KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 15 — There is a need to review how teachers are currently being trained as part of efforts to improve Malaysia’s education system, an academic has suggested.
“Another part of revamping our education system is teacher training. Unless we have proper teachers instilling the notion of having an open mind, we not going to get youngsters going through primary, secondary and tertiary who are broad and open-minded,” Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia’s Strategic Studies and International Relations Department senior lecturer Sharifah Munirah Alatas said during the Forum on the National Unity Consultative Council (NUCC) report at the Academy of Sciences, here today.
Retraining teachers will also work in tandem with the government’s plan to lower the voting age to 18, she added.
“The only way to make them ready is to teach the 40-year-old teacher to be mature themselves. If that is not happening, of course, the 18-year-old is not going to be mature.
“Whether these youth are mature enough to understand politics, it depends on the input by their teachers,’’ she said.
Sharifah also said that educators need to be able to speak up and to draw from different experiences to better educate their students.
“To be bold you need to be confident. Our teachers are not confident that is why they prefer to stay put in their own shell,’’ she said.
