International Contacts-Part 1

My International Contact is Jaqueline Che from Malaysia. I have not received a response from the organizations or individuals that I tried to contact, so I went in search of Early Childhood Professionals here in my community that have come from other countries. Jaqueline has been in the U.S. for about 7 years, where she attended Kansas State University and received her Masters in ECE.
Jaqueline works as a Center director and has experience as an assistant preschool teacher in Malaysia. She told me that the teachers there were teacher directed and did not let the children play. The Academics for 4 & 5 year olds is equivelant to our 1st grade. It was so hard for her to be a part of this rigorous schedule and she finally had to quit.
Jaqueline told me that women in Malaysia are discriminated against because the belief is that women should not be higher achievers than their husbands. Her parents discouraged her from getting her Masters Degree because they felt that no man would want to marry her. Women who are independent are looked down upon because Men are suppose to dominate. In a Muslim country the Muslims are the "sacred" and commander ones. She went on to say that Buddhist believes women are reincarnated to be women because of bad karma. Women are meant to suffer because of our lifestyle like pregnancy, menstruation, and being a class lower than men.
The number one issue facing ECE according to Jaqueline, is the amount of stress that is put on children in pre-k programs. They are having exams, spelling tests, and other high academic stressors. Parents are competing among their children for the best honors. Jaqueline sent me a couple of articles that help get her point across; one is from this mornings Everyday Exchange. It is an article about a mom who is suing her child's preschool because she felt that they misrepresented themselves when they said that they would prepare students for entrance exams to get into elite schools (Martinez, 2011). Here is the site, www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/03/14/2011/-03-14_manhattan_...
The other article is a country report on Poverty in Malaysia, and how they are eradicating it. I read the article, and it talked about current issues relating to poverty. Some of the topics included; fertility levels and trends, reproductive health, gender equality, health care, education and communication for adults, and STD's/Aids. I thought it was kind of odd that children were not mentioned in the article at all, neither was consequences of poverty on child development. It appears that they feel that population control is the answer to poverty in their country.