RM1.1 billion for motivational courses for students?

I think there must be a typo in this Star report. "The Government has allocated RM1.1bil for motivational courses for students in all parliamentary constituencies in the country, Deputy Information Min-ister Datuk Ahmad Zahid Hamidi."

This is almost equivalent to the RM1.2billion in the 9MP allocated for the training of PhDs for lecturers in our public universities. This works out to almost RM5 million per parliamentary constituency. But even if this was a typo, I don't think the Ministry of Information should have anything to do with organizing motivational speaking courses for students at any level (primary, secondary or tertiary). This is clearly out of the purview of this Ministry.

I would have suspicions even if it was the Ministry of Education or the MOHE who were responsible for organizing these courses.

Firstly, these courses are notoriously difficult to define. How does one define what a motivational course is? What kind of curriculum does this entail? What kind of 'practical' training does a student have to go through?

Secondly, these courses are difficult to teach. I'm sure that the MOE don't train their teachers to conduct 'motivational' courses. I'm also quite sure that the Ministry of Information doesn't have a staple of full time employees who are 'qualified' to teach motivational courses. There's a reason why people such as Anthony Robbins command such a high premium - it's because there are few people of his 'stature' in the motivational speaking world.

Thirdly, the results or effectiveness of these courses are notoriously difficult to measure. Unlike other subjects which can be more objectively tested, how does one test one's knowledge of self-motivation methods, for example?

The allocation for such large sums of money (if indeed the amount report was NOT a typo) only opens more doors for the possibility of patronage and misallocation of resources i.e. bribery and corruption.

Personally speaking, I'm quite agnostic in regards to the effectiveness of 'motivational' courses and / or speakers. I think that most of these large group sessions involving 'star' motivational speakers such as Anthony Robbins probably gives those who attend a short term 'boost' to their motivational levels which runs out sooner rather than later. (I also think that it's a tremendous waste of money)

I'm more critical of the techniques used by groups such as Asiaworks which specializes in large group awareness training (LGAT) that seem cult-like in nature. I'm sure that an announcement of this nature would catch the ears of such organizations, which would love to be awarded these contracts.

If individuals and private organizations / corporations want to organize motivational courses for their employees or for themselves, I have no problems with that. What I have a problem with is the expenditure of tax payers money on an educational 'venture' which has little to do with the purposes of education itself.