Petang tadi saya berkesempatan minum dan makan roti canai dengan beberapa orang kawan yang bekerja sebagai guru.
Mendengar daripada topik perbualan mereka, kisah dan cerita yang berlaku di dalam sistem pendidikan negara ini amat membimbangkan saya. Daripada markah lulus (passing mark) untuk subjek sains dan matematik yang diubah-ubah untuk mencapai target peratusan lulus sehinggalah kepada soalan UPSR yang bocor hampir setiap tahun.
Menurut seorang kawan saya ini, beberapa pelajar yang mendapat keputusan yang sangat cemerlang seperti mendapat "A" di dalam semua subjek di dalam peperiksaan UPSR mereka telah diterima masuk ke sekolah berasrama penuh, tetapi selepas beberapa bulan, mereka dinasihatkan supaya menukar ke sekolah biasa kerana didapati masih tidak menguasai asas pembacaan, penulisan dan pengiraan.
Bayangkan, pelajar yang mendapat semua "A" dalam UPSR dinasihatkan keluar dari sekolah berasrama penuh kerana tahap sebenar mereka tidak menggambarkan keputusan UPSR mereka.
Menurut kawan-kawan guru ini, projek "menolong Melayu" (kononnya) ini bermula selepas pencapaian markah yang teruk di dalam subjek sains dan matematik di kalangan pelajar Melayu apabila pengajaran dalam bahasa Inggeris mula-mula diperkenalkan untuk kedua-dua subjek ini.
Pada mulanya, langkah menurunkan markah lulus dilakukan hanya sebagai 'quick fix' sahaja kerana untuk mengelakkan kejutan dan menjaga air muka jabatan dan kementerian pendidikan.
Tetapi amalan mengubah-mengubah markah lulus sudah menjadi budaya dan mula sebati di dalam sistem. Menurut kawan-kawan guru ini, mereka terkejut bagaimana ramai murid yang mereka mengajar setiap hari boleh mendapat "A" di dalam peperiksaan sebenar UPSR sedangkan markah kebiasaan yang diperolehi sepanjang ujian dan peperiksaan percubaan hanya sekitar 25 peratus sahaja.
Menurut kawan-kawan guru, golongan atasan di dalam Jabatan Pendidikan amat menjaga "KPI" mereka yang berdasarkan kepada peratusan kelulusan dan juga peratusan mendapat "A". Lagi pun ini untuk "membantu Melayu", kata mereka.
Penyakit ini ditambah juga oleh satu barah yang lain, iaitu soalan peperiksaan UPSR yang bocor setiap tahun.
Kebocoran kertas soalan UPSR inilah yang menghasilkan pelajar yang layak masuk ke sekolah berasrama penuh, tetapi masih terkial-kial untuk menulis dan membaca.
Menurut kawan-kawan guru ini, 10 tahun yang lalu, mereka senang untuk meramalkan pelajar yang akan mendapat keputusan yang cemerlang atau yang gagal di dalam UPSR kerana keputusan peperiksaan sebenar juga lebih menyerupai keputusan ujian dan peperiksaan percubaan yang dilakukan oleh pihak sekolah. Tetapi pada hari ini, keputusan UPSR mengejutkan mereka. Pelajar yang tidak pernah lulus di dalam peperiksaan di sekolah sepanjang tahun tiba-tiba mendapat "A" di dalam UPSR.
Menurut kawan-kawan guru ini, kebiasaanya Terengganu ialah negeri di mana bermulanya soalan UPSR yang bocor. Ini kerana kertas peperiksaan UPSR akan tiba lebih awal di atas pulau-pulau yang mempunyai sekolah-sekolah.
Mampus lah kita macam ni... (MK, Expet Sep 23, 10 9:54am)
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Tuesday, 28 September 2010
Thursday, 2 September 2010
Stephen Hawking: God Has No Role in Universe
British physicist Stephen Hawking, shown here at the World Science Festival in New York City this summer, says he's changed his mind about the role of God in the universe's creation.
LONDON (Sept. 2) -- Entering the ongoing debate between faith and science, renowned British scientist Stephen Hawking claims that modern physics has now proved that God played no role in the creation of the universe.
In a new book -- "The Grand Design," co-written with American physicist Leonard Mlodinow -- the theoretical physicist sets out to demolish Sir Isaac Newton's claim that an "intelligent and powerful Being" must have shaped the universe, which he believed could not have emerged from chaos. Hawking and Mlodinow rule out the possibility of divine intervention, saying that new theories have made the idea of a supernatural creator redundant.
"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing," the pair write, in an extract published in today's London Times. "Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going."
"The Grand Design," which goes on sale next week, is a significant shift away from Hawking's previous comments on the divine. In his 1988 best-seller, "A Brief History of Time," he suggested that it was possible to believe in the concept of God as creator and also hold a scientific view of the universe. "If we do discover a complete theory ... of why it is that we and the universe exist ... it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason -- for then we would know the mind of God," he wrote.
And in a 2007 interview, he appeared to portray himself as an agnostic. "I believe the universe is governed by the laws of science," he told the BBC. "The laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the laws."
Hawking now argues that Newton's assertion that the laws of nature cannot alone explain the existence of life and the universe started to fall apart in 1992, when astronomers discovered the first extrasolar planets (planets beyond our own solar system) orbiting other sunlike stars.
"That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions -- the single Sun, the lucky combination of Earth-Sun distance and solar mass, far less remarkable, and far less compelling evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings," he writes. Hawking believes that other universes, as well as other solar systems, are also likely to exist. But if God's purpose was to create mankind, he wonders, why would He make these redundant and out-of-reach worlds?
Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist and high-profile atheist, welcomed the book, telling the Times that Hawking had developed a theory of Darwinism for the entirety of nature, not simply the creatures that live within it. "That's exactly what he's saying," Dawkins told the paper. "I know nothing of the details of the physics, but I had always assumed the same thing."
However, religious commentators have criticized Hawking's theorizing, saying he can never hope to explain what is essentially unexplainable.
"If all the physical laws had been explained and proved -- which is a million miles from the case -- our understanding of the actions of God would not be one whit greater: his existence and his actions are of a different order," writes Quentin de la Bedoyere, science editor of the U.K.'s Catholic Herald newspaper. "Most particularly it would not touch the question of how something existing comes out from nothing. That is a question which science cannot answer, and will never answer, because nothingness is not within its domain. ... Neither [Hawking], nor you, nor I will ever explain creation, except through faith."
(Theunis Bates. AolNews.com)
RUJUK...http://www.harunyahya.com/indo/artikel/073.htm
Kemudian Dia menunjukkan kehendakNya ke arah (bahan-bahan) langit sedang langit itu masih berupa asap; lalu Dia berfirman kepadanya dan kepada bumi: Turutlah kamu berdua akan perintahKu, samada dengan sukarela atau dengan paksa! Keduanya menjawab: Kami berdua sedia menurut patuh dengan sukarela; (11) Lalu Dia menjadikannya tujuh langit, dalam dua masa dan Dia memberitahu kepada tiap-tiap langit akan urusan dan keperluannya masing-masing dan Kami hiasi langit yang dekat (pada pandangan mata penduduk bumi) dengan bintang-bintang yang bersinar cemerlang serta memelihara langit itu dengan sebaik-baiknya. Demikianlah ketentuan Allah Yang Maha Kuasa, lagi Maha Mengetahui. (12)
(سورة فصلت , Fussilat, Chapter #41, Verse #11-12)
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