A workshop that I joined recently really made me curious and furious.
The workshop was to guide us on ways to teach weak students
on answering the questions in the English Language exam, Paper 2 which requires a lot of writing. Note that weak students are those who barely understands the language or could barely use it to speak moreover to write in it. The tips given by the presenter were great because they really work. They had succeeded in achieving their objective using those tips to their weak students. However, I couldnt help but felt really uneasy about the point of this whole thing-the objective.
The point was to make the weak students able to answer the questions and pass the exam. By drilling the students with sentence patterns that form good answers...yes...the students will be able to write answers that give them good marks in the exam( because they have memorised it)...ermm...then...what? Owh okay I know then the school's "prestasi" will boost and the people higher up than the school will like it. I guess they(the people higher up) like it because this is their interpretation: 'Any increase in the exam results is a good sign of the students' increased learning and intelligence'. Which means the school is producing more educated citizens that are useful for the country?
Really? What did they learn?:to write pretty answers required by the question?(note that pretty answers mean that they are exactly what was intended in the answer scheme, not the kind of answers that show their thinking or feeling or opinion). What part of their intelligence increased? Will they be able to use the answer patterns...in making decision in life? in expressing themselves? in socializing with people? Like they can chat with another person like this:
A: Hey how are you doing?
B: Err...the character that I admire in the novel *** is ***
A: Ok dude, you're weird.
Could they use the answer patterns in giving their opinions in real life? Yes?...most of the questions are asking the students' opinion..and yes the answer patterns are opinions..but they are not really what the students' thought, felt or wonder. In fact, I doubt that they ever wonder because they were not given a chance to think, to wonder. They were fed again and again with facts that do not require them to think. Because if they write what they think...they wont get good marks, since their answers will be different from the answer scheme. What's the point of asking questions if you have provided the answer and anything different from what you want to hear is wrong. It's like:
A: What is the colour of your t-shirt?
B: It's a colour that I like, that makes me happy.
A: No, your answer is wrong. The colour of your t-shirt is red.
B: Then, why do you ask since you can see with your eyes that it is red.
Another thing that bothered me was when the presenter taught us about marking the students' papers. Her intention was good. Her approach was more humanistic (meaning that she keeps in mind that exam candidates are human, not robots). And these exact words of her that she kept repeating was what bothered me: "Keep in mind that the candidates are
15 year old kids who had to
write something in a limited time, even we would not be able to do that" So that is the only point where the students' three years of learning in school is assessed? In that limited time? So being able to write something in a limited time qualifies the student as someone who had learned well in those three years? The aim was the end product, not the process of learning? So we get to know what the students achieved throughout the three years in the few hours exam? Not what they discover or acquired throughout the process of learning?
Then, if the school is gearing students towards the reading and writing in the exams? What happens to students that are not good in those field? They're not good not because they're lazy but because their ability is not in that field. But, since there is no channel that guided them towards discovering what they're actually good at, they felt incapable. That they couldnt do anything in school. So, they started doing things going against the teacher, the rules, the schedule. Unfortunately, they're not actually useless. They do have their specialties. But they do not know. Nobody knows. Because there is no way that could lead them to finding it out. The school's vision is not to produce happy students that make well use of their talents. Most schools' visions are like these:
sekolah gemilang antara terbilang (maksud: keputusan periksa yg terbaik antara sekolah2 elit yg keputusan periksanya bombastik)
The country's education philosophy seems to be forgotten, to produce well balanced humans. The products nowadays are rigid, stiff, expressionless, without opinions. For instance in an oral test that I did, I prepared an interesting picture : two sampans nearly crashed into each other, in each sampan there was a boy with a snake around their neck. The reason I chose the picture was to encourage them to comment, give opinions on the picture, as a prompt for them to speak one or two sentence. I started with direct questions and there was one question that everyone couldn't answer because it involves them giving an opinion, not because they do not understand the question in English because they still could not answer it even though I translated it for them, it went like this:
Me: do you think the snake is dangerous to the boy?
S: ....
Me: ular tu bahaya tak pada budak tu?
S: aa...
Me: don't worry, there is no right or wrong answer, saya nak pendapat awak je
S: ular bahaya, jadi bahayalah
Most students' answers were along this line. They keep on stating the fact that snake= dangerous. It is a fact, no other fact than this is important, didn't notice the boy's face, other people around the boy. Wow I thought to myself...they're robots. They stick to facts. No time to wonder, contemplate blablabla...
What made me sicker was this addiction or trend of measuring everything, making everything objective, turning everything into numbers, graphs. If you start measuring behaviour..wait could we even measure it?....this happens in my action research proposal. It was on extensive reading and my objective was
vague, I was told. Because they wanted more of an objective that improves the students' language/grammar/vocabulary(since they need those to answer the exam and its measureable). Because my objective was to encourage the students' to be more expressive, able to give opinions on what he/she read and actually enjoy the story and will be encouraged to read more and perhaps acquire the language along the way, indirectly. They do not get the 'being expressive' part. I think this is what's going on in their head:
What do you mean expressive?Can it help the students to sit the exams? Will it get them As?
Well, if they do ask this, my answer would be:
Firstly, being expressive makes them a human being. If they are able to express themselves, it means that they were involved in thinking. And I think, people who could not be expressive, will be living a life full of suppressed feelings unable to convey them, turning them into depressed people who could not enjoy life. Trust me, I went through it and I m still suffering from it. I was not taught to express myself. Only facts were given to me. When I was asked if I have any questions, my mind would go blank, because I m not used to wondering, thinking. Nowadays, the products are not intelligent people but computers with no ability to think for itself, think outside of how its programmed, it does what it was told in the way that's shown to them.
Well, these are just my questions, thoughts, wonders. It does not really mean that I am right in every way and that I could be able to change the whole system for the better. Note that what I wrote is not my statement. They're my questions.
