Tuesday, March 8, 2005 - 7:05 AM EST

Hee, I read your comments on my blog! Thanks for dropping lines on my page, I enjoy looking through them. ^___^

'Ceramah' means lecture, or talk, in 'Bahasa Melayu', our local language.

I can certainly tell you a bit about our education system. We have two compulsory levels of education - the primary level and the secondary level. The primary level takes six years to complete, each year they will progress, from primary one to primary six. From primary one to three, students are taught mathematics, English, Bahasa Melayu, religious studies, PE and science. As they move on to primary four and above, they will be introduced to another two new subjects, life skills/home economics and Local studies (which is somewhat an assimilation of light history and geography). At the end of primary six, they will be given a public exam, 5 papers in total, which are mathematics, English, Science, Bahasa Melayu and 'Penulisan', which is writing in Bahasa Melayu. We used to have a public exam at the end of our primary three year, where if we meet certain standards, we are allowed to complete primary level education within 5 years instead. I was one of the few chosen when this was first introduced, but sadly it has been abolished.

Progressing on to secondary school, it is divided to two - lower secondary and upper secondary. In the lower secondary, it takes three years to complete and we are taught 9 subjects, Mathematics, English, Bahasa Melayu, History, Geography, Religious studies, home economics/life skills, PE, and Science. From form one to form three, at the end of it all we will be given another public exam, testing us on all the subjects given except PE.

After this public exam, the results will determine which stream of education we will be studying under in the upper secondary level. Being strong in science and maths will put you in the science stream, introducing you to biology, chemistry physics and add maths, geography and home economics omitted. Being weak in the two subjects will put you in the arts/commerce stream, dropping the science subject and introducing economics and accounting. It takes two years to complete this level, and another public exam will be carried out at the end of form five, and the results enable your enrolment to colleges/form six or getting a job.

Form six is an optional pathway to obtaining college education provided by the Education Ministry of Malaysia. I've chosen this path since I want to be closer to home (I'm not exactly ready to fly solo yet, hee hee!) and that it's a lot cheaper compared to starting off in college. I'll be finishing at the end of this year, I enrolled for form six in May last year. Being in the science stream I'm given two options, either to take Biology or Physics, to go along with Chemistry, Pure Mathematics, Malaysian University English Test (MUET) and General Knowledge. There are also the arts/commerce subjects, but I don't really know them in detail.

Schools normally have two sessions - Morning Session and Afternoon session, due to lack of space to conduct classes all at one go. Morning session starts 7.20am and ends at 12.45 pm, while afternoon session starts at 1.00pm and ends at 6.15pm. Of course, we have to be in school slightly earlier than that =___="

The first Friday of the month is always known as 'Prayer Day', where people of different religion seperate themselves to their respective religions and go to their respective areas to do their prayers or religious activities. In my opinion I do not think this is truly necessary, being a multi-racial country and all, but we all have limits of our freedom to talk about things, this being one.

Co-curricular activities are quite important as well - these are carried out outside school hours. We are asked to join a minimum of three clubs, one being a uniform body, one a society/group, and one being a sport club. It is supposed to make us stand out as individuals who are capable in other things apart from academic achievements.

Being in form 6, I can say there is an alteration of how the education/school system works - teachers no longer spoon feed you with notes and work, we're all on our own! However, we are considered mature and of age, therefore we all were taught to open our minds, and push ourselves to really do our best.

Well, I can't really think of what more to write about the education/school system at the moment, but if you have any questions (and provided I can answer them), I'll be more than happy to respond to them. Hee, I wrote quite a lot already, hopefully some of it would have satisfied part of your curiosity! :)

What I plan to do for the next test of patience? I was thinking of expressing my dislike towards their actions by just saying, "Excuse me" or coughing out loud at the very least. Worse come to worst, I'll just respond with, "Oh, how rude!". Got any suggestions? I know I can come up with lectures, but I really have to grow older for that first. :)