McMasters' method of medical education was a deviation from the traditional medical studies norm that we usually hear of (at least in the 80s). In the old way, medical students were taught the pre-clinical subjects in the early years and were expected to integrate what they have learnt earlier in the clinical years at the tail end of their medical school and use them for the rest of their lives. The critics of this method argued that too much knowledge is learnt and wasted, not of clinical significance. In the USM model, this integration is done early via the problem-based approach of learning and their Holy Grail of community-centric teaching in the hope of producing community conscious physicians. It all sounds very novel and noble but in practice...The powers that be decided that to reach the ambition of the Government determined race-based upliftment of society, they congregated a motley crew of students with variable academic capabilities in the hope of churning out the mush into something useful to society! (To quote Professor Charles Kingsfield of Paper Chase *- a TV law drama series in the 80s).
The enrolment of the class, after initial correction when the Dean gave an ultimatum for the purdah wearers to remove their facial veil and to do some alterations to their dull-hued shapeless drapes, was 96.
One of the pillars upon which PPSP was laid upon by the founding fathers - Prof Ong KH, Prof G Simmons. Prof Saidi, Dr Reddy, Dr Kyaw TS et al. - was PBL (problem-based learning). PBL would have (and shown its capability in many other countries) would have been just fine if students genuinely had the desire to learn through self-motivation minus the 'kiasu' mentality frequently associated with Malaysian students and the playing field of students' intelligence was levelled around an acceptable axis.
Now there was a joke among NUS (National University of Singapore) students. Everywhere in the world, the performance graph of students in a class would follow a bell-shaped normal distribution Gaussian graph except in Malaysia - where it would be skewed towards both ends resembling a dumbbell (the pun, the pun).
In PPSP, PBL (which is actually supposed to be a group discussion with all students giving input as a clinical case study is unveiled scenario by scenario and a resource person, usually a lecturer, acting as a facilitator) ends up as a staring contest! One group of students armed with all the knowledge was stingy to share whilst the other group had nothing to share as they were clueless on the topic. Some were just shy! Everyone was just pleased with 'hand-outs' - printed reading material which can be read at their leisure in the comfort of library or dormitory. One of us (TFLG) would say, "We have pride, we don't live on hand-outs!", but he would still take it anyway and studied that to pass the tests!
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Prof Charles W Kingsfield Jr of Paper Chase. → →
