets us love each other and share our ideas, culture and dream together...

From: Alice ...O(∩_∩)O...

+all about us+

~mal~

Let Us Love Our Multi-Ethnic Community!!!

Today, I would like to share about a video clip with you all which are about rise up racial and ethnic groups from USARiseUp.com. The reason why I share this video clip with you all is it’d gave an inspiration for me on the importance of improve our race relationships. This video clip is a short inspiration video which its purpose is to let people take note about why and how should we strengthen the relationships among different ethnic and racial group in today community. Through this video clip, we can see that USARiseUp stress on how to enforce a multi-ethnic society to share their customs of different ethnic cities, preserving them and create a dialogue among its readership.

The improvement of race relations deserves our ongoing attention. We must do it for our children, our grandchildren, and their children. In the internet community, we can also share, enrich and potentially save our customs although we all come out from different races and ethnics. In the multi-ethnic community, we need to better understand each other to build better communities, cities, nations and a better world. For me, I also get make friends with other country friends through internet community. From them, I learn a lot of their cultures like when their national day is and how they celebrate on it. There is no harm for us to make friends among other country ethnics as we can learn more from them and we can also let them understand more on our cultures.

So, in conclusion, create strong bonding among different races or ethnics are an important task for us! Like in the message from the USARiseUp video, we should build a good relationship among different ethnic even with ethnic from other country to create a harmony n peaceful world. How will be our future community look like? Well, the answer is in our hand. So, let us hold hands together to build a better community in future!

~From: ALICE~ ...O(∩_∩)O...

ONLINE SURVEY....WHAT IS YOUR OPINION??

Please answer our online survey regarding the NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL POLICY. Thank you for the co-operation.

RACIAL AND ETHNIC COMPOSITION

This article is about the racial and ethnic composition in US. Besides, this article also explains about the racial and ethnic classification system. What is mean by ethnicity? The answer can be found in this article. In the multi-ethnic community, we need to understand more on the this issue as the population in the world now is increasing tremendously and we need to create a stronger bond among each other in order to build a peaceful and harmony life.

Ethnicity is a socially important demographic marker throughout the world. In many countries, however, it is not collected or reported in official population statistics, typically for reasons of social policy. Race is a concept with a contentious history and is no longer in use in anthropology. But in the United States, both concepts have long been, and continue to be, prominent features of population statistics. This article is therefore focused on the U.S. case.

The racial and ethnic composition of the U.S. population has changed markedly since the founding of the nation as successive waves of immigrants arrived from an ever-shifting array of countries around the world. Classifying persons as a member of particular racial or ethnic groups is, however, far from straightforward, not only because of the increasingly complicated mix of identities among children whose parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents were members of different groups, but also because social definitions of race and ethnicity have changed through time. Despite these complexities, it is clear that the racial and ethnic composition of the U.S. population has been becoming increasingly diverse especially since the 1970s, and this trend is projected to continue.

For more, you may read at this website: http://www.novelguide.com/a/discover/epop_02/epop_02_00278.html

From: Alice ...O(∩_∩)O...

TAKE A BREAK & TRY TO CRACK YOUR HEAD.....

A Touching Inspirational Story

The determination of a guy to go through all the hardships and obstacles of his life with imperfect body parts. Should we feel ashame for us who have both legs and arms/perfect body parts, but we don't have such strong determination to do everything and we even give up whenever we encounter with troubles and problems.
...O(∩_∩)O...

Forum Part 2

Firstly, I want to say sorry because too late to write this post. However, I still remember how the second forum has been done by other group. My group has done it in forum part 1. Our group is volunteered by myself, Fatin Izzwani Azman. Honestly, I think in forum part 1 I answered very bad and I admit, I lack in doing revisions and nervous also, but my friend still said that I'm very cool in front there. Ok, forget about the first forum. Now, I want to summarize about the second forum. In my opinion, the second forum is more formal then first forum maybe it is because the forum is lead by a girl named Amira. She is very polite and can handle the forum very nicely and interesting. But the first forum is lot of jokes and interesting too. From what I see, most of the panel seem to be more serious and looks like they have been doing some revisions because they answered the question smoothly eventhough, some of them not. I really interesting how two of the panel answer the questions and they are Enti Nashila and Adeebah. They give a very good explanations to the audience. To conclude, I think this activity teach us to prepare whatever we want to talk or explain to the others so, we are not nervous or still thinking what are we going to answer. Hopefully, there will be another forum but hopefully also it comes with the more interesting topic not history again.

First Day of Forum

Our class of ethnic relationship is divided into 12 groups. As we have limited of time for the forum, this forum will be held for two days and each day will have 6 panels. For the first day of the forum, the group is lead by Mr. Mohd Khaideer. Each of the panel is responsible to answer the questions from each group representative. A forum which like a Q&A session. The panels need to understand well the question asked and revise back on their regarding topic in order to answer well and solve the questions that are asked by others group members. Basically, most of the panels are facing difficulties in give out their opinion by using English as their language. Tomorrow 24/08 will be the second session of the forum. Hopefully, all panels will be more fluent in English in answering the questions and give a clear an explanation to their audiences. Good luck for my friends! o(∩_∩)o...

