Monday, July 12, 2010

On the different branches and brunches of life...

I was inspired to write this entry thanks to one of the resumes I was browsing through... This line tickled me.. "...Also supporting for **** brunch at 4 other location in Ipoh, Melaka, Johor and KL."
He must've been hungry at noon time while writing this resume I thought.. As brunch - food between breakfast and lunch is chosen instead of the different branches / offices..
Similar to the line above, I have come across MANY of them. Some which I can vaguely recall are as follows:
- I'm preferred to work in KL
- Thank you for your respond.
- We are looking for post of sales man or representative
- she’s looked for permanent job
- Here I attach my resume for your l looking for job HR perment job or any tempory job in shah alam area. If they are any please call me .


If you still cannot find any fault in the above lines, you shouldn't continue reading this entry. I hurt everytime I read such lines. I see them everyday, in cover letters, professional resumes, in emails and the list goes on. These days, I even catch one or two of such errors on national newspapers!
I stopped keeping tab of such mistakes and tried to look beyond the words, for the benefit of doubt. Unfortunately, I am 99.99% accurate when I follow up, only to be disappointed with very basic few lines of conversational English and reverting to ... "boleh bercakap dalam bahasa melayu tak?"

To be honest, I am open to being a Malaysian. I am proud of my country and the languages and the rich cultural heritage we bear as one nation. However, I do believe that in the advent of globalisation today, we need to be armoured. All rakyat or Malaysian citizens need to make an effort to master some basic communciation skill in order to interact with the society around them. This is especially true for the youths of today. No one is an island. And the youths are the future pillars of the nation and there are millions of them out there who cannot hold a decent conversation in English. No doubt Malay is our Bahasa Kebangsaan but learning a new language doesn't mean adapting to the cultures of the language or losing foothold of their mother tongue. If anything at all, it gives one an added advantage amongst the rest where the workers of today are no longer a local but global worker, open to opportunities worldwide

Going back to the grassroots of the issue, ultimate importance has always been given to the subject Malay language in school. You could have achieved A1 for subjects such as Physics, Chemistry, Biology and English. BUT if you fail your BM, you will need to repeat the paper or else you will not be considered for a full pass in your final secondary year exam. And the reverse applies where you can have an 9F for 8 out of 10 papers in your SPM with a B for your BM and you will be considered pass. This is the reality. If I can scan all the resumes of the latter I have seen, I can draw out a statistic on the same. Sad but true .... The weight of importance is misappropriately placed in our education system.

Recently there has been a massive debate on the validity of continuuing PMR and SPM papers. I believe all students are praying really hard so that the bill will be passed to scrap the papers altogether. Well, here comes another trial-error. Let's see the result - are the students screwed up at the end of graduation or are they fine, in fact better on hands-on experience or SME (subject matter experts) on concerned subjects.

In this climate where even the fundamental basics are not laid and sorted, we are trying to fish back the local expertise who have left for overseas to work there given a better and more conducive environment for growth.
I wonder what lies ahead for the children of our future. Home education? Private tutoring? Or Private schools, following Britsh of foreign syllabus?


What about those who cannot afford the luxuries of private schools? Those middle income earners? What about their rights to choose the best for their children? Do they have to leave their children in the mercy of the education system which is on a reverse-forward and trial-error mode?
I am praying that I will not be in a situation where my kids will be forced to become voluntary guinea pigs.
That God will enlighten the leaders of today to pave the education, financial and governing system in a way that will be able to progress children of all layers of society and it will truly be an education for all.

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