~MUMMY ROKIAH: DAULAT TUANKU

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

DAULAT TUANKU

SULTAN Kedah Tuanku Abdul Halim Mu'adzam Shah menyerahkan surat sumpah perlantikan sebagai Yang di-Pertuan Agong ke-14 selepas menandatanganinya kepada Perdana Menteri, Datuk Seri Najib Razak ketika Istiadat Khas Mesyuarat Raja-Raja ke-227 di Istana Negara, semalam. Tuanku Abdul Halim Mu'adzam Shah mencatat sejarah menjadi Yang di-Pertuan Agong buat kali kedua. Kali pertama 1970-1975 ketika baginda berusia 43 tahun semasa pentadbiran Perdana Menteri ke-2, Tun Abdul Razak Hussein. - Foto BERNAMA

Pada tahun 1970-1975 Tuanku Abdul Halim Mu'adzam Shah menjadi Yang di-Pertuan Agong semasa Tun Radzak Hussein menjadi Perdana Menteri hari ini beliau menjadi Agong kepada anak Tun Razak, DS Najib.

DAULAT TUANKU.

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The U.S. should truly fix its educational system

For the past month, we have all marveled at the life of Steve Jobs, the adopted son of working-class parents, who dropped out of college and became one of the great technologists and businessmen of our time.

How did he do it? He was, of course, an extraordinary individual, and that explains much of his success, but his environment might also have played a role. Part of the environment was education. And it is worth noting that Jobs got a great secondary education. The school he attended, Homestead High in Cupertino, Calif., was a first-rate public school that gave him a grounding in both the liberal arts and technology.

It did the same for Steve Wozniak, the more technically oriented co-founder of Apple Computer, whom Jobs met at that same school.

In 1972, the year Jobs graduated, California’s public schools were the envy of the world. They were generally rated the finest in the country, well funded and well run, with excellent teachers.

These schools were engines of social mobility that took people like Jobs and Wozniak and gave them an educational grounding that helped them rise.

Today, California’s public schools are a disaster, beset by dysfunction and disrepair. They rank at the bottom of the country, just as the U.S. now sits at the bottom of the industrialized world by most measures of educational achievement.

The World Economic Forum ranks the U.S.’s educational system 26th in the world, well behind those of countries like Germany, Finland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Canada and Singapore. In science and math, we score even worse.

We’ve been talking about America’s education decline for three decades now, so much so that we are numbed by the discussion. But the consequences of that crisis are only just becoming fully apparent.

As American education has collapsed, the median wages of the American worker have stagnated, and social mobility—the beating heart of the American dream—has slowed to a standstill. Education is and always has been the fastest way up the socio economic ladder. And the payoff from a good education remains evident even in this weak recovery.

The unemployment rate for college graduates is just 4%, but for high school dropouts it is 14%. If you drop out of high school—and the U.S. has a 25% dropout rate—you will have a depressed standard of living for the rest of your life.

The need for better education for most Americans has never been more urgent. While we have been sleeping, the rest of the world has been upgrading its skills. Countries in Europe and Asia have worked hard to increase their college-graduation rates, while the U.S.’s — once the world’s highest — has flatlined. Other countries have focused on math and science, while in America degrees have proliferated in “fields” like sports exercise and leisure studies.

Bill Gross, the head of Pimco, the world’s largest bond fund, sums it up in no uncertain terms: “Our labor force is too expensive and poorly educated for today’s marketplace.” There are two variables here: our educational levels, which are low, and our wages, which are high. Either we will raise our educational level or markets will lower our wages.

How to do it? Well, there is one simple, time-tested method. Work harder. Thomas Edison said that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Malcolm Gladwell found that behind many supposedly natural- born talents like musical ability lay lots of practice—by his calculations, about 10,000 hours of practice.

