OutSyed The Box |
| Reader's Comment : MOE Roundtable Posted: 19 May 2012 10:56 PM PDT Here is a comment from a reader Karen L. about my earlier post on the MOE Roundtable."I am afraid the current review might just be the same old issues that have been churning round and round mainly because the policy makers are not involved hands on in teaching their own children on a daily basis in completing their homework, getting them ready for exams, and the tremendous amount of daily stress just to cope with the languages for written exams. I truly believe the notion, that different children have different learning styles and different multiple intelligences, has not been emphasised at all when the syllabus of our primary education was prepared. The current syllabus is such that our children are forced to memorise vocabularies and sentences which are beyond their ability to absorb and process and reuse them again in their daily life. It seems easy for us, the adults, to understand the current level of BM in school but for children who hardly use the language, it is totally Greek. Without the parents or extra tuition coaching, they are totally unprepared for the exams. Imagine getting a lost of confidence when the child gets only 20-30 marks for his first ever exam in primary one. Then, the parents starts to panic and the rush for tuition teachers will begin. Subsequent years will see the syllabus getting tougher and tougher and the poor child will just be playing catching up for the rest of his primary school years. Come secondary years, he/she is totally lost coz the child will be streamed into classes where the children there are no longer interested in studying and are just wanting to finish PMR and start working. It will be a blessing indeed if such children don't end up being delinquent juveniles. Mind you dear sir, this is just in regards to children in the SK schools. For those in SJKC, it is a much bigger nightmare. This is because, they have to cope with bigger menaces. The chinese language and the mega fierce teachers who go around canning for even the minutest reason like leaving your seat to talk to a friend. Children who are visual hands on learners, those with ADD/ADHD/Asperger/dyslexia are the ones who will end up half a bucket full across the board in BM, chinese and English. In the end, they can't flourish in either SMK, Chinese independent schools or private schools. They are the ones who constitute the 25% of the dropout students. Frankly, among these children, many of them are actually geniuses who were made to fit into the rigid education system when they could have excelled in their respective field of interest at an early age. I have known of a few Asperger children who can rattle of scientific facts like a radio commentator, memorise thousands of words and spelling them our without any errors etc. But alas, they were called stupid and mischief makers in their school because of their inability to fit in the system. Sorry, sir, they are just not jack of all trades which is what our current system is making our children to be. May i suggest dear sir, to allow such children flexibility to have an alternative education system to enhance their intelligences in a way without overburdening them with too many things to handle. Allow me to relate to you a very good example of my son. He is naturally very inquisitive and creative. He is a visual hands on learner. Loves Science and Maths and is very good with his hands. Problem is, he hates anything that has to do with memorising and writing. He is quite a disorganised person and most of the time, likes to build castles in the air. For the first two years of his primary life, mummy was the one who has to pack him bag, look through his work to make sure he completes them, remind him of his daily routines etc..... due to the hectic daily schooling schedule, he had no time to thoroughly absorb the daily learning process well. He just lives life being told and pushed to do things. If you have a child like this, is this the kind of education you would want him to have?? Basically, his psychological age and his physical age aren't really in sync yet. If he was to continue being in the system, he will end up being the 25% dropout statistic. I had to pull him out, homeschool him with solely one language with English as the main language, throw in BM and Chinese tuition but not for exam purposes, let him learn chess, do Singapore maths with him and send him for tae kwan doe training. In the evening, he has free time to tinker with whatever art and craft projects he likes. Comparing now (he is ten) with when he was in school, he has matured a lot in terms of his thinking skills, his independence and his general knowledge. Dear sir, many parents are aware of the need to look for an education system which suits their children. But most of the time, we are constrained by the law, money and time. I do think that the government can help by allowing parents who wants to be more involved in their children's education to let them have the flexibility