SEPTEMBER 16 ― Twenty-three years after leaving secondary school, I often ask myself what I learnt during the 11 years from Standard One to Form Five during the years 1983-1993.

They were good times, to be sure. Simpler times as well. We did not have smartphones and tablets in those days. Even owning a PC was rare.

We were all excited one day back in 1986 when we saw boxes being moved into our new computer room. I was given my first home PC two years later and its memory was literally one over two millionth of the laptop on which I am writing this piece! That’s how far technology has come.

Since modern life has advanced at such a great pace in a relatively short time, we must now ask ourselves, is contemporary education really preparing students for modern life? Yes, we have computer classes, of course. But are they really teaching students to be savvy about modern life?

Let us first start with language. People absorb language as a matter of course. By the time you are seven years old and in Standard One, you will obviously have rudimentary communication skills or else you will find school utterly incomprehensible. 

What language classes in schools do is to systematize language. We learn grammar and widen our vocabulary. We learn to write essays and formal letters. We enrich our thinking by learning metaphors and expressions.

However, how much of this do we use on a daily basis? The example that comes to mind is the use of prepositions in Bahasa. "Di” and "pada” must be used for place and time respectively, yet how many of us actually do that?

I have observed formal use of Bahasa for years and seen this rule violated by no less than academics. In informal writings, it feels almost awkward to follow it! Yet students are learning this and other rules ostensibly for the sake of learning them. Is that really a good use of their time?

I also feel that students need to learn useful information to function well as citizens. Learning about our system of governance should be mandatory for all students.

Not just that, how government budgets are formulated and what makes a nation economically healthy and functional. I remember during the global economic crisis in 2008-2015, even economists were at odds to explain the solutions to the problem!

Lay people should be educated in these fundamentals because they are the ones who are most affected by them.

And back to IT ― in our current age, computers have overtaken virtually everything. Of course that gives rise to ultra-specialisation in the field of programming and computer engineering but lay people should also be competent enough to at least keep their PCs in top shape.

Given that, they should learn how to rescue their PCs from sudden virus infections. I have myself been caught in such a situation. Due to my laxity in installing anti-virus software (they slow things down too much!) and backing up my files, I have lost much of my work.

Now I have three types of protection and back my work up very regularly. I would have been grateful if I knew then what I know now.

I would also add house and transport management. Skills such as plumbing, basic electrical work, auto repair and maintenance would be very helpful for the modern citizen. They would certainly save you much in terms of repair fees.

After observing what repairmen do, I can tell that much of their work is relatively simple and routine. While ordinary people who are unskilled should not try to do repairs themselves, a semester of schooling in these areas should remedy that problem.

We live in a world where everything is hyper specialised. We have experts for everything but in reality, much of the time we spend learning superfluous things at school can be used to master these useful skills.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.