Sandy, Sandy everywhere,
Sandy messes with your hair,
Sandy says she’s coming,
Sandy sends everyone flying.
Sandy crashes into the shore,
straight into Jersey Shore,
Sandy’s a storm that’s horrible,
crossing a show that’s terrible.
But what’s the price,
of an October Surprise,
when everybody expects,
what everybody expects?
I am partial to an education system which has the English language as its medium of instruction. That is because I am most comfortable where English is the primary and the common language. While the Malay language is my mother tongue, I mostly use English to run both my private and professional life.
For a person with my background, it is reasonable for a stranger to expect me to be supportive of the policy (PPSMI) to teach science and mathematics in English. While I do sympathize with the policy, I oppose it.
I do not think anyone can doubt the importance of learning science and math. From the liberal education perspective, there are not too many other subjects that can liberate the mind the way science and math do. In terms of practicality, it offers a wide range of rewarding career choices.
To be good at both, one has to comprehend various scientific and mathematical concepts. The foundational lessons especially are crucial in allowing students to understand other more complex ideas. In both subjects, each concept is built upon an earlier concept. Failure to comprehend basic lessons will cause the student to struggle later. In a system where a student largely progresses based on his or her age, this can bring about a devastating snowball effect.
Learning those lessons can be harder than it is when both subjects are taught in a language that students struggle to master in the first place. That presents a two-layer barrier to mastering those basic scientific and mathematical concepts.
The language barrier adds to the frustration which can kill schoolchildren’s interest in science and math before the interest has a chance to bloom.
For many children from middle and upper-class families, English comprehension skills are not likely to be a problem. That is not true for the rest.
Consider a proxy to the mastery of the English language. Typically, families with higher incomes can be expected to have children who are better at English than those belonging to lower-income families. Here are the numbers. Based on the 10th Malaysia Plan, nearly 53% of households earned a monthly income of less than RM3,000 in 2009; about 66% earned less than RM4,000 a month; close to 76% earned less than RM5,000 a month.
The figures have probably improved since 2009. After all, 2009 was a recession year and we have recovered from that recession. Nevertheless, it is likely that a significant number of households still do not earn too much. This is a structural economic issue and such issues do not just change significantly in three years.
Notwithstanding the technical concerns about the evolution of household income over the past three years, that possibly means that more than half the children in Malaysia may have trouble with English. If PPSMI is to be continued in its blanket fashion as it was enforced earlier, that may lead to the making of a lost generation in terms of science and math education. As for the level of English, I am unsure if science and math classes are the place to learn English grammar, vocabulary and comprehension skills.
While I oppose PPSMI, that does not mean I think English is unimportant. I live in corporate Malaysia and in corporate Malaysia, English is the national language and not Malay. I know English is important. The inability to speak and write in English will come at a very great cost for fresh graduates and labor market veterans alike. I do believe that the teaching of English should be emphasized in all schools and at the early stages. The barrier to learning English should be reduced.
What PPSMI does to many students instead is that one, it does not reduce barriers in learning English — one does not learn grammar, vocabulary and comprehension skills in science and math classes — and two, it erects barriers to learning science and math for underprivileged children.
The point is that the teaching of English should not come at the expense of learning science and math.
At the very least, do not force students with a weak grasp of English to study science and math in English. Instead, let them improve their English in and outside of classes and let them learn science and math in the medium they understand best.
For students who already have a good command of English, let them study science, math and perhaps other subjects as well in English.
I was running some regressions at work just now and I realized my overdependence on computers had made me forgotten how to calculate certain statistics manually. Modern regression softwares automatically calculate various statistics less than a second and I hardly think of what happens in that virtual blackbox.
But just now, I was following up on a technical economic debate which revolved around some statistics where the report reported its t-stats but not its probability. I was curious about its probability and so, I had to translate the t-stats into probability manually by reading the t-stats distribution table. I struggled at first. I found myself embarrassed at my inability to read the table after 6 years worth of education in economics, and another 3 or 4 years in econometrics. But I managed. I guess, it is like riding a bicycle. Once you learned it, you know it. It may take some stimulus to remember if you have not been riding, but you can really do it.
One thought came to my mind after I was done with that.
I know there is a criticism about whether the critical values—the 10%, the 5%, etc—means anything. Indeed, the critical values are rules arbitarily made up out of convenience. It is highly possible that if the calculated value breaks a particular critical value, a hypothesis can still be true despite rejection. It is all a matter of probability and probability does not work so discretely as the typical critical value rejection rule suggests. If there is a 99% possibility of a hypothesis is untrue, that 1% can still pan out to be true however unlikely. (Let us not get into the Error I and II debate)
Too many people like yes and no answer. The rejection-rule gives them that, rightly or wrongly.
But I am thinking, why, throughout the economics and econometrics world, are the critical values always the same numbers? It either 1%, 5% or 10% (I have seen 25% but… ehem). Why not 4.7%, or 7.1%?
I think I found an answer to that after looking at the t-stats table for the first time in at least 2 years.
Powerful and cheap computers were only available in the last decade of the 20th century. Because of this, many students in the olden days relied on tables for their rejection rules. Tables being tables on pieces of papers, space was at a premium. So, publishers of tables could only print sexy numbers and obviously not too many numbers over the natural number space, never mind real numbers. Either you use the tables, or calculate the critical values yourself, which is a pain.
