1 million scouts……

or 1 million idiots in scout uniform??

This was in the news some time ago. Not hot news… but the jist of it is that someone ‘up there’ announced plans to increase the number of scouts in Malaysia from 200,000 to 1 million. My question to the people ‘up there’ is this: Are they planning on having 1 million scouts, or 1,000,000 poor souls who doesn’t know anything at all about scouting dressed in the scout uniform?

I’m not the most qualified person to write something like this…. but who is ever qualified to write a blog post? I’ve been a scout for 9 years and 10 months. 5 years as a scout, 4 years and 10 months as a leader, and 2+ years as a rover scout. (One can be both a leader and a rover at the same time). I haven’t spent very many years in scouting, but I have spent more years in scouting than the average Malaysian scout who enters in secondary I and leaves after secondary V. The success of the scouting movement is not in how many entry-level scouts there are, but in how many of those scouts stay in scouting, and how many of those scouts come back. For scouts to want to stay in scouting after adulthood, or to come back to scouting after they’ve left it, they must be imbibed with the scouting spirit, to have enjoy scouting to the core, to have been bitten by the scouting bug, to live the scout oath and law, not just while they are in uniform, but even when they are out of uniform.

It is easy to dress a person up as a scout. Just throw him a uniform. One can even memorise and recite the scout promise, but that does not always make one a scout. Just ask yourself if you live by the principles of the rukun negara. We all had to recite the rukun negara when we were in school, but how many of us live by those principles? If we did, if all the people did, if all the people governing our country did, then we would have a clean and fair judiciary. Do we? I’m not going to talk about the judiciary now, I’m just using it to illustrate a point.

The scouting bug, the scouting spirit, isn’t as simple as reciting a promise. Not even attending and completing a woodbadge course during a tenure in a maktab perguruan can make a true scout out of a teacher. And the knowledge passed on from these teachers to the scouts will not make the scouts scouts, not unless the teacher has been inbibed with the scouting spirit.

In order to increase the number of scouts in this country to 1 million, the country would need 125,000 scout leaders (I’m using the 8:1 scout:leader ratio). To be a scout leader, one needs more than a woodbadge. One needs scouting experience. Scouting is more than uniform and a promise. Scouting is about loving nature, about understanding the patrol system and implementing it, about camps and hikes, about breating, eating and living the scout promise, about teamwork, leadership, cooperation, about passing on knowledge from one generation to the next, about being independent, about knowing how to play when its playtime, to work when its worktime to know what is good for oneself, and what is bad. Voluntarism is a very important part of scouting. Volunteer scout leaders participate in scouting because they enjoy scouting, because the are happy when scouting knowledge and spirit gets passed on to the next generation. Volunteer scout leaders never every get monetary returns, they do scouting because they have the BP spirit deep in their hearts.

Can mass production produce the same result as the scouting bug? Can monetary incentives produce the same result as years of enjoyment, years of happiness and experience gained from scouting? Can mass produced scouts really be called scouts? It is easy to dress-up. It is not so easy to be a true scout.

KUALA LUMPUR: The Scouts are coming. Soon, that familiar Scout’s uniform will be seen in every housing estate, village, Felda scheme, Pusat Giat Mara and Institute Kemahiran Belia centre.

The Scouts Association of Malaysia also plans to introduce the Rover Scouts (for those aged 18 and above) at private and public institutions of higher learning, national chief Scout commissioner Colonel Prof Datuk Dr Kamarudin Kachar said.

He said the organisation wanted to increase its Scoutship from the current 200,000 to one million in three years.

“We started the Scout movement in Felda schemes in Johor, Negri Sembilan and Perak some five or six years ago. Now we want to take it nationwide,” he said after a dialogue session with Youth and Sports Minister Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said at the Scout headquarters in Kuala Lumpur.

“We are now moving from school-based to community-based. The idea is to instil social integration and national unity and to reduce social ills. This is most important,” he said.

Introducing Rover Scouts at the community level, he said, was also geared towards community development, increasing environmental consciousness and advocating peace.

He added that the Rover Scouts would also be introduced in countries with a large number of Malaysian students.

“We have Rover Scouts in Indonesia and the authorities in London have agreed to us setting up a troupe there as well.”

The association is also planning to introduce Rover Scouts in Australia, Russia, Egypt and the United States.

“The objective is to instil patriotism among Malaysian students overseas, and to increase their leadership qualities, living skills abilities and upgrade their working skills,” he said.

The International Scouts Academy of Malaysia will also function as a leadership and skills-training hub for uniformed bodies from all over the world, he said.

Brunei, Singapore and Indonesia have already indicated interest in sending Scouts here for training. There are 18 million Scouts in the Asia-Pacific region.

A variety of activities have been planned for the 100th anniversary of the Scout movement in Malaysia from May 12 to 18 next year.

The star event will be the 100th year jamboree at Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM). Commemorative coins and stamps will be issued as well.

“Six thousand Scouts, including 1,500 from Asia-Pacific countries, will attend,” said Kamarudin, adding that the association had applied for a RM2 million grant from the Youth and Sports Ministry.