U.S. schoolchildren spend less time in school than their peers abroad. They have shorter school days and a shorter school year. Children in South Korea will spend almost two years more in school than Americans by the end of high school. Is it really so strange that they score higher on tests?

If South Korea teaches the importance of hard work, Finland teaches another lesson. Finnish students score near the very top on international tests, yet they do not follow the Asian model of study, study and more study.

Instead they start school a year later than in most countries, emphasize creative work and shun tests for most of the year. But Finland has great teachers, who are paid well and treated with the same professional respect that is accorded to doctors and lawyers.

They are found and developed through an extremely competitive and rigorous process. All teachers are required to have master’s degrees, and only 1 in 10 applicants is accepted to the country’s teacher-training programs. The contrast with the U.S. is stark. Half of America’s teachers graduated in the bottom third of their college class.

Bill Gates has spent about $5 billion trying to research and reform American education. I asked him, if he were running a school district and could wave a magic wand, what he would do. His response: hire the best teachers.

That’s what produces the best results for students, more than class size or money or curriculum. “So the basic research into great teaching, that’s now become our biggest investment,” he says. One study estimates that if black students had a top-quartile teacher rather than a bottom-quartile teacher four years in a row, that would be enough to close the black-white test-score gap.

There are many more ideas, many of them worthwhile and worth trying, but you can get lost in the details of the education debate. These two seem simple—work more and get better teachers. Yet implementing them is anything but simple. They bump up against an education system that is deeply resistant to change and teachers’ unions that jealously guard their prerogatives.

All the specific measures that would allow students to work more and good teachers to be identified and rewarded— more days, longer hours, merit pay—are mostly opposed by the teachers’ unions and other guardians of the status quo.

When you get depressed by the obstacles to reforming the educational bureaucracy, you can get excited by the meta-reformers on the outside who are trying to revolutionize the system.

Take Sal Khan, who accidentally created what might well be a new way of teaching. Seven years ago, the MIT graduate was helping his cousin, who lived across the U.S., with her math homework.

When scheduling got difficult, a friend suggested he put the diagrams and equations he had drawn on YouTube so she could access them. Five years later, Khan has produced 3,000 videos teaching mostly math and science that have been viewed 80 million times!

But the real revolution has been in the classroom. Last year, Los Altos, Calif., decided to use the Khan Academy videos and software in its public-school classrooms. Doing so turns the educational model on its head.

In the traditional method, students sit in class and receive information from their teacher while they busily take notes—a passive process that wastes valuable classroom time. They do the most challenging work—solving problems—at home without help.

Under the new system, they watch the Khan Academy videos at home and solve problems in class, where the teacher’s talents can be put to use most fruitfully.

In addition, students can learn at their own pace — rewatching videos—until they actually understand the material. The early results show huge leaps in student skills. Technology is being used to create a customized, interactive education that is both novel and powerful.

The reason that I am so taken by the Khan Academy—other than that I have used its videos with my 12-year-old son—is that it is a quintessentially American innovation, a new way of thinking about education.

I went through the Asian educational system, which is now so admired. It gave me an impressive base of knowledge and taught me how to study hard and fast. But when I got to the U.S. for college, I found that it had not trained me that well to think.

American education at its best teaches you how to solve problems, truly understand the material, question authority, think for yourself and be creative. It teaches you to learn what you love and to love learning. These are incredibly important values, and they are why the U.S. has been able to maintain an edge in creative industries and innovation in general.

The U.S. should truly fix its educational system by emphasizing the basics—like hard work—again but also by renewing its distinctly American character. We will succeed not by becoming more Asian but by becoming, as the writer James Fallows put it once, “more like us.” That’s what made America the world’s most dynamic society—and it can make it so again.

Swiss Politician Bans Minarets then Converts to Islam

The Swiss politician Daniel Streich, who rose to fame as a result of his opposition to mosques in his homeland, has now embraced the faith he reviled.

