The Good Old Days?

I was reading about the article on reviving Mission schools here and here. Some Christian leaders and academics are looking into reorganizing and redoing mission schools in Malaysia, like how it was in the past during the pre-independence and early years of the Malaysian education system.

Dr. Tarcisius Chin, ex-Universiti Malaya academic and the CEO of La Salle Institute, in assuming ‘to arrest the declining standard of education’, said

“We want to bring back the good old days… We should take a serious look into the revival of mission schools, considering the decline of education standards”

He also stressed that these schools will not preach any religion, emphasise character development and curricular activities, which hopefully will create all-round personality, develop good character and values. These schools will be funded by local christian congregations.


He added,



“These schools will accept students from all races and religions and subjects will be taught mainly in English, but with emphasis on learning second languages such as Mandarin, Tamil or Arabic... Twenty years ago, nationalism affected the education policies with the abandonment of English as a medium.”


At the other hand, Tan Sri Chan Choong Tak said,

“To a certain extent, I agree that the current policies resulted in jobless graduates…If students had been trained to adapt to circumstances, to minimise risks, to select courses relevant to society and to be humble to accept employment not up to their expectations, then the number of jobless school leavers could have been reduced…

Universities continuing to offer courses not required by the market and the government continuing to assist jobless graduates with additional training will only worsen the problem.”

Something noteworthy to quote,

“Most of the mission schools have produced great students and leaders. The success lies in their dedicated mission to mould their students into god-fearing men and women with love for fellow humans, passion for knowledge and courage to face challenges. “

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My response, Part 1 Part 2 Part 3