Chan Weng Kit's Blogspot: DAY 446/447/448

Nov 20, 21 & 22

1) On Sunday, I attended the last day of the Malaysia Young Scholars Universal Leadership Programme 2017, at the Malaysia Hall Dublin. The previous night, all participants had been separated into their respective groups, each tackling a current issue that Malaysia faces. Since I was not present when the groups were formed, I decided to join the group tackling "Cultural Differences". We had until 11am to prepare a policy proposal, for which we were given 10 minutes speaking time. So the six of us started brainstorming ideas and the ways to implement them.

2) After a very unconventional way of determining the order we would present, our team went up first. We had come up with some suggestions, which centred around the implementation of a 1Malaysia Act. This would have overarching impact on various sectors, one of the major ones being education. We proposed the setting up of a 1Malaysia School, which would make a Mother Tongue language compulsory (in addition to the already present BM and Eng requirement). We also voiced our concern for the lack of transparency when it came to university applications.

3) To tackle this, we suggested the full disclosure by all universities through the set up of admission statistics for each university, without exceptions. Any discrepancy would have to be justified and accounted for. In this way, the public would have a better understanding of the process by which applications were accepted/rejected, and not jump to conclusions. Lastly, on the issue of the constant switch of Science and Maths in English/BM, we requested if the school be granted the autonomy to decide, or within each class if required. We opined that the schoolteachers ought not to have trouble teaching in either language, since the language of instruction has been changed so many times.

4) In short, our presentation was well received. Everyone got their chance to present, with a short Q and A session afterwards. That was the end of the programme, and after a slight delay, we were invited to have lunch. After "tapau-ing" (takeaway-ing) some food for later, I walked back to RCSI. It was a trip down memory lane, as I walked the same route that I used to take when I stayed at Leeson. That was my day.

5) Monday and Tuesday has seen me in the library. I've not been going out much, mostly because I am desperately trying to catch up with my studies. However, I still had some time to spare, to catch Prof. Frank Doyle's talk on "Insight into Peer Review". He shared a very interesting story of how his PhD Student's research, having originally been unjustly rejected for publication in a famous scientific journal, was then accepted into a smaller journal, and finally came runners up in a prestigious competition. That has been a summary of the past couple of days, and I hope you enjoyed reading about it. Thanks for visiting, and have a great day. Cheers!