One of my fondest childhood memories is the Sunday mornings spent at home.
If I were to close my eyes and describe, it would be the smell of aromatic screwpine (pandan) leaves and coconut wafting in the kitchen from my mum’s nasi lemak, blending in with the scent of chemical compounds of the ink on the printed newspapers. It was the only day of the week that my parents would subscribe to more than one newspaper.
After a hearty breakfast, we would pull the pages apart for our favourite sections. As we grew up, the entertainment pages were our first choice. Funny that this early exposure did not consciously get me to choose journalism as the choice of study, considering that newspapers became a major part of my career life later.
At the completion of my postgraduate teaching degree, my better half showed me a job advertisement for a post with the New Straits Times to promote and increase English
proficiency in schools. The required skills were transferable from both my teaching degrees. Try this,
he said, as I could always find a teaching job later if I did not enjoy the work.
Sixteen years later, the job has brought me to many classrooms in schools — from all corners of the country. The first 12 years involved coordinating and conducting programmes and activities; from journalism workshops to publishing newspapers written by youth for youth and organising national-level spelling competitions.
The NST has always been supporting the importance of education with focus on the English language education. It was the first newspaper in Malaysia to introduce its own Newspaper in Education programme in 1985. The core values of the programme, which involves the use of the newspaper in the classroom, fall on its content, and how teachers can use this reading material as part of their teaching tool.
I spent many of these years sharing with teachers and students nationwide an editorial published in 1795 by the Portland (Maine) Eastern Herald that said: “Much has been said and written on the utility of newspapers; but one principal advantage which might be derived from these publications has been neglected; we mean that of reading them in schools, and by the children in families. Try it for one session — do you wish your child to improve in reading solely, give him a newspaper — it furnishes a variety, some parts of which must infallibly touch his fancy. Do you wish to instruct him in geography, nothing will so indelibly fix the relative situation of different places, as the stories and events published in the papers. In time, do you wish to have him acquainted with the manners of the country or city, to the mode of doing business, public or private; do you wish him to have a smattering of every kind of science useful and amusing, give him a newspaper ... because every part furnishes some new and valuable information.”
The quote from the paper’s editorial is still relevant today. News content, in print or digital, is becoming more important to develop 21st century skills — the set of abilities that students need to develop to succeed in the information age.
Schools are focusing too much on teaching content, using material that mirrors the treatment of topics in approved textbooks, at the expense of essential skills, such as communication and collaboration, critical thinking, and problem solving, and concepts like media literacy and global awareness. A move towards these skills positions itself away from typical rote learning, where one can score by just memorising.
Efforts to encourage active learning that promotes such higher order thinking skills have borne fruit in neighbouring Singapore. Today, their students are topping global benchmarking tests that measure how well they apply knowledge to solving real-world problems.
Early last month, 15-year-olds in Singapore were ranked No. 1 in Mathematics, Science and Reading in the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) test, dubbed the “World Cup for Education”. They also topped another global Mathematics and Science test — Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).
One of Singapore’s efforts to reach this level (besides focusing on teacher training) was through curriculum shifts, such as “Stellar”, short for Strategies for English Language Learning and Reading. In 2009, Singapore introduced this national curriculum for all primary schools with the aim to develop pupils’ ability to use the English language confidently in real-world scenarios. Lessons do not rely on textbooks but use role-playing, storytelling and reading texts, such as news articles.
Language is very important to how we accomplish critical thinking — to convey our opinions, expressions and how we make our ideas known to others. In the hands of a creative teacher, the many sections and articles from a newspaper can provoke passionate responses to encourage active learning. Students make links between concepts and draw their own conclusions, using investigative work and examples from current affairs in the process.
The future will have more jobs that require us to think critically. We won’t be able to do that without fixing education. If the goal is to prepare students for tertiary education and career, the case for informational reading, through the newspaper for an example, is overwhelming.
It is with this in mind, The School Times, NST’s education English language pullout — with exercises and activities based on news articles besides English language worksheets of varied proficiency levels — is back in print this year to supplement the newspaper on Tuesdays. It is definitely most timely with the recent launch of the Roadmap for English Language Education Reform 2015-2025 to help raise the standard of English in the country.
Hazlina Aziz left her teaching career more than 16 years ago to take on different challenges beyond the conventional classroom. As NST’s education editor, the world is now her classroom