Tapes and colors

In 2006, into my third year as an Independent Trainer, I was appointed as a Program Trainer by a NGO which is based in Singapore to run one of their programs here in Malaysia. The NGO is a learning partner of Citibank and runs financial education programs aimed at the younger generation, and the public in general.

The requirement is for me to deliver their program to students from secondary schools in our country. Students, schools and parents need not pay for the program – it is given free. On top of that, each student is given a free copy of a book with the same title as the program. The book is written by professors from NUS as well as Monash University KL. For Malaysia, the book comes bilingual, in English and BM all in one book. And our very own distinguished lady of language, Adibah Amin edited and proof-read the BM version.

As the job involves some bit of traveling within the nation, I got my husband to help me full time with this part of our service. This would be the 3^rd year we will be doing this program under this NGO, and while the program provides us with the opportunity to fulfill our personal social obligation, it is not without its fair share of heartaches.

Dealing with schools meant we had to deal with a lot of red tapes. And I mean a lot. There’s the formality we need to clear with at the ministry level, then at the states level. Certain states require clearance from district levels before we can go knocking on school doors. At the schools, we first must convince Principals or their second in line before being referred to the “correct” teacher to coordinate the schedule for our free program, if the Principals agree to have the program at their schools.

You’d be surprised to know that, in spite of the ongoing campaign by the relevant agencies, in spite of reading about the poor financial planning skills of our younger generation, in spite of numerous proposed plans to introduce more life skills based activities to our students, there are still Principals who do not see any value in educating their students on wise money management, an important element that form the basis of life skills if I may say so!

Never mind school principals – one state education department down South went so far as to restrict co-curriculum activities to only those that are academic in nature! As a result, school administrators keen for their students to benefit from our program have to miss out on this opportunity. I pity school leavers from that state for they could end up “empty” in spite of achieving high academic excellence.

With this mentality among those we entrust to educate our future generation, should we then wonder why we are still driving our children to be very academic-oriented. To be very exams/results oriented?