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Easter Message by DAP Secretary-General Lim Guan Eng in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday, 8th April 2012: Easter Message DAP wishes all Christians Happy Easter. Celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead gives birth of a new life that gives mankind the hope cleansing our sins and enjoying eternal life. To do so, Christians are expected to adopt a life of simplicity, humility, service and sanctity(holiness). Malaysia should also adopt some of these values to establish an excellent education system that is capable of building talented Malaysians for the future. There is no doubt that availability of human talent is the new oil of the 21st century. However Malaysian education system is not only in a state of crisis but our leaders are in denial that Malaysian educaton system is no longer excellent. Education Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin boasted that the World Economic Report's Global Competitiveness Index 2011-2012(Report) showed our children received a better quality of education than the children in the United States, Germany and United Kingdom. How wrong, misleading and out-of-touch Muhydin is has been brought home by the failure of any Malaysian to gain admission into Harvard University, the world's most prestigious university, for the second year in a row. The quality of Malaysian applicants to Harvard University had deteriorated so alarmingly that none was even good enough to make it to the interview rounds. A two-year absence from incoming Harvard freshman classes is enough to raise concerns over the quality trends of Malaysian education given that at least one Malaysian had been admitted to Harvard every year from 1985 to 2010. Malaysia was only fourth among Southeast Asian countries in terms of enrolment in the Ivy League institution. Singapore has the highest number of Harvard undergraduates with 18, followed by Thailand with seven, Vietnam with six, Malaysia with five and Indonesia with two. In other words, instead of boasting that Malaysia's education system is better than US, UK or Germany, Muhydin should be worrying about being overtaken by Thailand and Vietnam. Tan Sri Muhyidin should also answer why there is not a single Nobel Prize winner who is a Malaysian and neither is there a single Malaysian university amongst the Top 200 Universities in the world? Or when given the choice, why more Malaysian students want to study in Singapore, US, UK and Germany than in Malaysian universities? Perhaps with the quality of students from Thailand and Vietnam rising, our students may be heading for Thailand and Vietnam in the future.That Muhyidin is in a state of denial about the crisis of mediocrity engulfing Malaysian education is clear when a closer reading of the Global Competitiveness Report clearly indicates that Maalysian education system has fallen behind in standards. The results is the same for other indexes such as in the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) involving 75 countries, Malaysia was ranked 56th in reading ability, 55th in Mathematics ability and 53 in Science. Our performance in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) has also seen a steady decrease from 1999 to 2007. Tan Sri Muhyidin Yassin should stop boasting that Malaysian kids receive a better quality of education than United States, Germany and United Kingdom but admit that Malaysian education is in a state of crisis that requires immediate rescue if Malaysia does not want to lose out to Thailand and Vietnam. *Lim Guan Eng, DAP Secretary General & MP for Bagan
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