Much Talked About… Streamyx and the Malaysian English Education

If you don’t like to read about people’s rant, this is where you can take the step of hitting the back button on your browser or type a new URL on the address bar or click the X at the top right corner of the browser. You have been warned.

Now, to kick off this rant, the first thing I want to touch on is Streamyx and its excellent service and internet speed. If you’re from TM and think that I’m praising you, you’d best go back to school to learn some English and understand the idea of a sarcastic remark. Oh wait…. according to the Education Ministry, our English teachers are not proficient enough to teach English.

Anyway, like MOST Malaysians out there that uses the internet from home. We rely heavily on Streamyx for our broadband connectivity which is supposed to be fast. The keyword here is FAST, Streamyx is anything but fast. Sad to say, that’s the truth. Compare it with many other ISPs from around the world and you can have an idea of how wonderfully fast our speed is. Friends from all around the world talks about how their internet speed is affecting their work. Guess what? Their connection’s even faster than what Streamyx is pumping out. Don’t even have to go far; just look across the border to the tiny island down south of Malaysia. Internet connection in Singapore is fairly reasonable and priced cheaper (if you’re a Singaporean) than Streamyx too!

My Attempt to go into The Star’s portal

Loading of any sites would not have a problem; it’s fast enough that streaming movies online would result in practically no lag at all! I’m not sure about you but for me, that’s good enough. For Streamyx, this is what I regularly faced (Look at the pic pls). 90% of the time, this is what I get. The best part is I’m not even surfing sites outside of Malaysia! I’m only going into local news sites like The Star and NST, now imagine that if connecting to a local site is this bad, can you imagine how I feel trying to browse sites that’s hosted oversea? The F5 button on the notebook I used on was the most used button on the notebook whenever I go online. Why? It’s the shortcut key to refresh the page and imagine at least 5 – 6 times pressing that button until the page decides to load. This is just for 1 site; I go to an average of 12 news site (on top of blogs and forums) a day reading up on the latest news. Do the math and you can have an idea of how many times the F5 button was pressed in the course of a day. Why isn’t Streamyx doing anything about fixing this problem that is faced by Malaysians? Yes, we use your service to get connected, as a company that provides services to the public; shouldn’t you be improving on your services to serve the public better? Calls to the Customer Service line at TM will give you the standard answer:

Sir, please unplug your computer’s cable from the modem (huh? I just told you I uses Wifi!) and turn off your modem for 5minutes before turning it back on.

If it’s that simple why my connection sucks, I wouldn’t be calling you in the first place right? Sometimes, I can’t blame the Customer Service Personnel on this cause that’s the standard answer they are taught to give no matter what you tell them. Try calling them once and give them a question, I’m sure that answer will be the first one given.

Why can’t Streamyx be pumping out the 1.0Mbps as it is? Why must it be on a ‘BEST EFFORT’ only connection? Isn’t that like a loop hole to tell you that I’m charging you for the 1.0Mbps but I’ll only feed you with 128kbps of connection speed. And staffs from TM wonders why are people complaining so much about the internet connection. DUH!

The other question is, why isn’t there any companies out there that’s coming up with better package at similar cost to challenge TM? Where’s the needed competition? Why is TM allowed to monopolize the home broadband market in the first place? The world is moving forward, but Streamyx seems to be moving backward. At the rate we’re going, I think it’s better to revert back to the 56k modem, it might give you a better connection speed.

Now, the other topic I’d like to touch on. The English language in our Malaysian Education, I have to admit that my England isn’t the best in the world but I can tell you for sure are that its way better than what some of these students are learning today. I spoke to a few students recently that came from a non-English speaking family and I could never get a straight answer from them! Ask in English, reply in Malay. That’s what I get. I’ve also wrote about the reason why I believe our child’s English is getting from bad to worst. Today’s news excerpt from The Star just reaffirms my suspicions.

Now, mind you, I didn’t say these words nor it coming from any Tom, Dick or Sally, this was quoted the Ministry of Education themselves! Only 25% of the teachers achieved the required result when it comes to teaching English, and this is for those that are required to teach in ENGLISH! What happened to the other 75%? Spending most of their time at the teacher’s lounge in the Canteen asking what’s for breakfast? (Screen shot of the News Report at the bottom)

You and I and everyone else know where the problem lies, shouldn’t we be fixing the root of the problem rather than finding the quick way out? We are talking about the future generation of Malaysians that will need to face the world. Malay language might be the international language back in the days of Hang Tuah and all but heck, these days; everyone needs to be able to communicate in English in order to survive in the international business world!

I spoke to a teacher who’s supposed to be teaching English for her subjects and all I get out of her is replies in Malay, she knows very well that she is supposed to be proficient in English but she refuses and chooses to talk in Malay instead. Why? Is this what’s going on in our class rooms as well? Text books in English but communication between teacher and students in Malay?

I dropped by my old school recently and spoke to some students; those from an English speaking family would have no problem conversing with me in English, but those that’s from a non-English speaking family. Gosh! All I can say is its quite sad. Yes, it’s good to know your mother tongue, but it’s also good to be able to communicate in at least another language on top of that right? I never have a problem speaking in English, Cantonese and Malay, why can’t the newer generation be doing that also?

Why not rather than trying to save the money and spending it unwisely elsewhere, try to put these teachers back to school! They only work for half a day, why not get them to go back to school and learn some proper English after that? Is it so hard to get an English educator to conduct classes to get these teachers to buck up?

Parents everywhere are annoyed with it, I’m annoyed with it. Instead of finding the BEST solution, the Ministry decides to go for the faster way out. Not putting the pressure on the teachers to become proper Educator doesn’t mean you’re the best Boss in the world. Your organization’s task is to educate the students, not just pay the salary to teachers and ignore the progress of the youth of the nation!

It doesn’t take 5 years for the Ministry to find out that teaching in English doesn’t work with the current crop of teachers that can’t speak in English, you can tell easily by just talking to them! When this program was mooted, we applaud it and welcome it. I believe many of us also felt that the Education ministry would have done something in order to ensure that the teachers are well equipped to teach in English before implementing it.

Well, I believe this has been a long rant. I’m sure not many readers of this blog could believe that I would write such long posts instead of posting up photos but some issues just pisses the hell out of me. It angers me not because it affects me but it angers me because whatever that’s being done is affecting my children, your children and the nation’s future generation. I’m no educator, I’m no professor and I don’t have the best solution on how we could solve the problem, but I believe if we put our minds together, there’s bound to be something we can do about it.

Let me know what you think, share your thoughts.

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