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Subscribe in a reader | Subscribe to poobalan.com by Email And yet number of As increasing, number of UPSR/PMR/SPM/STPM achievers increasing…good what….
students more worried about getting diseases..very good..concerned on personal hygiene.
Also perhaps the Star should install a better spelling checker so that “younsters” can be corrected.
poobalan
Survey: Many younsters aren’t concerned about racial integration
By SIMRIT KAUR
http://www.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/3/29/nation/17225671&sec=nation
PETALING JAYA: Racial integration among the younger generation in Malaysia still has some way to go, judging by the results of a nationwide survey of 4,400 Form Four students.
Only 52% of the teenagers said they had a friend of a different race.
In fact, mixing with other races was not something that concerned many of the respondents. Only 12.8% felt that it was an issue, while 63.9% were more worried about contracting a disease.
The Cognitive and PsychoSocial Profile of Malaysian Adolescents (CoPs) study was carried out in August by a group of academics from the Education Faculty of Universiti Malaya (UM).
Prof John Arul Phillips, a former UM academic and current dean of the Arts and Social Sciences Faculty at Open University Malaysia, said this was the most complete study of its kind because of the large sampling.
“We went to 44 schools in rural areas, towns and cities across Malaysia, including Sabah and Sarawak,” he said.
A total of 16.6% of the 16-year-olds surveyed also admitted to smoking. They cited emotional pressure (27.6%), a desire to be accepted by friends (25.5%) and wanting to be cool and macho (20.1%) as the most common reasons for taking up the habit. Another 12.6% said they were influenced by the mass media.
Other findings include:
·8.8% reported using drugs;
·10.7% never eat breakfast;
·8% have never used a computer; and
·3% said they were often not interested in studies.
The study also compared different groups of students. There was no major difference in resilience and self-esteem levels between males and females, but non-smokers were found to be more resilient and had higher self-esteem. In addition, males reported better relationships with their teachers compared with females.
CoPs project leader Assoc Prof Dr Fatimah Hashim from UM’s Education Faculty said:
“There was very low correlation between academic performance in PMR and psycho-social attributes such as self-esteem, resiliency and family bonding.”
In the area of general knowledge, only 23.3% of respondents identified Lee Hsien Loong as the Prime Minister of Singapore and 43.3% knew that Bill Gates founded Microsoft.
However, 81% knew that Manchester United was an English football club.
Students were poor in civic knowledge, too. For example, only 58.4% knew that Parliament consisted of the Dewan Rakyat and Dewan Negara.
