QUOTE(Benjamin911 @ Jul 17 2008, 10:33 PM)
Nope, I disagree with that.
Private schools are the only hope for those seeking English education in the country of Malaysia.
For public school, in my opinion is my school SMK Damansara Jaya, I'm from there, but I'm not gonna talk about it because I was from that school, but from my point of view after being there for 5 years and actually I was not originally from a damansara area primary school, and also cause from what I see about other schools around PJ area. and My mom used to be a teacher at another school and i have some other connections as well on these school things. I came to damansara jaya school cause i heard its good when during my primary school.Private schools are the only hope for those seeking English education in the country of Malaysia.
Strengths:
1. Compare to other schools, our grade for getting an "A" in school exams, is always 80%, especially for PMR (SPM I don't remember), even though the real percentage to get an "A" for the real PMR exam is 70% or 75%, our school exam can only get A if 80% and above. Other schools stick to the 70%, including nearby schools like damansara utama (I have people I know that are from damansara Utama). Because i believe that most of the students from SMKDJ can get more than 70% (when they study).
2. Students in my school are quite all rounders. If you look at school competitions for the past few years, like cheerleading, or debate competitions, we win quite a lot i think lately for the past few years. (Older days i dunno). Cheerleading = Winner for 2005, 2007 and i think there was 1 more year that we won, forgot. The rest I think we 1st runner up or 2nd runner up, around there. Debates, i dont know much, but i heard we got win also. I have friends and know ppl who involve in mssd or cocuriculum who are good in those and their academics as well.
3. We have quite balance type of students from rich, to poor and middle classes. The teacher have mentioned in the past that compare to other schools nearby actually, our statistics could be higher, but we have the poorer students from the kampung kayu ara who most of them are not really the study type lah, cuz of their family background (its related to the science of sociology, im not discriminating poor ppl), cuz most ppl tend to repeat what their family did in the past. Most rich kids will stay rich, middle class kids stay middle class, and poor people stay poor, unless they take a lot of effort to change their path of life. But despite that, we still manage to maintain good standard.
4. There is very little racial bias or discrimination. Even though the school is predominantly chinese, but you won't really find people who mix around with their own race only. Most student group or aka "gang" there is multiracial, especially as the classes go higher. But the people in the lower classes still do interact with one race to another. In some batch there are stereotypes there or aka "social cliques", but there are still at least 1 or 2 person from other race in most of those cliques and people do still interact with other races despite the existence of these cliques. Sometimes the cliques are made up of combined races, depends. You can also see quite a number of couples made out of different races despite the fact that the school is predominantly chinese. Got quite a number of mix-raced borned kids also like ma-chi and chindian lol, mostly the mix comprised of malaysian races la i think.
5. We probably don't have the best facilities, but we have the necessary needed facilities.
6. Discipline is not the best but still considered quite good.
7. SMDJ might not give the best in terms of quality of some things compared to private schools, but students here are made out of people from rich to poor, so students deals with people from rich to poor, which is a great exposure, because in the real world, there will be people whom are rich and poor, and you would need to have the skills to interact with all types of people. to be successful in the real world.
8. Most teachers do their job properly, no complaints.
9. Very little gangsterism, nowadays probably even more less or no more already.
10. It is a mix school, meaning got boys and girls.
11. The Location of the school, if talking about the Whole Klang Valley, in my opinion the location of the school is very strategic as it is located in the heart of Petaling Jaya. And I'm sure that we all know Petaling Jaya is a very convenient place to live in, everything is here...LRT, taxis, buses, colleges, universities and according to Prime Minister Tun Mahathir Mohamed = The land in Petaling Jaya is the most expensive in Malaysia, thats what my mom told me, when it's in the heart of petaling jaya, the land is obviously very expensive. Famous shopping malls nearby also like 1utama and the curve (but these are also accessible to all the damansara and bandar utama schools)
Weaknesses
1. There are existence of social cliques in some batch that widens the gap of interactions between students. Stuff like the ones you see in those american high school movies, some of these students are quite immature and watches way too much american high school movies and get influenced so easily . Wanna mix with cool people only la, popular people only la, this that la. But I think the batch they have there nowadays less of these stuffs, from my experience. Most other schools in Malaysia don't really have this type of problem.
2. The school is great academically and in cocuriculum so some students will be very sombong to people because they think they're damn good already due to the school's reputation. Some of them are also sombong because they come from rich families.
3. We don't have a good football team lol. Well, during my batch at least, the rest i dont know.
4. Most students that are not malay don't have fluent command of malay when they speak which is a good tool that can be used in future and it makes them less Malaysian because of that when compared to students from other government public schools (but in exam they do very well for BM....but their spoken malay are still understandable la, just not the best compared to some schools in KL who have non-malay students speaking fluent malay).
5. Because of weakness no.1, some students from the affected batches don't really have good social skills compared to students of other school and it can really affect their future because in the real workplace you would need to interact with everyone of different background and etc.
6. The School is predominantly chinese, which is not balanced compared to schools like Sultan Abdul Samad and my primary school. The Chinese students will somehow have less skills and less exposure to interact with other races since they have a lot of people of their own race there, which will be quite a big loss when they get out into the real world. But the chinese students there so far mixes with other races as well, just not as good as some other balanced race school.
Well, these are just the things I can share. So far I think SMKDJ's strength is because of it's all-rounderness. We are the best in academics like those chinese schools, or the best in cocuriculum like some schools or the best in terms of quality in facilities or teaching like private schools, but we do pretty well in all of those, thats all.
This post has been edited by Iliveunderwater: Sep 14 2008, 04:50 AM