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General Knowledge 101

Anything to do with books, magazines, other reading materials, writing, education system and language

Education Malaysia 2020: 23 Reasons for Rejecting Teaching Science & Mathematics in English

Education

This will be the last post on system moving forward in 2020 (at least for the first quarter of this year). By the way, it is still early to say that Dr M taking charge of the Education Ministry is a good thing or not. After all, he already had his hands full as the Prime Minister, running the whole country.

Talking about the education system, I wrote this post almost 10 years ago on teaching Science & Mathematics in English. It did not make any sense then; it does not make any sense now. There were 23 so-called arguments put forward by some NGO back in 2009 and it is in Bahasa (note: PPSMI means Pengajaran dan Pembelajaran Sains dan Matematik Dalam Bahasa Inggeris which loosely translated as Teaching and of and in ).

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Education Malaysia 2020: Bakri Musa’s Advice For The Minister of Education

education

Yup, I am still on the topic of in – this probably would be my last 2 posts on the topic before I move on to some other topics. I actually had something else in my mind when I read this excellent post on ‘s blog titled “Unsolicited Advice For The Next Minister of Education”. Image source: Free Malaysia Today

By the way, for those of you who may not be familiar with Dr Bakri Musa, he is a Malaysian-born and Canadian-trained surgeon in private practice in Silicon Valley, California. He is also a well known speaker and writer related to current issues. The full detail of his bio-data is listed here.

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Education Malaysia 2020: Which is Better – TIMSS vs PISA?

timss

(The differences between PISA & – Table source: https://theeconomyofmeaning.com)

As I was drafting the post on OECD Big Data and PISA articles, my son stopped at my working desk and asked me whether I will be evaluating TIMSS as well.

I was not aware of TIMSS before this so when my son mentioned it, it sounded Greek and I knew I needed to dig further for details.

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Education Malaysia 2020: Breaking Down OECD’s PISA Big Data

OECD

(Based on the data source from , hopefully in 2020, the Minister will focus more on the changes that is more relevant for the modern world than on religion and race. We need to wake up and smell reality irrespective where we come from. Image source: TheStar)

Wow, finally Dr Maszlee Malik had stepped down as the Education Minister (rare ones who own ministerial responsibility & resigns – I truly respect him for that) and I hope whoever replacing him will immediately drop the petty experiments like introduction of Jawi for BM and relook into propelling the younger generations to meet the reality of a dynamic future world.

Education is serious business for any parents who still have kids in school. And it is the same for me. I am always thinking of their future and ways to ensure that they get the best in education based on my capability and means. As parents, we had never said “no” when our kids wanted to buy any books.

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Big Bad Wolf Book Sale 2019: Good but Slightly Disappointed

big bad wolf

(Big Bad Wolf Sale – tonnes of books on sale at ridiculous price in a huge hall – is a must go event every end of the year)

Every year we try to make to the Big Bad Wolf Book Sale – the largest book sales in Malaysia (if not mistaken the world). So coming back from holidays, one of the main priorities for us was to go for the sales before it ends.

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Silly Facebook Reader Comments Part 1

Facebook

It is known fact, all around the world, in all languages, there are posts readers who comment based on the headlines alone. Probably because they don’t have the time to read the whole the posts or click on the link or the headline itself is clear enough to comment. Even I have been guilty of this on many occasions.

Then there is another level to Facebook post commenting – where the readers have read & understood the post and yet they make that sound , dumb, ignorance of facts or at times, comments that has no relation to the original post.

Considering that there are plenty of such comments, a compilation of these comments & replying to it would be interesting indeed. Why say no to free comedy dished out on daily basis?

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Big Bad Wolf Book Sale 2013: Good Book Hunting At Wee Hours

Big bad wolf

After the great success last year (and the years before), (Big Bad Wolf ) sale was back at the same place this year and we made sure we were there on opening day.

But before that, please allow me to trace back to the beginning of this year when I mentioned that I was intending on adding another before the end of the year BBWB sale and turn the small family area upstairs into a mini-library.

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Education 101: Teaching Exciting Maths to Kids

Conrad Wolfram Maths Teaching Mathematics

(Why teaching maths have to be so boring so says Conrad Wolfram who runs the worldwide arm of , the mathematical lab behind the cutting-edge engine Wolfram Alpha. Image source: Wikipedia)

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Books 101: The Beauty of Reading And Building A Library

I love books since I was still small. My grandmother often says that all it needs to keep me busy is a . As an adult, I guess one of the “wisest” things that I have done in my life related to reading & books is to buy a proper and set my own library.

Books Reading Library Knowledge

(My latest collection of books – the one in green cost RM8.50 each whilst the Mammoth Book is RM19.90 – a far cry from Dan Brown’s latest thriller costing RM40)

I like reading (my wife have started to pick up reading, with a pace of 1-2 pages per day but reading a book still sounds “Greek” to my son) and over the years, I have been collecting books but without a proper shelf or cabinet, the books were simply lying all over the place.

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