Daniel Streich was a member of the Swiss People's Party (SVP) in Switzerland. A well-known politician, Streich led the calls for a ban on minarets across Switzerland. He was active in building anti-Muslim sentiments throughout Switzerland. This sustained campaign led to him being given a high ranking position in the Swiss Army.

Switzerland Minaret Ban and Daniel Streich
Streich was an important member of the Swiss People's Party (SVP). His importance could be estimated from his influence on party's policy making, in which he always had a prominent role. His movement against minarets was aimed at gaining political attention and interest. He won the slot of military instructor in the Swiss Army due to his popularity.He was also committed to his party (SVP) and stood as a local politician in the commune of Bulle.

Daniel Streich Conversion to Islam

Streich attempted to understand the Qur'an and Islamic teachings in order to argue against Muslims on tenets of their faith. In the course of his efforts the ex-Christian began to agree with and acknowledge the proclamations of the Qur'an.

Born in a Christian family, Streich had a comprehensive study of Islam merely to malign and confront, but Islamic teachings had a deep impact on him. Eventually he de-linked himself from political activities and he embraced Islam. Streich has termed the SVO activities against the Muslims as satanic.

He says that he used to read the Bible and often went to chapel, but now he recites the Holy Quran and offers his prayers five times a day. He further says that he cancelled his party membership and made public his conversion. Streich says that he has found the truth of life in Islam, which he could not find in Christianity.

"Islam offers me logical answers to important life questions, which, in the end, I never found in Christianity," says Streich. He is now a committed Muslim, who attends the mosque, recites the Qur'an and prays five times a day.

According to figures from the Union of Islamic Organizations and Communities, some 3,000 to 5,000 Italians have recently converted to Islam from Catholicism.

Post-Conversion Life for Daniel Streich

Recently the question of ban on minarets was put to voting in Switzerland, wherein the Swiss nationals gave the issue a legal status.

As per voting results 42.5 per cent people voted in favour of the minarets and 57.5 per cent supported the ban, while the Muslim population in Switzerland is only 6 per cent. The most wondrous thing in this regard, therefore, is the support of 42.5 per cent of population for only six percent Muslims. The analysts claim that ban on minarets and Islamic rituals has attracted the people towards Islam.

Streich has now focused his intentions on participating in the building of the new Conservative Democratic Party in the canton of Freiburg. Freich's new movement is in contrast to his previous one and he aims to promote religious tolerance and peaceful cooperative living, in spite of the fact that ban on mosques minarets has gained a legal status.

He is vehemently opposed to the Minaret ban and is hoping to establish Switzerland's fifth mosque and the most beautiful in Europe.
(Source : The Islamic Bulletin)

'We went to jail for Hamid Tuah'

(source NST)
2009/11/01

Her father was the legendary Hamid Tuah, the revolutionary who opened up land for poor peasants in many parts of the country. Siti Noor Hamid Tuah speaks to ARMAN AHMAD about the extraordinary life of the farmer and activist
I HAVE many memories of my father even though he was away most of the time when I was a child.

He was in and out of jail between 1961 and 1969, imprisoned for what he believed in, and our family suffered a great deal.

But his cause inspired the whole nation, from the student movement to civil society.

Father worked as a special constable in Batu 5, Jalan Banting when people started asking him for help.

We struggled to survive. Father's salary was RM70. I had to wake up at 4am to tap rubber before going to school.
My mother, Sharifah Mahani Syed Hamzah al-Aidid, was related to Tunku Abdul Rahman, and a lot of landless people came to seek help to get land.

While in Kedah, father used to be in Angkatan Pemuda Insaf along with Tunku Abdul Rahman's cousin, Tengku Daud Tengku Haidar. So, he had a measure of influence.

My father was born in Babus Salam, Tanjung Pura, Langkat in north Sumatra.

He spent his childhood and early adulthood in a place that was a hotbed of nationalism. Indonesia, at the time, was fighting Dutch colonisation.

