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Critique Essay

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Submitted By Manimaran
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INTRODUCTION
The article “Another Malaysian Education Dilemma: Can We Trust Our Exam?” was published at The Edge Malaysia on Jan 07, 2014. It was written by the author, Nicholas Chan. He is a graduate from Universiti Sains Malaysia and he is a forensic scientist by education. Currently, Nicholas Chan is a socio-political research analyst at Penang Institute. He believes that there is truth in everything and it all depends on whether a person willing to see it or not.

SUMMARY
The author started the article by informing the reader about the current education status of the Malaysian students.

The main points which were discussed in this article were about the examination and educational level in Malaysia. The author is disappointed with the education level in Malaysia. The author compared the education level with other countries too. Besides, the author mentioned about the removal of Penilaian Menengah Rendah (PMR) which was announced recently, and replaced with school based assessment (PBS). The removal of PMR was caused by the difficulty in making sense of having students with excellent results, but still underperforming to international standards. The author made assumptions on the education level that the standard of Malaysia education is low. Lastly, the author gave suggestions on ways to overcome the inequality problem in education.

The author concluded the article with hope.

ANALYSIS
Facts VS Opinion
Author is using many facts data to support his opinion. As an example of the author taking facts to support his opinion are “Table 1: Data from Examination Syndicate shows Malaysian students primarily outperforming their previous years' cohorts in national examinations. But with sliding TIMSS results, how truthful are our tests? (Left image reproduced from Malaysia Education Blueprint)” (Nicholas Chin, 2014) and “Table 3: Malaysian school performance by performance bracket in TIMSS 2007 and PISA” (Nicholas Chan, 2014). Besides, the author did mention about the facts of examination in the following sentences: “The undeniable fact is that, examinations, especially those with high stakes involved, are still very influential in deciding learning outcomes because their effects ripples through the entire gamut of the education experience.” (Nicholas Chan, 2014) and “An examination must to an extent, psychometrically reflect on how good the student is, be it cognitive or emotional prowess.” (Nicholas Chan, 2014). These two sentences clearly shown that the author is trying to express his opinion about examination are not only about passing the exam or the grade achieved by the student; Examination should be guidance for student towards a brighter future.
Slanted Language
The author uses a lot of slanted language in the articles. The examples of slanted language can be clearly seen in the following sentences: “While the fate ultimatum of Malaysia's education under the Malaysia Education Blueprint (MEB) might take another decade to realise, but the fate of PMR is basically sealed.” (Nicholas Chan, 2014), “This must be a disaster to say the least” (Nicholas Chan, 2014), “Such mismatch of education achievements (assuming that being able to enter University is a measure of quality in itself) and professional demands must have eroded a daringly large portion of trust our parents have towards the education system, which in turn would further impede efforts in improving the system.” (Nicholas Chan, 2014), “Hence, it is disheartening to see that in comparison to South Korea in the PISA 2009 mathematics and science scores, none of our students reach the highest level of proficiency (level 6) and less than 0.5% reaches level 5, as compared to the South Koreans, that has 6.84% (math) and 0.55% (science) for level 6 and 17.81% and 9.95% for level 5 in the same subject order.” (Nicholas Chan, 2014), “This suggests that not only we have an inequality problem to tackle in education, but on the larger picture the language is simple, the standards simply aren't there.” (Nicholas Chan, 2014), and “If not, under the more decentralised nature of PBS, teachers and principals might "game the system" to suit their interests, hampering the opportunity for an honest evaluation of the student's learning outcomes for effective teaching resources allocation.” (Nicholas Chan, 2014). Based on the selected sentences, the slanted language uses by the author were disaster, mismatch, disheartening, inequality, decentralized and game the system. These slanted languages were all negatively slanted and they are emphasizing on the education system. The main purpose of these negatively slanted languages is to help people in realizing the current level of our education system, which is in a very bad situation.
Purpose or Intent
The purpose of the author to write this article is to inform readers about the dilemma faced by parents and students in Malaysia education. The author’s intention is actually to make the readers realized about the failure of Malaysia’s education system by using factual evidences, which is clearly presented in the article. Furthermore, the author also shows a set of data that he took from the Examination Syndicate about the performances of Malaysian students as evidence. He also tried to share his own opinion in order to reinvigorate Malaysia’s education by using decentralization. His suggestion can be seen in the last two paragraphs of the article, which are “The most convincing proposed solution to reinvigorate Malaysia's education decline is decentralisation. However, for a decentralised education system to function optimally, local stakeholders, especially parents' engagement and participation is very important. In order to woe our parents back, credibility to our education system must be restored.” (Nicholas Chan, 2014) and “In the push for accountability, the venerability of our assessments should be revived too. Marking and grading criteria should no longer hide under the veil of the Official Secrets Act but released neatly within the education annual report starting 2013 (the annual report release is another initiative of the MEB). Trust must always be won by none other than the hard and honest way.” (Nicholas Chan, 2014). These two paragraphs are basically suggestions made by the author towards Malaysia education. The author claimed that local authority plays the main role to make Malaysia education successful, so parents should participate in assist to make this happen. The next paragraph is about making the exam scheme and grading criteria to be more transparent rather than hiding it as secret. It is a way to build up trust among the Malaysian.
Bias
The author is biased against the Malaysia education system. From the title of the article itself, “Another Malaysian Education Dilemma: Can We Trust Our Exam?”, the author is already shown dissatisfaction about the education system in Malaysia. The author kept comparing Malaysia’s education level with the other countries. The comparison can be seen in the article, where the part showing “Table 2: The left and right images show how different it is in terms of the grading results between TIMSS and PMR and also the SPM English paper and Cambridge 1119 standards. (Images reproduced from Malaysia Education Blueprint)” (Nicholas Chan, 2014). In this part of the article, the author is comparing the TIMSS with PMR and the English level between SPM English paper and Cambridge 1119 standards. It is obvious that the author is looking down on the Malaysia education system. Furthermore, the author showed his disappointment about the scores of Malaysia students in PISA by stating “Hence, it is disheartening to see that in comparison to South Korea in the PISA 2009 mathematics and science scores, none of our students reach the highest level of proficiency (level 6) and less than 0.5% reaches level 5, as compared to the South Koreans, that has 6.84% (math) and 0.55% (science) for level 6 and 17.81% and 9.95% for level 5 in the same subject order.” (Nicholas Chan, 2014). In this part of the article, the author is comparing Malaysia with South Korea on Mathematics and Science scores. It is an act of bias that caused the author to keep comparing Malaysia with other countries.

