More 'A's, More Knowledgeable?

There are more than 23,000 students who scored straight 'A's in the Penilaian Menengah Rendah (PMR) examination, and this number seems to be growing every year. That's more than 5% of students who scored straight 'A's without yet taking into account those who scored 6 or 7 'A's.

The question posed by Syed Nazri in his News Straits Times (NST) column is simple – “Are our children getting smarter or is it plainly that the examination standards are lower?

I have no doubt that our children today are academically more knowledgeable than our generation and the generation before us. However, 23,000 straight 'A's students? That leaves us with pretty much no doubt that the examinations have been dumbdown in order to enable a higher passing rate amongst students.

My argument is 2-fold for the standards of the local examinations to be raised significaintly.

Firstly, this dumbdown process of our examinations must stop and be reversed immediately. One might be keen to blame our universities for the lower standard of graduates they seem to be producing. However, to a large extent, the universities have to cope with whatever input they received from the secondary schools. It is difficult for local unviersities to maintain or even introduce "high" standards, if the students who enrolled are unable to cope with the more rigourous syllabus and subject matters.

Secondly, even if the argument that our students have indeed grown significantly smarter over time, it is even more relevant for our Ministry of Education and examinations syndicate to raise the standards in order to challenge the students further. Only then will we be fully 'exploiting' the talents within our young Malaysians, raising the bar for Malaysia's future development.

By giving smarter students dumbed down examinations will serve no purpose in strengthening their intellectual prowess, but will instead, be a clear insult to their intelligence.

Let's see what the National Education Blueprint 2005-2010 to be released tomorrow will say about this subject.