Alextakashi
05-01-2007, 03:31 PM
Elitism = The attitude that society should be governed by an elite group of individuals.
Please give a word or two about this topic.
My own experience starts when I was admitted to control school (which emphasize on elite), however from my previous experience in teaching a primary school, I was pondering about the question again. Should we support or abandon elitism?
In schools, the smartest kids will be grouped to the "best" class, with the best teachers to teach them. So that they could excel...how bout the weaker ones??
Lets say we put it in a ecomonics perspective, Teachers are the capital goods. So Good teachers are as scarce as good capital goods. While students are the product. Let say a school is a country, so if in support with elitism, we should put our best capital good to produce our high-end product, of course this will definitely improve our top-notch students, but also increased the margin between top notch and lowest end. However, if we're not in support of elitism, whereas we will think of the weaker kids in priority, we will surely allocate good teachers to weaker kids, (since they are much weaker!) and normal teachers to bright kids. In this sense, the overall product quality will rise, margin between two extreme will drop, but our top notch students will not be as competitive.
So being a Malaysian yourself, with the JPA,MARA and other institutes sponsoring scholars, and NEP that helps the poorer and weaker citizens, are we striking a balance??
Another fact that contradicts elitism and communism. In China, they adopt the elite athletes program, which they will fund the elite athletes to get gold in olympics etc. However, according to research, the average spending to a olympic gold is equivalent to building 100 schools in rural areas of china,(including electricity, infrastructure and water supply). In Athens 2004, China got 32 Gold medal, which means China has forgone 3200 schools for the mere fame of olympic. What is your view on such approach of the Chinese Govt.? Are the Elites more important? or the mass public/rural residents?
Please give a word or two about this topic.
My own experience starts when I was admitted to control school (which emphasize on elite), however from my previous experience in teaching a primary school, I was pondering about the question again. Should we support or abandon elitism?
In schools, the smartest kids will be grouped to the "best" class, with the best teachers to teach them. So that they could excel...how bout the weaker ones??
Lets say we put it in a ecomonics perspective, Teachers are the capital goods. So Good teachers are as scarce as good capital goods. While students are the product. Let say a school is a country, so if in support with elitism, we should put our best capital good to produce our high-end product, of course this will definitely improve our top-notch students, but also increased the margin between top notch and lowest end. However, if we're not in support of elitism, whereas we will think of the weaker kids in priority, we will surely allocate good teachers to weaker kids, (since they are much weaker!) and normal teachers to bright kids. In this sense, the overall product quality will rise, margin between two extreme will drop, but our top notch students will not be as competitive.
So being a Malaysian yourself, with the JPA,MARA and other institutes sponsoring scholars, and NEP that helps the poorer and weaker citizens, are we striking a balance??
Another fact that contradicts elitism and communism. In China, they adopt the elite athletes program, which they will fund the elite athletes to get gold in olympics etc. However, according to research, the average spending to a olympic gold is equivalent to building 100 schools in rural areas of china,(including electricity, infrastructure and water supply). In Athens 2004, China got 32 Gold medal, which means China has forgone 3200 schools for the mere fame of olympic. What is your view on such approach of the Chinese Govt.? Are the Elites more important? or the mass public/rural residents?