A TEACHER IS ONLY AS GOOD AS HIS OR HER BOOKS

A university teacher (pensyarah le tu) is only as good as his or her reading of books (number and type).

Lets ask, how many have we read and what type, mediocre topics or high level ones?

The great professors at great world institutions at their 50s and 60s didnt/dont become great overnight but accumulated their knowledge by reading throughout their younger years.

The idea that we are smart already just by having PhD is totally WRONG! PhD is nothing but a process that teaches us how to read and learn by ourselves. So if we stop reading and learning after getting our PhD that alone shows that we have gone through a WRONG PhD. Seriously, nothing much we knew from our PhD for it was just a PROCESS.

And when I say book, I really mean it literally, not journal articles or magazines because our journal reading (hence understanding), in turn, is as good as the books that we read. Look at the journal articles we read and ask what is the percentage of our understanding and are there other articles that we just put them aside simply because we just couldnt understand them?

Many believe that teachers become great by DEFAULT as they get older. Come on, without continuous reading there is no possibility for accumulation of knowledge. What? We think professors can get knowledge during their sleep through dreams? We must be dreaming then.

Ok I know there is a small group of us who are actually reading book all the time already but many still dont and many are deluded that we are smart enough because we have PhD. So those who are yet having their reading habit, please start now.

Why? Because we as teachers need to be very smart over time for then only we can produce really smart students hence society hence nation. Then only we, as a society and as a nation can produce and sell technologies to the outside world and bringing in money INTO our country.

Now our country is really in bad shape because of our total dependence on oil as there is all there is at time South Korea, Japan, China, UK, Germany, US are selling their technologies hence having their sustainable economy (at least more sustainable than depending on natural sources and service type of economy like us).

If we really love our people and country, we as scholars must be very smart so that we can start producing marketable technologies. But remember, for it to be marketable the technologies must be:

1. Cheaper but perform similar, at least

or

2. Same price but perform better

or

3. Cheaper but perform better - the best

But to achieve this, we must compete with the brains at MIT, PRINCETON, CALTECH, IMPERIAL COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, OXFORD, TOKYO and the like. Are we ready and fit enough for this fight?

So teachers, lets keep reading books until we die. Indeed, we have a very good reason for it, have we not?

And if we have difficulties in our reading of a book, that means there are other books that we need to read and understand first, so go dig deeper and keep reading. For those in engineering fields, read back also our maths and physics books because, many times, these are the sources of our difficulty smile emoticon