Suara Hati Ayahku

Salam.

I begin my writing with Bismillahi..and Al Fatihah. Don't forget 1 salawat to our beloved nabi.

I want to write something on today's generation regarding attitude, motivation and perception.

Atttude = some say that the older generation are much better because we came from poor families in the rural areas. We were trained to walk many distances and we didn't complain going to school, work and etc. Todays generation are very fortunate. Firstly the BN government has provided many facilities like buses and free milk at school. Secondly they are very pampered by their own parents and siblings. Thus there is nothing strange that a child does want to go to school if the parents do not provide them with handphone, personal computer and etc etc. So attitude has changed from somone who was trained to walk in the hot sun to school with someone who are very much pampered. Going to school and anywhere driven by their mums and dads. It is hard to see them appreciating our gift as compared to our friends in 1970s where after SPM their parents could only afford to give RM35 watch like TIMEX. Now the gifts could go as far as 3days/2 night trip to Bandung. Imagine?

Perception = According to Slavin(1995) and Felder and Brent(2004) man perceives differently at 2 different sets of time. The hard and bad times. If in the olden days a student did not attend classes for 3 days they could be expelled from school (without any strong excuses) but at present not many HEADS of schools dare to expel children who came late after their mid year holiday break from Europe/USA. Just check the newspapers. Now the parents are very strong. If the teachers beat the children , these so called parents will come to school and start attacking the teachers. Pity those disciplinary teachers at school. They got beaten by the parents who sometmes come with gangsters. Their cars got scratched just because they 'denda' the students to stand on their chairs on the football pitch in the hot sun. Thus the children now perceive that the schools are very weak. thus they respect very little the sacrifice of their teachers who are willingly .. doing anything to get the target 100% A's in mathematics come shine or rain. See? The perception we had shown to the knowledge at school has suddenly gone down into the drain. This year we gave Prof Dr Ibrahim bin Bajunid (ex-boss Sri Layang) tokoh guru. I supported that strongly but there is nothing wrong to give that type of award to teachers who are still surviving after they had recieved 1000 beatings and tortures by parents and society in the urban areas like Klang Valley. Another perception is teaching is soft. Why? 70% school teachers are mainly ladies. So where has the men gone hiding..hah?

MOTIVATION
This is a hard topic. We are motivated based on certain important factors. Lets talk from the students' point of view. If the teachers came to the classes fully prepared, they could be well motivated. So does the impact of good teaching and learning environment at schools. If there is less disciplinary problems then the teaching will be very good and consequently the students are very motivated. Some of us adults are motivated to work a bit harder, if we got a pay raise. Say with SPM qualification we were given the task to head a primary school in east coast of malaysia . WE are motivated because based on SPM we are given many chances to attend imprtant meetings in Kuala Lumpur. So far I have wrote man are motivated if there is an extrisc reward like a pay raise. If the teachers came with some ABM ( alat bantu mengajar) and the ABM works then the students are motivated to learn more on that topic say algebra. Unfortunately , pay raise has short term impact of worker's productivity. There must be some inner intrinsic rewards attached to hard work in schools and offices. This is called IMAN. If we have strong iman, we worked harder for the sake of Allah. THe rewards are jannah (heaven). Eternal reward for ever and ever.

In sum, attitude, motivation and perception play important roles in our day to day functioning. Right? he..he.. But let us function a bit better than yesterday for the sake of allah, shall we?

Wallahu allam.