April 22, 2007 |
More foreign students = education excellence? What kind of logic is that?
Malaysia aims to double to 100,000 from the present 50,000 the number of foreign students at local tertiary learning institutions by 2010, Higher Education Minister Datuk Mustapa Mohamed said.
He said the government would embark on a dual-pronged approach to realise the target, which he described would be a “significant increase” to achieve the government’s goal to turn the country into a centre of education excellence. [Bernama]
For me, it’s another 50,000 foreigners getting to know how poor the tertiary learning institutions are. Shouldn’t the ministry focus on improving our universities’ standards before thinking of attracting more foreign students?
April 20, 2007 |
After the brawl at Machap, we must have guessed that the politicians and their supporters have learned something and would act more mature in future… it didn’t happen; the supporters fought again on the nomination day of by-election for the Ijok state seat.
I wonder what will happen at the nationwide election if this ‘fighting spirit’ is not controlled.
April 11, 2007 |
Underlining its seriousness in wanting greater unity, the government yesterday ordered school administrators to speed-up integration-related programmes. [NST]
I doubt that the government is working on the right spot. You see, when I was in primary school, there are no racial issues in my thinking… Ali, Ah Kau and Mutu are all good friends. It applied in my real life; I made friends with all people regardless of races.
My thinking got a bit confused when I got into high school. We were required to study Tamadun Islam for one or two years. Fine, if it’s to learn other Malaysians’ culture and religion… but I always wondered why Muslims are not given the chance to learn other Malaysians’ origin as well?
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April 5, 2007 |
When I was a kid, I had some fantasy about high speed trains… like the French TGV and Japan bullet trains; I actually thought that those trains could reach a destination faster than an aeroplane.
The fantasy kinda shattered when I took my first train journey to Kuala Lumpur from Ipoh (or Ipoh to KL, can’t remember correctly) when I was around 9 years old… and it took around 4 hours to reach the destination, as fast as a car could be.
I am still interested in trains though, and I always believe that a good train network is an important factor to build a modern country. I was more affirmed about the idea when I visited London for the first time 5-6 years ago, when I saw how good their Underground (sort of like our LRTs) system was.
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