RESPONSE
This article is successfully written by the author, Nicholas Chan, in overall because it is comprehensive with information on Malaysia education system with all the tables and graphs to support his opinion. However, few suggestions still can be done to improve the article. The first suggestion that can be made by the author is giving more examples for readers to relate it with real life situation. If the author could give more real life examples, readers can easily relate the situation with people around them. It is more effective than just explaining plainly on the happenings in Malaysia. The second suggestion is the author should give more opinions that can be supported by more successful cases. Lastly, this article is purely based on the author’s opinion and not the result from any research findings or results.

CONCLUSION
This article is recommended to all parents in Malaysia. Since parents play an important role in educating their child, reading this article will help them understand more about the education system in Malaysia. Besides, this article also can help some parents to have a clearer view to decide whether sending their children to the local school or international school will be a better choice. Furthermore, this article also can assist parents in getting some idea on how to take care of their children’s education. By doing so, parents can understand what Malaysia education is lacking and they can help improve by giving their children extra course or sharing session.

REFERENCE 1. Nicholas Chan (2014). Another Malaysian Education Dilemma: Can We Trust Our Exam?. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.theedgemalaysia.com/commentary/270283-opinion-another-malaysian-education-dilemma-can-we-trust-our-exams.html. [Last Accessed 24th June 2014].

2. Nicholas Chan (2014). #IamUiTM. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/sideviews/article/iamuitm-nicholas-chan. [Last Accessed 29th July 2014].

3. Nicholas Chan (2013). Defining Racism. [ONLINE] Available at: http://aliran.com/thinking-allowed-online/ta-online/defining-racism/. [Last Accessed 29th July 2014].

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