About Me

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Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
A 40 something dad of five and a half wonderful kids with amazingly different traits and temperament from whom he wants a break from at times, yet wish they never grow older.....and be with him always.....(howzat possible?)and now wishing that he can be a stay at home dad......

10 February, 2007

On a serious note....

Interesting commentary and observation on our education system by Tony Pua; albeit written a year back, it is still relevant and certainly not outdated! The issue today is still the same - a lot of debates but the action plan remains moving at a slow pace.

When I was doing my bar vocational course in London some 15 years back, almost all the Singaporean law graduates of my batch (at least at the University which I attended my bar vocational course) graduated from British top law schools unlike their Malaysian counterparts.

We have brilliant students around but the system does not support them to grow and bring the best out of them. When I was choosing my law school 20 years back, there was no support at all from my lecturers and information was hard to come by (then of course there was no internet available for us students, unlike now). We had no counsellors as well! Can you believe that?

For a lot of my friends, they just simply hantam (gambled) when making the universities of their choice. In my case, I was lucky because I had some guidance from my friends who were already attending British universities and only applied to BTUs and got accepted to 2 top law schools, Nottingham and King's College. I'm not embarassed to say that I only knew the concept of Ivy League, Oxbridge and BTUs when I was 19 years old.

I have made sure that my daughter is exposed to this idea at a young age. Since the system does not provide this formal guidance, as parents we have to work extra hard to ensure that our kids are supported with quality information to aid them in making decisions!

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on my mind certainly constantly

on my mind certainly constantly