So, that convention sticks after awhile. From early econometricians to students of econometrics, the same tables get used over and over again. It becomes a tradition.
Maybe?
Frankly, when I found out that Ajax would be grouped with Real Madrid (again!), Manchester City and Borrusia Dortmund in the group stage of the Champions Leauge, my heart sank. Does Ajax have any chance against these giants? Borrusia Dortmund maybe but Real and City?
The first two results were grim. In the first match, Ajax was unlucky to lose to Dortmund 0-1. Given the tough matches ahead, this was a must win and Ajax wasted it. It appeared, Ajax might even miss the Europa Cup. In the next match, Real pummeled Ajax 4 to 1. In the third match, which was held earlier today, I had expected City to roll over Ajax.
And no, instead, Ajax streamrolled over City.
I woke up for sleep for a moment after going to bed early. Weary eyes, I picked up my phone and checked the score: Nasri made it one up for City. I went back to bed, expected the worst.
At dawn, weary eyes still, forced to get up by the noisy alarm, I picked the phone again and what I read delighted me.
Not a bad way to start the day.
The unfortunate thing is that things are getting tight because Dortmund beat Real unexpectedly. While that means the qualification spots are wide open, I prefer if Real had won. While that would probably realistic sealed the first spot for Real, leaving only the second spot open, it would be easier to have the second spot wide opened than all spots opened. Reason is simple: the points difference between the second and the third ranked teams in Group D would be smaller in the only-second-spot-is-opened scenario than the scenario of all-spots-are-opened.
Right now, there is a 3-point difference between second-placed Real and third-place Ajax. If Real had won, there would have been only a 1-point difference between Dortmund and Ajax.
Anyway, while I do want to see Ajax qualify into the next round of the Champions League (it has been too long), I think the realistic expectation is to go through the Europa Cup. To do this, Ajax will have to beat City (the next match will be in Manchester, which will be tough. Fighting away from home is also tough; I probably do not mind a draw) and beat Dortmund. Do all that to maintain the third spot.
I am convinced that Ajax can beat Dortmund in Amsterdam later in November.
Member of Parliament for Rembau, Khairy Jamaluddin yesterday repeated the accusation he made at a forum organized by Chevening alumni association last week. He said that Pakatan Rakyat is being hypocritical about its criticism of government policy regarding highways and independent power producers. As he pointed out, PR opposes these policies to the point that they want to nationalize those highways and power plants but at the same time, the Selangor state government holds shares in those private companies which operate the assets in Selangor. So, the state government enjoys dividend from the investment.
First off, I oppose government involvement in these matters and I balk at nationalization. At the same time, I dislike monopoly. These two concerns force me to adopt a gray area because while these highways and power plants are now operated by private companies (the definition private is increasingly blurry these days with state funds owning significant shares of these private companies), they were granted excessive monopoly power or overly generous concession at the expense of consumers, especially in terms of electricity generation in the past.
So, I do not want the government, state or federal, to nationalize highways or power plants, and I do want to see those monopoly power granted by the government curb. So, I am stuck. On these matters, I will bark at both both Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat’s policy. The former is responsible for granting the monopolies and perpetuating the status quo with limited improvement possibly because of political entanglement with the business community and the latter trying to do too much to overcome those monopolies with too much state power.
And I do not really trust BN in fighting PR because BN has proven to oppose PR’s proposal only in words but in action, they would do what PR proposes anyway. Proof: the Eastern Disperal Link in Johor which the government took over and abolished the toll. The EDL has another disturbing dimension to it: it is really a bailout of MRCB by the government. MRCB was in trouble because the government did not have the political will stick to its words. This by far is not the only example.
But, on the issue at hand, I am unsure if it is hypocritical of the Selangor state government to hold a stake in companies operating the same highways and power plants that PR proposes for the government to take over, as Khairy accused.
Would it not be wise for the Selangor state government under Pakatan to own interest in these power plants and highways in Selangor so that the state has a say in the respective companies’ board of directors?
One has to remember that the reason PR proposes to take over these assets is that PR claims that the companies or rather the arrangements which allowed these companies to profit in the first place are burdensome to Malaysians. PR claims that nationalization is a cheaper option to the status quo. As far as I understand it, it is not really about some socialist dream. It is really a matter of which is cheaper, which I think is a technocratic approach. Technocratic in the sense that it is number driven.
I actually am swayed by that technocratic argument but not to the point of nationalizing those private assets. I say so because nationalization is not the only conclusion to that technocratic argument. I am sure if we sit down and think about it, there are multiple ways which any party can achieve so.
One way is to have a say in the Board of Directors of those companies. The state government can voice its discontent over any possible revision to prices charged to consumer. This has its own conflict of interest issue—if one is profit-driven, then the state itself may want to optimize its returns; in this sense, Khairy is right—but like I wrote, it is also a way to influence companies’ decision from within towards the objective of reducing burden to Malaysian consumers.
Is that hypocritical?
On the net, maybe yes, maybe not.
Now, I do not know whether the Selangor state government has a seat in the Board of Directors or if the state does, then whether that rep’s voice is in line with PR’s rhetoric. If Khairy’s accusation is to be credible, I think he has to go one layer deeper to the dynamics of the Board of Directors.