Vocational Skill : Aim into an Educational Goal

Someone asked me the other day, Is Vocational Skill Important as one of the Aim in Education Goal.. Well... below are my opinion about it...... 

Vocational skill is an important aim into an educational goal to improve the learning curve in related industries in order to produce highly skilled individuals that  improve quality of citizen life. It creates more employment opportunities and reduces the unemployment rate. Malaysia does not need to depend on foreign skilled workers and earning by locals can be better than white collar workers which helps in economic growth as cash flow remains within Malaysia. Those skilled employees are important to maintain the quality of the products in the related industry that could bring good impressions to locals and foreigners. This will also attract more foreign investors to invest in Malaysia due to the good quality. 

Schools need to provide awareness to the students about the importance of vocational skill needed in the job market and how certain inner interests (such as designing, crafting, cooking) that are trained and developed properly could be used for their future employment. This also exposes students directly to their dream job and has better job satisfaction that leads to better productivity, efficiency and motivation in the job. School Counsellors to conduct Vocational Preference Inventory (VPI) on students to understand personalities better and search for the work environment that is similar to it and to target on students’ personalities that is similar to work environments that focus on vocational skills. 

Due to vocational skill needs to have a strong foundation to be built up from young, therefore the basics of the vocational needs to be implemented to students at their early stage of studies before gradually being taught to be more advanced in the skill. In order to educate vocational skills to students to be useful for their future job, applicable frameworks need to be conducted. The needs of the industry and additional factors need to be identified during the implementation of curricular. Surveys and interviews from companies to have the detailed info about the skill expectation from companies need to be collected so that in the future it will be easier for students to look and fit in to the skilled job. 

The curriculum in school can use the Behavioral-Systems-Family Model as part of the pedagogical model. Through mastery learning, the skills can be divided into smaller part for students to adapt and catch up. Then direct instruction to be used, teachers can let students watch videos about how others perform the skills and organize school visits to companies to provide real life experience on how the skills can be implemented in jobs for students to have a better understanding of the future job environment. Teachers needs feedback to the students on their performance by giving rewards for those who can perform such as organize small competitions and give a token of rewards to those who can perform well.  Students who are poorly performance, can punish them such as asking the students to stay or give extra homework to them. Proper continuous practice in their skill needs to be given to students so that they can master the skill and will not demotivate their interest in it. 

Joclyn Leong Fong Yi, Leong Fong Yi, 梁凤仪

Work From Home --- Protect Each Another During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 Pandemic is getting serious around the world and a lot of medical teams are getting exhausted. The cases per-day are increasing, and in Malaysia, the daily cases are very high compared as before. A lot of medical team had been working around the clock without proper rest and clearing their annual leave. It is not just few months, but is since last year. Sometimes, looking at their condition in work, I feel that they are really a Hero. In the past, soldiers risk their life to protect the country and anything they will sacrificed in the war zone. Same as now, although it s not war zone but it is also similar to it. Medical Team risk their life, get expose to the COVID-19 and anytime, they can get infected and if really unlucky, it can take away their life. They all are really hero. SALUTE THEM!

In Malaysia, Government had been implementing MCO, CMCO, EMCO, RMCO... based on how the situations are. They did encourage company to let their employee to work from home. Well, it is quite disappointing when I notice some of the superiors or company, they have the mentality that those who work from home are having vacation. Even though those work from home, did carry out their responsibilities properly and the company still able to run, YET, they are view as "having vacation at home" by their superiors or bosses. This is a totally negative mindset. 

If company allow those employees who can work from home to work from home, at least there are lesser people outside. Most of them will be at home and if they want to have their meal, they can order delivery. The office will not be over-crowded and if there is any of the staff tested COVID-19 positive, at least those who have close-contact will be minimized. It had been years....... and everyone are aware that this COVID-19 is so dangerous. However, some companies, those who are holding high position, they still cannot accept the culture of work from home. It is even sad that those employees are being misunderstood by their superiors/bosses that they are actually having vacation at home. 

Why they cannot put aside this kind of negative thinking and think as whole..... for the sake of the country, to minimize the possible of getting infected by COVID19? Why can't they think of the positive side of working from home? As long as the employees are still able to carry out their job as normal, why not just come out with the policy of , who can work from home to work from home? 

I met with friends, telling me that they tried to explain to their superiors about working from home to minimize the risk, however, they are so unfortunate that being view by their superiors that they are trying to find excuses not to come to work. And worst still, it had affected their evaluation and they notice that their superiors started treat them differently, ever since. Such a heart-broken situation. While some try so hard to tell out sincerely about their concern, this is the treatment that they received. Misunderstanding, Negative Impact. 

There are people under phobia, until they dare not to step out of the house. Some even chose to resign  in order to avoid going to their office, whereby some office have positive cases. Some have to stay strong and to protect themselves by themselves because they seriously need the monthly income. I pray to God that , God to open up those people mindset..... let them understand, those who voice out, are sincere and not because they are lazy. I pray that the world will be back to normal without COVID-19 soon or at least, able to control by the vaccine.