Malaysia verses United States Education System
...ool. There are three standardized tests to be taken and passed, one in Standard Six, Form Three, and Form Five in order to graduate from high school and continue to university. On the other hand, in the United States, school districts are divided into elementary schools, middle schools or junior high schools, and high schools. Elementary schools contain First through Fifth or Sixth Graders including kindergarteners. Middle schools contain Grade Six to Grade Eight, while junior high schools contain Grade Seven to Grade Nine. Following that, students go to high school until Twelfth Grade. Unlike Malaysia, most American school districts typically do not require any examination to graduate from high school. Having passed all of the required courses, a student is then considered a high school graduate. This shows that the United States education is more relaxed compared to Malaysia’s. Education courses provided is another difference between Malaysia and the United States. For instance, the level of upper secondary schools in Malaysia and high schools in the United States are approximately the same, yet the courses offered are dissimilar. All students in upper secondary schools in Malaysia are required to take Malay, English, mathematics, science, history, and Islamic Education (for the Muslims). Then, students can choose other elective subjects on one condition; they must take nine subjects at minimum and twelve at maximum including the core subjects. Usually, they enroll in subjects of a discipline that they are interested in such as business, pure science, social science, accountancy, and literature. American high school students, conversely, are required to take English, mathematics, science, and social studies. They may also be required to take a foreign language and/or physical education. Additional courses such as art, music, home economics, and industrial arts are also offered. A course is just one or two semesters long, whereas in Malaysian upper secondary schools, subjects take the whole two years to be completed. Apparently, the difference in courses makes the students in both countries different in terms of their study development. Recently, meritocracy has been a hot education issue in Malaysia. People have been debating whether to apply this system in admitting students to the federal universities or to continue using the quota system. The quota system admits students based on race. For instance, at least ten percent bumiputera students must be admitted. The meritocracy system, instead, selects students based on their qualifications without giving preference to personal backgrounds. Today, the meritocracy system has been launched and is still in the trial period. Only time can tell what will happen in the future. Another hot topic concerns the medium language used in schools. Earlier this year, there was a proposal to change the medium language from Malay to English. Since then, so many opinions either opposing or favoring this issue have been expressed that the government has finally decided to implement this transformation in stages. To begin, only two subjects, Mathematics and Science, apart from English are to use English as the medium language. However, schools still have not started this transformation because of the possibilities of other problems that may arise such as lack of English knowledge among teachers and problems regarding textbooks. Currently, the Ministry of Education has announced the start of this program in 2003 but, there may be other changes prospectively. In the United States, however, education issues definitely differ from the issues in Malaysia. One of the hottest topics discussed for the past few years concerns year-round schooling. At present, most schools in the United States operate ten months per y...