Gaonomics

This past year our company helped a group of marketing students from one of the colleges here in Malaysia with a final year project, which was to do a public survey. The project included going out in public places and asking people to complete the survey, whereafter they should key in the data into a software called SPSS and produce a final report with the results. We helped them by explaining what kind of information we would like to get from the survey and went through the questions they had prepared to ensure that they corresponded to our requirements. The rest was done by them.

Last week we received the final report and they told me that they got the grade A3, which apparently meant about 70% and above. For comparison there is A1 (best), A2 and A3, and their project was still the best in their class. When I asked them what the teacher had said, they told me that she had been pleased that they had worked with a real company and worked on a real survey. Not entirely satisfied with that response, I asked again, didn’t your teacher tell you the reason for your grade and how you could improve the report, and they told me, no, she just said that it wasn’t in depth enough.

That’s it? I was shocked, how are these young people supposed to learn how to do it better in future, if they don’t get any constructive feedback and ideas of what they could have written to improve their grade and do an even better report. To me “not in depth enough” is a completely useless piece of information, one which purpose seems to be to indicate that the teacher knows more than them, but not for her to share and them to know, but in reality it seems that this teacher may not even be knowledgeable enough herself to be able to give useful comments and pass on knowledge and ideas of real value to her students, why otherwise wouldn’t she try her best to help her students understand how they could have produced a better report and ensure they bring something of true value away from her lessons and their project.

Don’t teachers have an obligation to help students improve their skills through practical guidance that are useful to the students to help them do better in future?

I suppose this just proves the reasons why the graduates, as we read about in the newspapers, are not skilled enough when they start working and only pick up the essential knowledge from the experience they gain at work.

I can’t help but think that these students are supposed to know about marketing when their join a company in order to be an asset to that company, but it seems that they have to gain the experience at the company’s expense in order to be capable of running marketing campaigns and other related marketing work on their own in future.

I think this is wrong, as it shouldn’t be the companies’ responsibility to train candidates of higher education on how to do the job they have been employed to do. It should be the responsibility of the educational institution, they come from, so they can really assist the companies, when they finish their education and start work.

Granted that many specialists are fostered from the experience they gain in doing work related projects, and I don’t downplay the importance of work experience, but I think that students could be much more competent, skillful and knowledgeable when graduating, if their teachers took it upon themselves to ensure that the students learn from their school projects and learn how to improve themselves for every project they do in college/university.

A lot of companies lack the skilled and qualified manpower to improve their business and become more competitive, and hardest hit are the small and middle sized companies because they can’t afford to pay the higher salaries demanded by the good candidates, and having to train young people to perform the work they have been employed to do is very time and resource consuming and therefore another impediment for these companies to attain success, which is a vicious cycle, because without the qualified candidates, the company cannot improve or earn more money to be able to afford better candidates, which can help the companies move into a positive and successful cycle, and therefore remains uncompetitive on the global or even on the local market and just operate on a day to day basis to survive and without a plan or strategy for long-term success.

It is essential that schools and educational institutions are committed to produce qualified candidates that are really helpful for the companies, and this must start from as young an age as possible.

I was therefore thrilled when my son told me the other day, which I also noticed when checking his exercise book, that his history teacher had only written comments that were helpful and useful to my son, which indicated how he could improve his note taking in future. A truly useful piece of information, which proves the commitment and professionalism of his history teacher.

And I heard from another parent that her daughter’s teacher in year 6 had asked her to redo her numeracy exercise before he wanted to mark it, because he saw that she had misunderstood how to do the exercise and therefore had them all wrong, where normally she gets them all correct, and he took the initiative himself to explain it to her again, so she could do them correctly, which she did and got full marks.

This kind of commitment and desire to helping the children do well, improve themselves and learn the concepts properly are noteworthy and their’ efforts truly remarkable and is what I call great teachers, and it would be so wonderful if all teachers had the same commitment and helpful approach, as shown by these two teachers in Tenby International School.