Another cranky letter to the paper

Just sent to The Star...see if this one gets printed loh =)

Dear Editors,

While I, as a young biologist, am glad to hear of the federal and Johor state governments' recent commitments to developing a local biotechnology sector, I am also somewhat doubtful of their immediate success. (See "Malaysia offers millions for biotechnology research",
September 7; "Biotech to get 6mil", September 13.) My apprehension is caused by the lack of an essential factor for a workforce of competitive Malaysian scientists: a high standard of basic science paedagogy.

The teaching of biology and the other natural sciences in Malaysian public school leaves much to be desired. I speak from experience as a former student in both Malaysian and U.S. public secondary schools.
I'm not complaining about the facilities, since I know that we do not have as much money available for public education as a fully developed nation, but about the curriculum, which is full of inaccuracies, omissions, and outdated information, and downright boring, which is fatal to the thought processes of teenagers.

As an example: The Form Four chemistry textbook states, without qualification, that ionic compounds dissolve in water, whereas covalent compounds do not. I asked my teacher, "What about sugar?" (Sugars are organic molecules and have covalent bonds between their atoms.) She answered "It's a polar compound. You'll learn about that in Form Six."

As if Form Four and Form Six students live in parallel universes where
the laws of physics are different!

Technology means the application of science, and in our education system there is a critical lack of connection between theory and application. I went to school in the late 1990s, yet not once did I
hear teachers talk about current issues such as the Dolly the cloned sheep, the Human Genome project, or even local issues such as the discovery of Nipah virus.

Even when the PEKA (practical lab examinations) were introduced in my year, my classmates and I simply carried out the instructions like robots. If an experiment "tak jadi", we did not take note of it as real scientists should; we were instead told to write down what was "supposed" to happen in order to earn full marks.

We were never taught to truly observe the world around us; to name the
birds and plants we saw around our schools every day. We were taught by rote memorisation that pollution is "bad", but never really why. Malaysia is one of the top five countries on Earth for reptile biodiversity. Surely that's something we should be be proud of, yet the writers of the KBSM textbooks didn't think it was worth putting in.

Many people seem to be regarding "biotechnology" as a get-rich-quick investment, just as information technology was regarded in the 1990s.
It is not. New technologies require creative thinkers, and unless we learn to encourage and allow them from an early age, biotech will stagnate in Malaysia just as IT has.

The alternative to improvement, of course, is letting Singapore poach
the cream of our aspiring scientists.

If any secondary school students are interested in biology for more than scoring A's in their exams, and in learning ways to explore science on their own, I invite them to e-mail me at [email address deleted from this copy to prevent spambots, but leave comments if you're interested].

Yours sincerely,

Hwa Shi-Hsia