Compare and Contrast: The Python Story

Here are some of my observations from the first few days I have been in Malaysia. Dalat School is very unique, and quite different from the American public school system. It is not ruled by state and federal standards, teachers have much more freedom to explore subjects and certain topics with their students. 

A glaringly obvious example of the differences between a private school in Malaysia and a US public school is an event that happened my first day here. An 11 foot python that had ingested a goose was found, somewhere off campus. The snake (actually small for a python) was gravely injured, and someone brought it to school. It died, and all the students were allowed to see it. Pythons aren't a common occurrence here on school property, but I suspect that the ability to take advantage of rare and exciting teachable moments such as these are more common, and encouraged. The high school biology classes got to dissect it the next day. That in itself was a marvel to me. It wasn't ordered from a lab, or snakery somewhere where the animals are prepared for dissection, it was fresh out of the jungle. No formaldehyde. No nothing.  The lesson and preparation for the dissection were mere hours old. Everyone in the school, staff and students, were psyched about the opportunity. Nobody blinked an eye. It was a learning opportunity for the film classes too, they are going to make a video of the dissection and put it on youtube.

I mentioned the event to my dad in an email, commenting that this would probably never happen in the USA. He replied comically, saying  "…you are right about it never happening in the USA.  We would have had some bizarre animal rights group protesting the dissection, and lawsuits from the ACLU asking if the python’s rights had been violated.  Meanwhile no one is protecting the rights of the goose (hopefully not the one who lays the golden eggs)".

In short, there are many opportunities here that would not be able to happen in the US. 

Like I previously mentioned, Dalat is a private school. This means students must apply and interview in order to even be considered to study here. Students here want to be here. They want to be challenged, they want to learn, and are eager to explore different subjects. Their advanced curriculum sticks out to me, especially in 6th grade science. They were looking at basic chemical reaction equations. They were looking at them, not solving them by themselves, but they were still there.  I don't know about you, but I don't recall doing those in 6th grade. It is only an introduction to them, and students are not expected to master them but the fact that they were on the board was a bit of a shock to me. Even in the ESL class, the ESL students are high intermediate to advanced. As a class, we went over a students' creative writing. Dare I say there was more interaction and constructive criticism than in my college writing class? Perhaps it is because of the age, nature, or comfort level of the students, but I was also surprised at the quality of the writing.

These will most certainly not be my last surprises, but I look forward to more!