Speaker's corners in Malaysian universities

The announcement by the Deputy Higher Education that Malaysian universities set up speaker's corner as something that should be welcome. This announcement is important because we do not want to produce university students who are like human robots devoid off all those generic skill. One aspect that I notice among the tertiary students especially the ones studying in the IPTA is the lack of communication skill. They have difficulty in relaying messages loud and clear. The students really lack the confidence and they tend to speak slowly . The problem is not juust the difficulty in expressing in English as they are equally lacking in competence to express themselves clearly in Bahasa Melayu.

As such the announcement by the Deputy Higher Education is timely and should be welcome by various parties. The people in the government and the universities should not fear this sort of activity in the speaker's corner. They should encourage the students to take part in this sort of activity as we do not want to produce zombies that would parrrot the government's view only. We need students who can really think and able to express their views and opinions in such a way that would reflect their status as university students.

One way in which the students could be encouraged to participate in the speaker's corner is to award extra marks or to be part of the course requirements for university courses. We need to produce future leaders who can think and lead the nation to greater heights. Malaysia should be lead by leaders who are honest, full of integrity and able ward of all the bribery temptation.