He had that spirit to fight for people's rights and justice.

When he started working in the estates, he always asked: "Why does the white man control so much land while the Malays have to work in servitude under them?

"Why can't the Malays live with freedom -- working on their own land?"

He had his own vision. He believed every man should have freedom, without having to live under servitude. Every man should have a house and a piece of land to work on.

He said the Malays at that time did not have freedom and had to rely on others.

I remember him saying that even if you are an estate coolie, you should have freedom burning in your heart.
It was in the 1950s that he first organised parties to clear land in the Highlands Estate.

He asked mother to seek Tunku Abdul Rahman's approval. Because of his efforts, some 100 peasants got their own land.

Now that area is called Johan Setia, in honour of a district officer named Johan who worked there.

News spread that father had helped the farmers get land and soon farmers from Tanjung Karang appeared at our doorstep.

They were asking for Hamid Tuah to help them get land. Father helped them.

But the farmers there, who had yet to get approval, had no water to irrigate their crops.

Father said: "Just divert the water into your fields."

Five hundred farmers diverted water into their fields and the next thing we knew father was arrested. He "disappeared" for a month.

Those were difficult times. Mother was alone to fend for my seven siblings. We worked hard, tapping rubber and planting fruit trees.

We finally found out that father was being held in Pudu Jail through a lawyer named Karam Singh.

Karam told mother that it would be hard to get father released. Was she brave enough to organise a demonstration?

Mother said her husband had done nothing wrong. So, what should she be afraid of?

With that, hundreds of farmers from Tanjung Karang congregated at our home one morning and we set off for Kuala Lumpur.

We arrived at the old railway station and marched towards the big clock (Dataran Merdeka).

I remember the date quite clearly. It was Feb 21, 1961. We camped there for 19 days.

The newspapers played a big role in telling the story of the farmers to the people. Soon, people were coming over to give us help. We cooked behind the State Secretariat building (the Sultan Abdul Samad building).

After 19 days, the government gave us an offer. Hamid Tuah would be freed. The land would go to the farmers. We, being simple peasants, did not ask for it in writing.

When father was released, he was put under restricted residence and sent to Kuala Kubu Baru. He could not go to Kuala Selangor, Tanjung Karang or Damansara.

Only a few farmers got land as promised. Because of this, there was a second protest. This time, after a few days, we got notice to disperse.

When we did not, we were all arrested. There were over 100 men and 48 women. We were sent to Pudu Jail.

Mother and my sister, Fatimah Sham, refused to be bailed out so we were kept in Pudu Jail.

Later, in court, the judge asked Fatimah if it was wrong to demonstrate. Fatimah answered that it wasn't.

We were released some time later. But life was hard.

Father was arrested again in 1966 for going to Kuala Selangor to help people get their own land.

I tapped rubber at 4am, then went to school in the afternoon. Despite this, many of my siblings got into university. I, too, went to university.

Fatimah Sham became the first female president of the Universiti Sains Malaysia student association in 1969.

When I look back to our father's struggle, I think we have come a long way.

(Siti Noor Hamid Tuah is writing the memoirs of her late father which will be published next year)

Najib dalam Konvensyen BN 2010

Selanjutnya, sebagai pemimpin, saya mahukan semua dalam Barisan Nasional hendaklah memikirkan kepentingan rakyat lebih daripada kepentingan diri sendiri. Saya ingin memetik satu falsafah Cina yang sangat sesuai dijadikan pengajaran kepada kita. Dalam bahasa Mandarin berbunyi:

“Xian tian xia zhi you er you, hou tian xia zhi le er le ”

(“先天下之忧而忧，后天下之乐而乐” )

Saya difahamkan ia bermaksud:

“Selesaikanlah masalah rakyat sebelum kesusahan menimpa mereka, Bahagiakanlah hidup rakyat sebelum semua dapat hidup bahagia“.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

DAULAT TUANKU

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