OUR education system serves numerous long-term goals. At the humanity level, it is responsible in educating the people.
At the economic level, it plays the function of a human capital developer for current and future market needs.
At the societal level, it plays the role of a social engineer, to ensure that the human capital it produces can be the driver of values and provide livelihood for current and future generations.
And at the political level, it serves as one of the instruments of patriotism.
Together, they make our education system a vital ingredient for solid and sustainable nation-building.
The issue, however, is the method we use to measure our achievements — the grading system.
Growing up, I have always wondered how is it that the children of teachers are always able to score highly in exams compared with others.
I was told then that this was because they had inherited the ‘genius’ genes of their parents, hence enabling them to understand things better and quicker, relative to other students.
It was only much later in life that I realised the actual shape of these ‘genius’ genes was a bundle of papers entitled ‘Buku Skema Jawapan’ or samples of past examination papers.
It seemed that our whole education system is so immersed in the pursuit of excellence, that it has forgotten the real excellence lies not in schools, but in life after school.
When its proper function as a means to an end is properly understood, the grading system used in our education system can be a strong tool for many purposes.
The grading system is causing our children to have a limited mindset, one that is characterised not by the long-term benefits of their learning, but the short-term gains of their academic standing.
In reality, when we express the merits of our students’ educational excellence through the system of grades 1,2,3, or A, B, C, the first thing that we are teaching them is not the pursuit of excellence, but rather, the formation of the us versus them mentality.
While the grading system is designed to enable educators to identify the weak learners, and allocate more focus on them, in reality, students are pressured by the mounting workload and expectations to deliver more As
Furthermore, our educators would be more likely to focus on those who have potential compared with the lesser performing ones.
The weak students will be demoralised when they realise they can’t make it to the top 5 or the top 10 students.
It is evident that we are actively pushing not for a holistic development of our students, but rather the formation of a successful minority and unsuccessful majority of the future.
Worse, these successful minority might not even be able to sustain their success, once they start their careers after graduation.
While it is true that the market demands graduates with technical abilities to drive operations, the real driver of the market will be by those who are humane with community values.
The economic cycle is characterised by ups and downs, and that being the case, the main determinant of success within the market is not solely the strength of academic qualifications, but rather, the strength of the person’s character.
This is the chief reason why we always come across successful businessmen with an unsuccessful academic record.
Human capital is not something that we can measure through a numerical or an alphabetical grading system; it is something that we measure by gauging our students’ ability to solve real-world problems, and how effective they are at bringing people together.
This grading system was inherited from the Western education system and already we are witnessing its negative repercussions.
But then again, success is never a destination — it is a journey, and all journeys begin with the first step.
The writer is a former NST journalist and chairman of the Kedah Timber Association