Time to Review Back on Our Country HISTORY!!

For this coming Thursday, another interesting activity will be held in ethnic relationship class --- FORUM. What is a forum?? Well, forum is actually an open discussion for various topics. It may be a challenge for me as I always lack of confidence in sound out my thoughts and giving opinion. In order to answer well during forum, there is another big challenges for us to handle which is we need to understand and know well about our country past history such as Malacca period, Japanese occupation, Malayan Union, MAGERAN and so on. Not many of us can memorise or remember our country own history. As what our lecturer said in class just now, it could be a shame for us when a foreigner ask us about our country history but we ourselves could not manage to answer him even a single words. So, what we should do now? Go to the library, find the relevant book or try to surf more information through internet to flash back our memory about our own country. Hope everyone will enjoy the forum for the coming Thursday! …O(∩_∩)o…

Learning Ethnic Relationships in An Interesting Way---COMICS

This first comic is about the issue of enculturation. The foreign student seems can’t get use of the new environment and keep on complaining on the food. As we stay at different culture environment or study at foreign country, we should learns the culture there and try to acquires values and behaviours that are appropriate in that culture. If not, we could hardly survive in other country.

Next, the comic is about a dialogue between a mother and her son. Her son is receiving a compliment letter from a man who has ‘different colour of skin’ or different race that delicate to his mother. The component of ethnic relationships that take part in this comic is segregation. In our daily life, there has been a separation of different kinds of human into racial groups. Different races are communicated with each other’s nicely and there have been lots of marriage between different races in the plural country.

The third comic is about the conflict that happen among a rich guy and a poor girl. Discrimination and prejudice are concepts of ethnic relationships which may related to this comic. The rich guy is looking down and criticise on his friend who come from a poor family. The main factor of this case happen is the different class of the group which lead to discrimination of the poor family.

Lastly, it is about the dialogues between a fish and an old man. This comic is connected to the concept of segregation and nation. It's have been a habit for animals to be human pet a long time ago. Animals and human are both from different species, however they can communicate with each others quite well and some even rely on each others in their daily life.

As the conclusion, it's a fun way to learn ethnic relationships through comics. There are still lots of knowledge that we can learn from ethnic relationships. As our country-Malaysia is an multi-racial country, we need to learn how to communicate well with each race which may lead to a peaceful and harmony country. A good cooperation will often bring to success. o(∩_∩)o...

~~~ ER~~~ :)

Last week in ER class, I have done an interesting activity that is crossword puzzle. It's a pairing activity. I fun do it with my partner. Being honest, for the 1st time I didn't know what word should we find in that crossword puzzle. The instruction is clear. We must find 12 word that is related to the ER which is 12 basic concept of ER. But lack of knowledge within ER were barrier us a little bit, haha... My partner and I try our best but unluckily we not the winner for that day. A bit disappointed.. :( but, never mind.. ngee~

Today, we create a comic. There were 4 differ comic that we should finishing. We done the task in a group of blogging. Actually its enjoyable activity but I have no idea to it, hoho. .. To do the task, we need to create a story related to the ER. We must choose 1 issue for 1 comic.

Think & Answer

This is what we did in the last class of ethnic relation subject. This subject I, Rushdina have to take for my 3rd year 1st semester in my university. I had done this crossword puzzle with my beloved other group friend, Siti Nor Azra. We learned the words related to concepts of ethnic relation as we hardly search the answer for this puzzle. We didn't even know the words before we do this activity. So, that is challenging. The 12 words that appeared to be true are assimilation, accommodation, acculturation, pluralism, racism, prejudice, discrimination, segregation, ethnocentrism, stereotype, nation, and race. This subject taught me about ethnic relation in my developing country, Malaysia. Malaysia have many sources to be export other than other country that have less sources but have being a developed country such as German. What is the thing unique in Malaysia is that it have many race live together in it. The key for this country to be on top is cooperation within all races for the sake of harmony living that we can achieved by being a developed country. We should not practicing racism, prejudice, discrimination, and stereotype act. In the other hand concept of assimilation, accommodation, acculturation, segregation, ethnocentrism, nation and race should be understood by Malaysian people. I can see nowadays people can communicate among each other although they come from different race. Malay wearing cheongsam, Indian eating ketupat, and many others. The special characteristics of different races should give Malaysia a big advantage such as Malay with their friendliness, Chinese with their hardworking and Indian with their talkativeness. When we have problem, we should face the problem, all sit at 1 table and discuss how the problem can be eliminated. 1 small problem should not be ignored as it will become harder to solve later. That is how 1 Malaysia is created. Dr Sri Mohd Najib said, "1Malaysia is a concept to foster unity in Malaysians of all races based on several important values which should become the practice of every Malaysian." - www.malaysiatoday.com