East vs. West: Malaysian vs. Kiwi Education (Part 3)

3. Memorization of Scientific Facts vs. Hands-on Practical Experiences

As I’ve noted before, Malaysian education is all about exams – the goal is not to promote practical knowledge, but to get an unbroken list of “A+”s on the exam transcript. So when it comes to science, we don’t care that much about the experiments. After all, why waste time doing the scientific experiments with care when we can be getting tips on how to score on the Biology exam?

In Piopio College, on the other hand, it’s not just all about memorizing chemical equations. The teachers do care that the students get the chance to explore science through experiments, and they do insist that the students do experiments the proper, scientific way. Although I went to Year 12 in Piopio College as a Year 10 student back in Malaysia and scored better than everyone else, I was humbled when it came to using the proper apparatus to conduct an experiment on acid-base neutralization. That’s the moment I realized that all those facts floating aimlessly in my memory weren’t really that useful after all.

In Malaysia, 10% of our Sijil Perperiksaan Malaysia (SPM, the Malaysian GCSE) marks for the 3 science subjects – Physics, Chemistry, and Biology – comes from a selected list of scientific experiments done during Year 10 and Year 11. The idea was to let us do some experiments related to our curriculum, and at the same time nurture our interest in science, under the guidance of a teacher, or course.

We took the “guidance of a teacher” part way too far.

“I’ve got the results and conclusion before I even started the experiment!”

Here’s how we get those 10%. First, the students do the experiment. Then everyone writes a report, which is graded by the teacher. The teacher will give marks based numerous criteria, such as “Is the report complete?”, “Did the student show interest?”, “Did the student show dedication and teamwork”, and “Did the student thank God?” No, I wasn’t joking about the last one. Anyway, there are a few experiments in Year 10, a few more in Year 11, and all the marks are compiled into a report, which is stored together with the scientific reports in a folder. The school then submits the marks to the government. All done!

But you know, we’re all about getting excellent results in the exams, and of course, we want to ensure that we get the full 10% for our exams. So here’s what the teachers do. A few days before we even start the experiment, the teacher hands out papers containing a complete scientific report, with the hypothesis, list of procedures, conclusion etc. and orders us to copy the whole thing down. So now the whole class, no, all Year 10/11 students have a “perfect” report that fulfills all the criteria listed out by the Ministry of Education! Hooray!

Well, except for the results of the experiment. We may have the conclusion already, but we haven’t done the experiments, so how are we getting the results? Besides, it’s not like we can just skip the experiment altogether; if an official from the Ministry of Education finds that out, the school will have some explaining to do. So we carry out the experiment. Some actually do the experiment, while some just watch, apparently disinterested or too scared to handle a Bunsen burner.

But then, the teachers never gave us any formal training on how to properly conduct an experiment, except for a few reminders here and there, so the results are often a mess. Ah, no worries! Teacher says, “Never mind. Just copy the results of the guy got it right.” We scurry around, looking for that lucky guy, then copy his experiment’s results. Tada! A complete report! Now we give the reports to the teacher. The teacher checks if the scientific reports are complete, and then gives everyone full marks. Done.

The Kiwis got it Right

Now of course, Piopio College is still a high school, and we don’t have the amount of freedom that undergrads have. The teachers still tell us what to do, give us instructions on how to use lab stuff properly, etc. However, the main difference is that the Kiwi educational system lets the students really learn the purpose of doing scientific experiments.

The students start an experiment in Piopio College with the teacher explaining what should be done on the day. Everyone dresses up in lab coats, and starts doing the experiments. The methods and procedures used are still fairly fixed, although they aren’t quite as rigid as in Malaysia – the students are allowed a little more freedom.

When we finally get a satisfactory result (one that is fairly consistent, follows an expected pattern, etc.), then only we write our reports, which are of course our own work. I still wonder what were the Kiwi students thinking when I asked them “how should I write this report?” or “What does the teacher expect to see?” Culture-shock, you see.

There’s one more thing. In Piopio College, when it comes to experiments, the students don’t cheat. If they get a weird result, they’ll repeat the experiments until they get it right. I was teamed up with guy while doing an acid-base titration experiment. For some reason, we kept on getting the results wrong, as the measurements collected were too far apart. The teacher insisted that the difference between the volumes measured must not exceed 0.2ml. At some point, I asked him, “Hey, our results are really close this time; do we really have to do this again? (Hint, hint)” He said yes. In Malaysia, if we had a crappy experiment, we’ll copy the results of another team, or just falsify the data, like this guy.

Thanks for the measles outbreak in the UK, Andrew. (Taken from the Huffington Post)

To sum things up, here’s the difference between Malaysia and New Zealand education when it comes to science: New Zealand schools produce students that are familiar with the scientific method, able to conduct experiments and write report properly, and are honest – in short, Kiwi schools produce scientists. Malaysian schools produce sneaky businessmen through science education. Hey, perhaps there’s something to celebrate about Malaysian education anyway.