Redefining Education

What exactly is Incitement, many have asked.

Incitement is a non-profit organization that encourages individuals to incite positivity in a form of visions, goals, knowledge, stories and to actually take action towards those bold visions. Incitement is a global movement of local communities that was born out of the idea that everybody has something worth sharing. Two students, Yau Hui Min and Judy Ooi, having attended some Incitement events, were massively inspired by the speakers there and eventually, this gave way to an idea. After many weeks of endless planning and preparation done by the fellow Incitement club members, this idea bloomed into a reality, the very first Incitement Youth event with the theme “Redefining Education” in our very own campus.

On 28th February 2013 at 8pm, the grand opening of Incitement was officially launched by Yau; the host of this event who gave a brief introduction about Incitement and the reason why "Redefining Education" was chosen.

The first “Inciter”, a term used by Incitement which means speaker, the Co-founder and Managing Director of Teach for Malaysia, Mr Dzameer Dzulkifi with his presentation “Do more than dream.” Mr Dzameer mentioned about the problems of the gap between students around Malaysia due to their individual economic status and encouraged the audience to help these kids out. After Dzameer’s presentation, the flash slide activity was introduced which Ms Lauren eagerly took part in. Then , a game called Pitcher Pocketeer was introduced.

Riveting speeches that inspired everyone

After this activity, the next presentation “Theory of Knowledge” was presented by Mrs Loh Mei Lin, a TCSH TOK (Theory of Knowledge) lecturer for the IB Diploma programme. She emphasized that students nowadays do not question the things they learn in school, which she felt that this subject should be introduced to secondary schools students as it would promote curiosity.

Right after Mrs Loh’s presentation, it was time for YB Dato’ Saifuddin Abdullah, the deputy minister of higher education of Malaysia to give his presentation “The Soul of Education” In his presentation, he mentioned that the main goal of education is to nurture good individuals and urged people to suggest ideas to improve the education system because action cannot be taken without an idea.

Captivating the listeners

This was then followed by another flash slide session, one of our students, Chin Kar Yern was brave enough to volunteer himself. The next inciter, Anne Tham, teacher, founder and managing director of the ACE Edventure programme. Mrs Anne emphasized the importance of training students to think and giving students skills to succeed, such as communication, organizing skills and many more.

The 'Inciters' got the audience engaged on a personal level

Last but not least, our last inciter of the night, Michael Reyes, CEO of the prestigious MoneyTree Asia Pacific with his presentation “Gamification of Education”. Mr Michael started off his presentation stating that no education system in this world is perfect and he wants to change the way student learn. Mr Micheal urged the audience to not blame the education system and we can make the change by asking 'why not' instead of 'why'. He strongly encouraged the audience to use every type of technology they liked to teach the students.
After Mr Micheal ended his presentation, Yau thanked the presenters and gave a spoken word poetry performance. In her spoken word poetry, she mentioned about how her teachers told her that she need not understand things which are not taught in the syllabus.

Appreciating the speakers

Right after the amazing performance by Yau, this Incitement Youth event came to an end with the last two sessions, the energy building activity and the appreciation round. This event could never happened without all the Incitement Youth members’ teamwork to accomplish this common goal. This writer sincerely hopes that we are able to organize more Incitement Youth event, to be one step closer in achieving our mutual target, which is to make this world a more positive and optimistic planet to live in.

BY LO ZHEN XIN