to rejoin back the system at some point in their life. For example, I would love to have my son enrolled in government polytechnics schools but he does not have UPSR/PMR certificate and that is the hindrance factor. I would love to have him join any school competition (as an independent or together with other homeschoolers) ran by the education ministry just to let him experience the spirit of competition / teamwork etc. It is time we should recognise that mass education belongs to the 20th century to fulfill the era of industrial revolution. We are now living in the borderless world where knowledge should not be taught but should be sought. Our government should not be so steadfastly holding on to only one education system but to look into assimilating many systems as branches in the core system. Another point to highlight is the fact that there should be child psychologists, early childhood educators, pioneers of modern learning styles like waldorf, montesorri, green schools, creative learning schools etc, sitting on the review panel too..... They are the ones who will be able to let it be known that child developmental process should not be accelerated for the sake of wanting them to complete our education syllabus. No child should be forced to learn when they are not ready to do so. One last point to be brought up dear sir. The current KSSR system is no better than its predecessor, the KBSR. In fact, the current second and first year students loses so much more because they didn't get to learn maths and science in English. The examination format for KSSR and KBSR doesn't differ but yet the contents for KSSR is so much tougher, not much work to reinforce the children's understanding of the languages (BM and Chinese) and basically, without tuition or parents assistance, the child will find it difficult to understand what is going on in class. They are doing yet again a lot of memorising work without understanding why and how things are done. Please do not let yet another generation of our youth slip through the cracks in our education system. Dear sir, thanks so much for allowing me to purge my thoughts. Good day to you.." Karen  |
| Posted: 19 May 2012 10:38 PM PDT Today lets begin with some tai chi disclaimers ok. To all the "tidak boleh menggunakan akal" folks jangan marah saya ok. 'The Criminals Of Islam' (click here) is a book written by one Dr Shabbir Ahmed MD. I found this book on the Internet. So dont blame me ok. Please blame Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamed who brought the Multimedia Super Corridor, the Internet, Broadband etc to this country. Thats how this book came to my knowledge as well. Jadi ini semua salah Tun Dr Mahathir. Siapa suruh Dr Mahathir bawa masuk Internet ke negara kita? Kan lebih baik kita duduk bawah tempurung saja? So, bukan salah saya ok. 'The Criminals Of Islam' is an expose by Dr Shabbir Ahmed MD of some of the more 'tidak menggunakan akal' type of writings that have been written by the religious people from a long time ago. Obviously Dr Shabbir is very critical of the old religious scholars. That is why he calls them 'The Criminals of Islam". Here is an excerpt from his book. (This is a short post.) I would like to draw your attention to his remarks about Imam Tabari (838 - 923 AD). To avoid confusion, Dr Shabbir's writings are in italics. THE CRIMINALS OF ISLAM By Shabbir Ahmed, M.D. Florida, Oct 20 2009 Sixth revised reprint since 1999 ISBN 0974787922 NO COPYRIGHTS: Anyone can reprint, make copies or translate this book without making any changes. NOT RECOMMENDED FOR CHILDREN AND THE WEAK-HEARTED This book will clearly show the unbelievable absurdities, lewdness, shamelessness, forgery, and malice of some 'great', famous and widely revered Muslim scholars, Imams and Ulema. Sheikh Sa'adi Sheerazi voiced a sound scholastic principle, "Exposing wrongdoing is not wrongdoing in itself." STARTLING CONFESSIONS Let us examine the personal confessions of some of the most ancient and foremost "Imams" ('Canonical' authorities) who narrated History, Hadith (Prophetic sayings and traditions), laid down Fiqh (Islamic Jurisprudence) and did Tafseer (explanation) of the Quran. IMAM TABARI'S STRANGE CONFESSION: "I am writing this book as I hear from the narrators. If anything sounds absurd, I should not be blamed or held accountable. The responsibility of all blunders rests squarely on the shoulders of those who have narrated these stories to me." So, Tabari wrote nothing but hearsay. Mazhabi Dastanain Aur Un Ki Haqeeqat by Allama Habib-ur-Rahman Siddiqui Kandhalwi, Ar-Rahman Publishing Trust, Karachi What were his sources? Not a scrap of paper! "He told me this who heard it from him who heard it from her and she heard it from so and so," and so on. By compiling his 13 Volume History and his 30 Volume Exposition of the Quran under royal patronage, Tabari became the Super Imam. The later historians until this day have persisted in following the trails of the Super Imam. Imam Zahri Wa Imam Tabari, Tasweer Ka Doosra Rukh by Muhaddith-ul-'Asr