I’m in my helpful mood, so I decided to help the officials in the government with their reform plan, because as it appears, they’re lost and in need of guidance, or maybe their vision is blurry (or blocked) and they cannot see what’s wrong here. Anyway, number 1:
Education.
The fact that anyone who majored in math can become a math teacher is the biggest part of what’s wrong with our teachers. You study history in college, you graduate and ta-da! You’re a history teacher. Well I’m sorry government, but that’s not the way it goes!
I finished school 8 years ago and from what I’m hearing, thing have gotten a lot worse since then. Teachers lack the necessary communication skills that are needed to educate. Some teachers treat students like they’re their opponents, some use foul language with them, that is if we decide to turn a deaf ear to the physical abuse stories.
One of the most basic things the government (represented by the ministry of education) should provide is proper education in a suitable environment and public schools’ environments are as far as they can be from suitable. Heat, ventilation, space, minimum first aid requirements are all in miserable shape and I’m not even getting into toilets and sanitation because I just ate.
Universities might be in better shape when it comes to the overall atmosphere, but the psychological pressure professors put students under is another huge problem; from racism to just plain douchebagness, every semester is like a battle. The common conversation during registration period is about how to deal with this professor so that you stay on his good side (and therefore pass) and what not to do around that one so that you don’t end up on his bad side and fail. And yes, it is personal and has nothing to do with your grades.
Beside the instructors, there’s always the eternal problem of administrative issues, registration, fees, registration, credit hours, fees, fees, registration and fees. Let’s say you need to register for 15 credit hours this semester, you go to find only 2 out of the 5 subjects are available, you temporarily settle for those until you find a solution, that solution being a week-long battle (sometimes more) with the grumpy employee at the registration department plus the head of section or the dean at your faculty, after you get the (not really) necessary paperwork done through the agonizing bureaucratic process, you go to register for the rest of the classes and whaddya know! Your previous registration has been canceled, because the minimum is 12 hours and you didn’t reach those. And that was only one of the simple and common cases.
I’m also not getting into the issue of high fees here, you know because of the quality of the service you’re bound to receive.
So, number one: reform education, reform schools, reform universities, reform colleges, reform teachers, professors and anyone in the sector because people have had enough.