Source: NST – 2007/10/09

Note to readers: I wrote this a few days ago, many times, and I was a lot more mad about this, and the post was a lot angrier… but streamys kept messinag about and I kept loosing my post… the more i lost the post, the angrier the post got…. but in the end strymyx won… and here I write it again… but it probably doesn’t get the point across as well as my last post did… but it may be a better read since its not so angry… either way… at least I wrote something I guess… heh.. Regards…

The Final Frontier….

I remember falling in love with the concept space travel when I watched my first episode of Star Trek : The Next Generation. The idea of going into the unknown and seeing things for the first time enthralled me and it was also one of the reasons I got into technology.

Many people I know of are very proud that we got somebody up there but is it really a great thing? In my books it is just like a millionaire paying big bucks to be a space tourist. True, there were experiments conducted but it just doesn’t give that ‘I am so proud to be Malaysian’ or ‘Malaysia Boleh’ thing.

What makes a space program of any country great is not really the destination but the road there. The engineering challenges of creating a space vehicle breaking earth’s gravity and all the logistical issues in maintaining it are what makes it a monumental achievement for the Americans, Russians and more recently the Chinese. We on the other hand bought some Sukhoi fighters in exchange for a scientifically oriented taxi ride.

I think it is great that we have somebody up there but is it truly something of monumental proportions that it is being made out to be? It also doesn’t help that prior to the launch that some idiot in the government also wanted us to make Teh Tarik and play Batu Seremban there.

Maybe one day when we have a space program that is vertically integrated from rocket to astronaut I’ll be proud but not today.

Free Burma!!

No. 12299!

Whither good education? Full Circle?

This article was prompted by this Bernama report, where our beloved PM said “our education system has come full circle“

This sign was found in the library of a secondary school in the Klang Valley. If this is the quality of education that the foreign students are here to receive, I very much doubt the usefullness of their Malaysian-acquired education on the global scale. Is the sign in English or Malay? Is it even in GOOD English or Malay? what is ‘jangan on’ and what is ‘air-corn’? So what if the library is air-conditioned and cormfortable? There are more tables in there than books. There are more sofas than shelves. IS that what a library is meant to be?

According to dictionary.com, a library is:

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) – Cite This Source – Share This

li·brar·y /ˈlaɪˌbrɛri, -brəri, -bri/ Pronunciation Key – Show Spelled Pronunciation[lahy-brer-ee, -bruh-ree, -bree] Pronunciation Key – Show IPA Pronunciation

–noun, plural -brar·ies.

1.	a place set apart to contain books, periodicals, and other material for reading, viewing, listening, study, or reference, as a room, set of rooms, or building where books may be read or borrowed.

2.	a public body organizing and maintaining such an establishment.

3.	a collection of manuscripts, publications, and other materials for reading, viewing, listening, study, or reference.

4.	a collection of any materials for study and enjoyment, as films, musical recordings, or maps.

5.	a commercial establishment lending books for a fixed charge; a lending library.

6.	a series of books of similar character or alike in size, binding, etc., issued by a single publishing house.

7.	Biology. a collection of standard materials or formulations by which specimens are identified.

8.	canon1 (def. 9).

9.	Computers. a collection of software or data usually reflecting a specific theme or application.

 

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A collection of books? What I saw was a collection of tables and chairs. A collection of cormfortable cushioned settees. A collection of empty shelves. And a collection of raggedy primary-school-grade books.

This was not the library of a rural school. It was the library of a six-year-old, single session secondary school in an affluent area in the Klang Valley which costs the goverment a couple of hundred thousand to maintain a year. Is this the quality of English/Malay that we want our children to learn? Is this the quality of Malay that our children’s teachers use? Whither good education? Education in Malaysia has NOT come full circle. The majority of overseas students studying in Malaysia are doing so in private universities/colleges. Most of these institutions of higher learning are associated/affiliated or at least connected in some way to institutions of higher education in foreign countries, namely the continents of North America, Europe and Australasia. The existence of these local institutions point to the LACK of good quality education in goverment-funded institutions of higher learning. Malaysian students whose parents can afford it are still getting their qualifications from overseas universities. Those who can, do it directly by studying overseas. Those who can’t, do it indrectly do it at local private colleges/universities. The degrees they received are from overseas bodies. The degrees they receive are not FROM Malaysia.

I don’t see a full circle, and I don’t see good education. Good education was available here in the seventies. University of Malaya used to be well known worldwide. Where has that gone? It has been snatched from our hands and our children’s. We are left with shadows. Shadows of past glory, when our education was overlooked by the British. We could be proud of our institutions then.

Anyone can say we have progressed in the past 50 years. We have. But by whose hands? By the shear self-preservation, hard-workingness and desire to succeed of the population? Or by the ‘helping hands’ of the government.  Our education system has not come full circle.  The private education industry have made some headways into improving the standards of education in this country.  But the fact that we cannot trust our own education bodies to award us with degrees which are recognized worldwide says that our education system did not in any way come close to full circle.