Jaame'-ul-'Uloom Hazrat Allama Tamanna Imadi Phulwari, Ar-Rahman Publishing Trust, Karachi IMAM IBN KATHIR'S CONFESSION: "Had Ibn Jareer Tabari not recorded the strange reports, I would never have done so." Tafseer Ibn Katheer, Khilaafat-e-Mu'awiya-o-Yazeed, Mahmood Ahmed Abbasi Comments by OutSyed The Box : Oops too late. First of all, by his own testimony, Imam Tabari simply wrote down hearsay stories without bothering to check their authenticity. Then Ibnu Katheer - the famous writer of the well known "Tafseer Ibnu Katheer" says he just swallowed Imam Tabari's "strange reports". Ibnu Katheer says : "Had Ibn Jareer Tabari not recorded the strange reports, I would never have done so". Well too late. Tabari did record strange stories and therefore Ibnu Katheer also copied those strange reports. You can read the rest of Dr Shabbir Ahmed's book by yourself. It can be downloaded as a PDF file. To be fair, I also searched for people who tried to defend Imam Tabari. And I found this site here. Here is an excerpt : Some pathetic non-Muslims use unreliable quotes from unreliable books. They quote the following from Al-Tabari's book: "I have fabricated things against God and have imputed to Him words which He has not spoken." ~MUHAMMAD (Al-Tabari 6:111) Response: This is in fact such a weak and stupid argument made by some Christians, and they desperately and shamelessly use it to disprove the prophethood of Muhammed. For starter, who is Tabari ?! Tabari was a HISTORIAN not a scholar, so he does not verify the narrations as we will read in the introduction of his book. Anyway, Islamic historians would simply compile all the known narrations about a certain event, regardless of how authentic or reliable each of those narrations were. They would copy the Isnads (chains of transmitters) into their books, in order that the Muhaditheen (scholars of Hadith) could determine which narration was Sahih/Hasan (authentic/good) and which was Dhaeef (weak) or even Mawdoo (fabricated). In other words, the historians compiled the narrations, and the Muhaditheen authenticated them. Therefore, based on the above, we find that Tareekh at-Tabari is simply a COLLECTION OF NARRATIONS on certain events; some of these narrations are ACCURATE, whereas others are NOT." Comment by OutSyed The Box : I think this defense of Imam Tabari is bullshit. This guy says historians are NOT scholars. So historians (ie Tabari) do not have to verify what they write down? Says who? But Imam Tabari also wrote his world famous Tafseer Al Quran !! In fact the reason why we know his name today is because of his classical Tafsir of the Quran which is favoured by Sunni "scholars". So when Imam Tabari wrote his world famous Tafsir al Quran, was he being a historian (who did not verify his sources) or was he being a scholar? So should we then follow the example of Imam Tabari? Can we write history books today without bothering to check the facts? Can we throw in fairy tales and unsubstantiated gossip or false narrations and say 'This is a history book'. Boleh ke macam itu? Anyway, we know for a fact that Tabari's writings influenced thousands upon thousands of other religious scholars (nauzubillah - may Allah protect us from them). One of them was Ibnu Katheer (whose comments we have already seen above). Ibnu Katheer is also famous for his great 'Tafseer Ibnu Katheer' - yet another exegesis or explanation of the Quran. Here is an example of Ibnu Katheer's tafseer of the Quran : The earth is resting on the horns of a great bull. When he shakes his head he brings earthquakes. (Ibne Kathir 2:29, 50:1). Then Ibne Kathir also says elsewhere : "The earth is resting on a fish. The fish is resting on water, water on the Mount Safa in Makkah, Safa on an angel, the angel on a rock, the rock on air. When the fish moves, it causes earthquakes. (Imam Ibne Kathir, Tafseer part I pg 76). Folks, if you think too much about bulls and fish causing earthquakes, you can have a serious headache. Take the easy option ok. Just watch National Geographic. Earthquakes are caused by shifts of the tectonic plates. Science also confirms that the crashing together of tectonic plates is causing the Himalayas to grow taller each year. And the Quran says so too : Surah [27:88] When you look at the mountains, you think that they are standing still. But they are moving, like the clouds. Such is the manufacture of Allah, who perfected everything. He is fully Cognizant of everything you do. Folks, I am sure there will be some of you who will come out swinging defending Ibnu Katheer, defending Imam Tabari and stuff. I am sure some of you will become 'sudden experts' in Tabari and Ibnu Katheer as well. I am positive some of you will start saying wild stuff to defend them which may surprise even Tabari and Ibnu Katheer. If it is too stupid (or rude) sorry I will not let it through. Dont bother asking your ustad or lebai either. You will be wasting your time. They will not know a thing. Nauzubillah - May Allah protect us.  |
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