By Ravinder Singh,
The Malaysian Examination Board’s rubbishing of the claims that it had made a sudden change in the format of the Moral Studies SPM examination paper for this year is a load of rubbish in itself.
The official who defended the action saying that “they only introduced a system called Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS), which requires students to think critically before answering questions” has himself exposed himself as lacking Higher Order Thinking Skills or HOTS.
If he had any HOTS and was able to think out of the box himself, he should have realised that framing questions that required children to “think out of the box” without having first taught them to think out of the box throughout the year, was an act of hitting the children below the belt.
The idea of teaching critical thinking skills in our schools has been bandied about since 1990. For the 23 years that have passed, what has the Ministry of Education to show? How critically are the children passing out from the normal schools able to think not just to answer exam questions but to engage in their daily activities?
It is true that “most students just memorise the 16 ‘nilai murni’ for Moral Studies”. Is that their fault or that of the system which required them to do so? Did they have a choice of not memorising and regurgitating the word-for-word answers that they were required to give?
No one disagrees that children must be taught to think. This was being done very well in the 50s and 60s when children had to give reasoned answers. The teachers who taught the children to think were themselves excellent thinkers. All this changed since the 70s.
Starting in the 70s, candidates taken into teacher training colleges were no longer those who had done well in their Forms 5 or 6 exams. They were those who could not get into institutions of higher learning and as a last resort applied for teacher training. This was the beginning of the decline and the rest is history that everyone knows.
Another justification given by the Examinations Board is that Under the National Education Blueprint 2013-2025, Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said that SPM exams will have 50% questions on critical thinking skills by 2016.
Heaven forbid if this is the way the Blueprint is going to be implemented – hitting children below the belt, i.e. expecting them to perform a miracle of “critical thinking” without first teaching them to think!
The ministry and the exams board must get their act together. First teach children to think out of the box. This cannot be done overnight. It is a slow process as it needs a lot of practice. And before that can be done, train teachers to be thinkers.
Teaching children thinking is not like teaching a mathematical formula. How is thinking to be taught if a child goes to a teacher with a question and the teacher reprimands the child “don’t disturb me”, or some other such answer that discourages the child from asking any more questions?
The justifications given by the Examinations Board are untenable and smack of a lack of Higher Order Thinking Skills. Thinking out of the box is much needed at this level before it can filter down to lower levels.
The Malaysian Examination Board’s rubbishing of the claims that it had made a sudden change in the format of the Moral Studies SPM examination paper for this year is a load of rubbish in itself.
The official who defended the action saying that “they only introduced a system called Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS), which requires students to think critically before answering questions” has himself exposed himself as lacking Higher Order Thinking Skills or HOTS.
If he had any HOTS and was able to think out of the box himself, he should have realised that framing questions that required children to “think out of the box” without having first taught them to think out of the box throughout the year, was an act of hitting the children below the belt.
The idea of teaching critical thinking skills in our schools has been bandied about since 1990. For the 23 years that have passed, what has the Ministry of Education to show? How critically are the children passing out from the normal schools able to think not just to answer exam questions but to engage in their daily activities?
It is true that “most students just memorise the 16 ‘nilai murni’ for Moral Studies”. Is that their fault or that of the system which required them to do so? Did they have a choice of not memorising and regurgitating the word-for-word answers that they were required to give?
No one disagrees that children must be taught to think. This was being done very well in the 50s and 60s when children had to give reasoned answers. The teachers who taught the children to think were themselves excellent thinkers. All this changed since the 70s.
Starting in the 70s, candidates taken into teacher training colleges were no longer those who had done well in their Forms 5 or 6 exams. They were those who could not get into institutions of higher learning and as a last resort applied for teacher training. This was the beginning of the decline and the rest is history that everyone knows.
Another justification given by the Examinations Board is that Under the National Education Blueprint 2013-2025, Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said that SPM exams will have 50% questions on critical thinking skills by 2016.
Heaven forbid if this is the way the Blueprint is going to be implemented – hitting children below the belt, i.e. expecting them to perform a miracle of “critical thinking” without first teaching them to think!
The ministry and the exams board must get their act together. First teach children to think out of the box. This cannot be done overnight. It is a slow process as it needs a lot of practice. And before that can be done, train teachers to be thinkers.
Teaching children thinking is not like teaching a mathematical formula. How is thinking to be taught if a child goes to a teacher with a question and the teacher reprimands the child “don’t disturb me”, or some other such answer that discourages the child from asking any more questions?
The justifications given by the Examinations Board are untenable and smack of a lack of Higher Order Thinking Skills. Thinking out of the box is much needed at this level before it can filter down to lower levels.
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