Academic freedom

Of examination question, empowerment and academic freedom

Lately, there was brouhaha about the quality of questions in the final examination in the university. This is my view about the whole thing. Consider these scenarios:

1.      This story is from an American university of repute. The professor of a course offered in the university has his own style of teaching, unique to himself only. For all intents and purposes, the class is able to grasp what he is talking about. For the final examination, he asks the students to submit to him what they think their grades are. He takes the grade in good faith and factored in the final calculation of the course grade;

2.      A story has it that a world-class professor in a European university came to his class to give final examination to his students. He wrote down two questions on the board and asked the students to begin answering the questions. Time given was unlimited. A student finished and submitted his examination script to him only to find out that there was something wrong with the answer. He was allowed to have another chance to make it right. He told the audience that his job was to teach and until the students learned, he kept teaching them no matter how long it took him;

3.      The next story came from a university in the West, which is listed in the top 10 of world ranking. The professor gave only one question for a three-hour examination. The question asked was, “Why?” The students were surprised by the one-word question asked. As the professor was given full authority by the powers-that-be to ask what he thought the best question to test the understanding of the course he taught, there was no complain. But the majority of the students looked puzzled although they started to write, many pages. The best student in the class spent time thinking about the question. He thought of some answers, but did not like them, and so he tore off the answer script. He tried some more but still not quite like it. At last he took a nap and spent time thinking about the question. He scratched something on a piece of paper and submitted to the professor just in time before the bell rang. The other students thought that he was finished. When the result came out, he scored the highest mark (A⁺). The answer he gave was, “Why not.”

What I am driving at, as lecturers of the courses, we should be given the autonomy to ask any question we think is the best for the examination. No body else in the university is better than the lecturer teaching that particular course themselves. This is what academic freedom is all about.

To be a world class university, we not only feed the students with fact related to the course we are teaching, but we also encourage them to think critically.

Shamshuddin Jusop

The Ghost of Bintulu

 

You may have heard a lot about ghost before or the devils if you will. It is part and parcel of our life. People say ghosts are everywhere, but lucky enough we do not or cannot see them because our eyes are not meant to see ghost, which is a wave-like creature. Or else we cannot move around on the earth surface because there are too many of them around. God says ghost exists. It sure is. However, there is no estimate of their number in the world. Under normal circumstances, they do not disturb us. They may be around, but we do not seem to bother about their presence as we are usually not affected by them. From time to time we hear stories about people being possessed (disturbed) by ghost. Here is one of the stories as told by my student recently.

Last week (October 3-6, 2010) I was in UPM Bintulu campus to sample some soils for my RUGS project. I brought along three graduate students to help in the sampling. One of them was Roslan Ismail, a PhD student. Dr Arifin Abdu of the Faculty of Forestry was also in the team. For the whole trip, Dr Arifin and I stayed in a hotel, Park City Evelyn Hotel, which is located a few km from the campus. The students were accommodated at the student hostel.

Roslan was given the key to a room in the top floor of a residential block of the college. He took the key in good faith and went on to sleep there for three nights. For your information, the entire floor was not occupied by students. It was empty. It must be something fishy! It has to be. So Roslan was sleeping there alone. In one of the nights, somebody knocked at the door of his room. He opened the door but saw no one. There were two more knocks. He kept his cool. He thought somebody was playing trick on him. So he went on to sleep. When he was about to doze off, he felt as if somebody pulled off his foot. It occurred twice. He didn’t bother to check though.  It didn’t occur to him that he was in for a surprise, an encounter with the devil.

The next morning he told the students that he was leaving for home as his job was done in good time. The students were surprised to see him in good mood with cheerful face. Only then that he realized (was told) the room he was sleeping for the last three nights was haunted and that nobody wanted to stay there. No wonder that particular floor was not occupied by anyone. They said that the room was keras. It means that it is haunted! For all you know, a ghost is making a living there. Apparently, the ghost came in to test his nerve. Since he did not know anything about it, he slept soundly throughout the three nights. Lucky for him nothing untoward happened. Roslan told me about his experience with ghost while we were on board of the Malaysian Airlines to KLIA on October 6, 2010.

We are all God’s creatures. Ghost has as much right as us to stay at any corner of the earth. We have to respect her right as much as she has to respect ours. However, she should not do things considered as disturbing our peace of mind! We cannot have peace of mind when a ghost goes around scaring people. The Malays believe that they should ask permission from its guardian before passing an area new to them. This is to ensure they are safe and sound and that their minds are not possessed by the devils.

Shamshuddin Jusop