Nom nom nom....regurgitate.

An average Malaysian would spend 12 years of his/her life huddled in rooms filled with wooden/plastic tables, semi-functioning chairs, and cruddy toilets; trying to make sense of the babble from the somewhat uncertain looking individual who; in their unmoving manners; wave their fingers and long metal rulers across the chalk-filled air occasionally banging on the front desks asking for their audience's attention and also to shut their traps. Our public schools hold many memories of trials & tribulations, first loves & love lost, self discovery & self detonation. Like many schools of other nations, our years in school would be remembered fondly, or dismissed when the topic comes up. 
Its a place where we find ourselves and somewhat try to learn the ropes in preparation for the big ugly world out there. The question is: Did we actually learn anything useful all those 12 years of education?

Answer is: Of course we did. We learned a lot We also learned that studying is akin to eating a bowl of soup noodles and spewing it out the exact same way it came at the canteen lady.

Sudents in Malaysia have been hum-drummed to believe that xerox-like skills are the pinnacle of the education system. If one could reproduce exactly what they scanned from a text book on to the examination paper - Ace! At the end of the day, our public schools produce students who can only CTRL+C, CTRL+V. No analytical skills garnered, no understanding needed. Just slap on what was printed back onto another piece of paper. Wow, 10 A1s! Does that qualify you as a 'smart' student, or just a machine with photographic memory?

Up to this date, there has been many stories of A1 students getting scholarships in foreign institutions, only to come back crying because they can't cope. Why is it they can't cope? It's because we are not trained to THINK. We have been spoon fed all our lives and when the moment comes that one is to be required thinking out of the box, the box crumbles under the immense gravitational pull of the individual's hollow mind.

The students are not the ones to be blamed for all this. It is the teachers, their parents, and the whole education system that has to be blamed.We need not lower standard to allow every child to come out as A1 students. We need not shout and brag about how many As our children collected over the years through CTRL+C. We need not publicize how 'smart' and 'accomplished' our nation's youth are in daily papers. It is just pure glorification of pseudo-intelligence. We need a society of genuinely intelligent people. People with the ability to dissect and think through problems and give solutions.

It is sad to think that our youths only seems to obtain that 'Life OS patch 2.0' when they hit tertiary education systems.