Laugh Now But Cry Later. Serious!

Posted by Unknown On Monday, April 1, 2013 4 comments
In my earlier post, I was lamenting how the dire state of education in our land has caused us to lose international competitiveness in our effort to develop the nation and ourselves. Not only that, many have lost the ability to think because it is too tiring, too tedious, inconvenient and confusing hence there is the tendency to subject ourselves to balderdash and moronic claims, promises, accusations etc. We have been deprived of capable leadership that can steer the country in the right direction.

Just the other day, my husband was driving us to the vet for my dog's vaccination. Along the way, he received a SMS and requested me to read it to him. I opened the message and to my horror, I read:

hello! i am miss thee....

I thought to myself - oh wow! He has an admirer who is trying to use Shakespearean English???? What the...????

Maintaining my composure, I read on....and it was actually:

hello! i am miss thee. mr teh asked me 2 call u @ ****** which he etc etc

So the message was actually:

Hello! I am Miss Thee. Mr. Teh asked me to call you about etc etc etc!!!

Considering the current state of education, don't be surprised if one day, not too far in the future, employers receive such CVs from job applicants.

Curriculum Vitae

Name:                                   Ah Boy
Age:                                      Still young
Sex:                                      Never. Still under age
Religion:                               I only have experience praying for my cat who dead 2 years before
Race:                                    I love to race, how you know?
Nationality:                            I don't like National, I prefer Sanyo
IC Number:                           6735
Telephone number:              House got no telephone
Hand phone number:            3310
Address:                               Penang Jelutong
City :                                      Nor Haliza?
Postcode:                             I never post anything
State:                                    What state you want? In my family, I am 2nd
Country:                                I want to travel to go oversea anywhere outside Malaysia
Marriage status:                   Secret
Email Address:                     Hotmail
Education Background:        My teacher said not bad
Working experience:             Last time I got sell pirated VCD
Father's name:                      Daddy
Father's IC:                           You ask him
Mother's name:                     Mummy
Mother's IC:                          You ask her
Current Salary:                     Depends on my daddy mood
Expected Salary:                  As much as you can pay
When can start work:           Depends on my mood
Highest qualification:           Ya, very high
Grade:                                 Cannot Tell
College/University:              College All Lousy wan
Signature:                            Can I use chop?

To further illustrate, take a look at this paragraph written by an Upper Six student from a premier school in Penang whom I was helping for eight times.. I told her guardian that I cannot help her any more because she does not want to help herself. Mind you, this was her third attempt to answer a very simple question where she was required to give her opinion of materialism.


Note: She misspelled materialism with a double 'l' and apart from other mechanical errors such as tenses and sentence structure, wrote import instead of important and Ipohe instead of iPhone and only corrected it when I pointed it out to her after asking her to check this page for three consecutive times because she just could not see the errors. There are more errors than what I marked in red.

Quo vadis, Malaysia?

May God help and bless our nation and deliver us from egomaniacal leaders, mercenary characters and self-serving miscreants disguised as Samaritans.

May our education system be revamped to empower our nation to soar ahead again.

I am really fed up of seeing nonsensical work from many students across the board. Seriously, I am going to devote a few hours each week to compile the Little Book of English Horrors to document all the evidence I have collected through the years, especially in the 21st century.

Please leave a comment to share your views.

This is Part 2 of my post on Education and Selection Process Determine Quality of Leadership.

Part 3 will be posted at 3.30p.m. today. Please swing by later. Thanks!

4 comments to Laugh Now But Cry Later. Serious!

  1. says:

    Gem I'm already crying. If this student were taking Matriculation, an essay of this standard would merit an "A". Never mind the grammar mistakes, miss-spellings etc. People who even recognise these errors are a negligible minority.

  1. says:

    Philip L.H. LIM Dear mws,

    If in future you do receive some horrific email, sms, messaging with such grammatical errors, it's probably because my smart phone, or ms word, trying to be too clever and auto correct for me.

    This article had me tickled, but it's not at your students' work, but more at the errors accompanying the many "sms"es I sent over the years without previewing.

  1. says:

    Unknown Dear Gem

    I have seen the writings of a JPA scholar who scored 13As years ago. Her first essay for me went something like this:

    I has a good family....

    That is why I only work 2 hours a week at college. I have actually been offered more classes but I declined because sanity is more important than money.

    Sighs...I am so thankful that my younger son is now in Form 3. He came home heavy hearted with the news that the top student in his school who scored straight A* in the 2012 SPM - was not offered a JPA scholarship. The teachers and students in his school are deeply disappointed, rattled and quite upset...Life goes on...

    :-(

    Take care and God bless!

    Shalom

  1. says:

    Unknown Dear Mr Philip Lim

    I salute you for your patience in teaching full time. Maths is not an easy subject to teach but at least it is not as maddening as teaching English.

    Actually, you can disable those auto check systems in your handphone and then those bloopers will not happen. I have posted a couple of jpeg shots of such misspelled words in smses - can be quite hilarious depending on the situation.

    Take care and God bless you as you give your best in your classroom.

    Keep in touch!

    Best wishes

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