Milk is an essential liquid for young mammals before they are able to digest other type of foods. Getting the milk isn’t really a big deal in dairy industry. The hardest segment of it is the storing and therefore better distribution of milk to the households. Of course, when we say storing, the first object that comes to our mind is milk bottle. In fact, milk bottle wasn’t invented in an easy path. The introduction of milk bottle had gone a long and stiff way since the Industrial Revolution until now.
The story of milk and milk bottle reflects the education system in Malaysia. Milk symbolizes the knowledge while milk bottle are the educators. And needless to say, the milk drinkers would be the learners of knowledge. Pointing fingers to the education system, criticizing how dreadful and immobility the modern children are, telling somebody off that students nowadays speak English that only the Aliens would understand – Malaysian’s habit as always.
Maybe the metaphor being used here is quite unconnected but in my humble opinion, Malaysia never lacks macro thinker- speaking the overall performance of the economy, political system and education system, criticizing the big issues and so on. Maybe by doing all these, they think they can gain better recognition and self-serving esteem. What we truly need is the perceptive micro thinker, focusing on tiny details and able to analyze things from microscope rather than a geographical map. I would say that Malaysia produces too much of big-mouth gentlemen rather than operation-oriented engineers. Hence, instead of paying too much attention on getting the milk either from a New Zealand cow (teaching in English) or an Indonesian cow (teaching in Malay), why not observe more on the quality of milk bottles?
Anyway, I know a very good milk bottle named Professor Tey Nai Peng in University of Malaya. Graduated with a Bachelor of Economics degree (majoring in statistics) from the University of Malaya in 1974, obtained his Master of Science (population planning) from the University of Michigan, USA in 1982 and probably the best demography economist in Malaysia.
His contributions towards national demography and socio-economic studies were enormous. He was the principal investigator for 20 national and large scale surveys/studies on population, family and socio-economic issues, funded by the Government of Malaysia, Rand Corporation (USA), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), World Health Organization (WHO), Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), Ford Foundation and ASEAN-Australian Population Programme. In addition, he was a researcher in more than 30 population and socio-economic studies.
He has provided consultancy services to several international and government agencies, private sector companies and NGOs, including the NPFDB, Ministry of Rural and Regional Development, Federation of Reproductive Health Associations, Malaysia (FRHAM), UNFPA, United Nations Social and Economic Commission for West Asia (ESWA), ESCAP, WHO, International Planned Parenthood Federation, Futures Group International, Synergos Institute, Asian Parliamentary Forum for Population and Development (Malaysia), Sepang International Circuit, Macrowork Sdn Berhad, Drainage and Irrigation Department, Tenaga Nasional Berhad, Citibank (Malaysia), Chemical Company of Malaysia and Women Development Centre.
He is a Board Member of the NPFDB, Centre for Malaysian Chinese Studies and Community Support Network, a member of the Evaluation Committee of FRHAM, Malaysia and the local representative for Asian Population Association. He was the Deputy Chairman of the Commission for the Inquiry of Service Workers in Sarawak, Ministry of Human Resources (in 2002-2003), a Committee Member of SPSS User Group and Publication Secretary of the Economic Association of Malaysia.
Despite all his previous glory and achievements, he still consciously knows a fact that education is the key of continuous improvement. If education fails, it means all the things the previous generation have done would fail as well. And this exactly why he is still teaching survey methods and sampling designs, data analysis, application of demographic techniques, statistical methods, basic statistics and econometrics.
Frankly speaking, many undergraduates faced plentiful cocky lecturers who would say “Do you know this” and “It is pathetic that you don’t know this”. But goes back to the very objective of education and nevertheless a duty of a lecturer, isn't it a task of educator to minimize the knowledge gap between students and a teacher? Anyway, the quality milk bottle that I know here would say “Do you know this” and “Haiya! You don’t know this ah!!! Let me explain!!!”
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