A sin to be smart

Looks like every one, that is our politicians, is a critic these days when talking about the PSD scholarships. Where have we gone wrong? Is race so important that it overrides all considerations including the sidelining of many of our bright students from pursuing their dreams? Anyway, let us look at our education system from the root cause.

In order to help the Malays to "better" themselves, UMNO have to practice mediocrity by lowering the bar in all the school exams. By nature, many of the non-Malays are already bright and had the bar not been lowered just to cater for the Malay students, the non-Malay students would probably NOT get as many A's as they are now. Perhaps 3 or 4, the most. But by lowering the bar, you can now understand why the non-Malays and some of the bright Malays were able to score the unbelievable 10, 11, 12, 13 A's something totally unheard of during my time in the 60s. In fact, such excellent scores have become quite abit of a joke. Back then, our papers were marked by the Cambridge Examination Syndicate in London and therefore the marks could not be tampered with for political reasons. If you are good, you are good; and if you fail, you fail. No dispute. Today, our education is such a mess and even if Pakatan was to take over the federal government, it will take them years for them untangle the sorry state of affairs we are in.

So, now, UMNO is in a dilemma. By having lowered the bars, the amount of scholarships is just not enough to cater for all the overwhelming A-students. As a Malay party, they will have no choice but to accord priority to the bumiputra students. Hence, the current crisis. If the bar was to be lifted a few notches up, few Malay students would have the opportunity to pursue tertiary education and that would defeat the purpose of the NEP.

So, non-Malay students would ask what is the point of studying hard, get a string of A's and not getting anywhere, especially in the pursuit of a career that has been their life-long dreams. Undoubtedly, in this country, for a non-Malay, it is therefore a sin to be smart, and it's criminal to be successful!