Then what?

Anand Kumar and his students

My brother from a different father and mother sent me a mail recently about a certain Mathematics tutor from Patna, Bihar, who would tutor students pro bono for them to pass the coveted Indian Institute of Technology entrance examinations. He hand picks a group of 30, motivates them, arranges hostel facilities, cooks healthy meals and literally drills them day and night to achieve 100% pass rate.
The students swarms in from remote and impoverished regions of the land to slog it out for about 7 months with the sole intention of passing the test. A pass, to them, is the panacea of their woes. A rewarding career and perhaps a post in a multinational company or even an overseas posting is a sure way to uplift their living conditions and their immediate loved ones. 

The spill over effect can be seen even to the relatives whose background and caste is irrelevant anymore. I can relate to the hopeful eyes of the illiterate parents who put all their hope, putting aside their difficulties and poverty, to educate their offspring. In the year that the documentary was shot, 29 of the 30 students passed their exams.

Audience with President Kallam

A little melodrama occurs after that. You can watch it below if you have the time.

So what happens afterwards? The teenagers go on to IIT, get a comfortable job, parents continue their  tortuous job albeit at a less strenuous pace. Then what? They get married, perhaps stay in a big mansion or migrate to a developed country and enjoy the fruit of their labour. They themselves would have offsprings who after growing up guarded against poverty and shielded from harsh reality of needing to acquire street-smartness and survival skills, would think that it is their birthright to demand for luxuries that their parents tried to offer to the kids. Whatever they missed, they did not want their children not to have.

On the part of the children, hard work and motivation would be alien vocabularies. They would talk about enjoying life. having a complete life, not to miss out on finer things of life and the now well renowned phrase of that it is their life and they can live any which way that they please!

In the immortal words of Confucius, wealth in a family would only last 3 generations. And the cycle of life would go back to square one!

Caught in a time warp

On a quiet Friday afternoon, I dropped in my relative's office as I was passing by that area. Something like how a mafia henchman drops in at the boss' place to show respect! Anyway, just to say 'hi' and 'bye'. The Man was not in so I ended up with a tete-a-tete with his high society daughter. After the usual pleasantries, the conversation swayed on to her two children's education in an international school. The high heeled Madame managed to enlighten the poor relative (yours truly) on the latest happenings in an international school these days. It was indeed an eye opener!

Leave us kids alone!*

The catch phrase these days in the educators' circle seem to be to protect the psyche of the students and to refrain from creating an aversion to school. In other words, bend over backwards to keep the children happy and to put up with all their tantrums. It is a cardinal sin to ever upset their feelings and learning should be a pleasurable experience for them with no dent in their individual self esteems (ego). Students cannot be reprimanded for making mistakes in class and in their worksheet. They are not required to do corrections for errors in their school work. They do not have to sit for dictation. Red ink cannot be used to mark books as again it will upset them and maybe they would not like to come to school. At the end of the term test, they would not be given placing in class as again it may crush their little egos and may retard their self development. It appears to me that we are dealing with whiny spoilt bred babies and the educators are retarding their growth to adulthood with the ability to endure the trials, tribulations, competitions, failures and what not which is seen in the real dog eat dog world!
The good thing offered by the school is the exposure that the students get in the fields of games, drama and music. Being dissatisfied with the pace and depth of studies, the family members and private tutors were roped in to provide patch up work to fill up the deficiencies in the private school system so as to prepare a well rounded education for her kids to face the real world. And mind you, both kids have not reached double digits in their ages yet!
Hey! Looks like things have not changed much from RRF days. You still depended on tuition teachers and tuition classes even if you are in international schools. And guess what; even tertiary students in college and universities in the Klang Valley employ tuition teachers to teach them. These tuition teacher dependent varsity students are going to lead some multinational companies and perhaps rule the country one day. Scary!!!
*Pink Floyd, 1979: Another brick in the wall
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4SKL7f9n58

Memories of RRF: Tuitionsss (Tuition Asses)

As parents, most people would not want to gamble with their children's future. They rather follow the weather bitten path followed by many, herd mentality you could say, but the logic is the majority cannot be wrong. History has shown again and again that the odd snowball who was frowned upon had changed the world we live in. A classic case of this would the quiet Jewish boy who failed his math and science tests who subsequently received the Nobel prize in Physics with his theory of relativity (A. Einstein). And the daydreaming Malay boy at the back of the class in Penang Free School who was forever humming songs to himself and was thought to be off his balance eventually turned out to carve his name eternally in the Malaysian movie and music industry (P. Ramlee).

2001 Family Pix

Are you the parent who would take a gamble on your children's future by doing the extra-ordinary? Well, my parents did not and I dare not. Amma decided that education was the way forward out of the dungeon of RRF. This was 40 years before MIC realised this. (Just to quote the text of Najib's speech in a MIC award ceremony for UPSR students). I suppose they will be there just there as UPSR best students to hail MIC contribution to the Indian society of Malaysia. Most of them will be nowhere to be found after the PMR top students' list is out. By then it would not be MIC's problem anymore, is it not? They do not have a single Tamil secondary school.
It is also the same with the concept with home schooling concept. Just because everybody is saying that the quality of national schools at its lowest ebb, not at par to its former glory days and its southern neighbour and the rest of the developed world, that does not warrant us to jump the band wagon of home schooling of selling an arm or a leg to finance our children in the international schools! By resorting to home schooling, we (the parents) are actually taking it upon ourselves to develop our children academically, socially (developing inter and intra personal skills) and street smartness. In essence, we are taking a gamble on their future. What if it did not turn up as we planned? Are we going to have blood in our hands? I rather have others take the blame.
Coming to the topic at hand. Sending children for tuition seems to be a part and parcel of Malaysian education. Everybody is going for it, so go for it. Even the teachers who are not terribly forthcoming in school suddenly metamorphose into scholarly tutors in these tuition centres. Why not take the risk if so and so's kids improved by leaps and bounds after attending so and so's tuition centre?
That is what Amma must have thought when she sent us to all these tuition places back in RRF. My earliest recollection of attending tuition classes was when I was in about Std 4. The pressure was there for me to obtain good Std 5 public examinations results as it was a pre-requisite to attend PFS. So, there I was, sent to attend Mr Balakrishnan's classes in B block. Mr Bala's tuition class was packed as he was, to the local Indians, God's Avatar as he was the only secondary school teacher in midst of clerks and similar ranking staff. Like they say, in the kingdom of blind, one-eyed Jack is king. He could not be wrong! Actually his wife, a homemaker, is the one who did most of the teaching. I would describe her to be like a trigger happy gun swinging cowboy in a western movie, looking at the way happy swinging her wooden ruler at the students, among those in the receiving end were her two boys (Yoges and Vicky) who were not the brightest match in the box! She also had a toddler who was forever crying with thick mucus sliding down her nostrils and answering nature's call as she liked it. Special treatment would be given to his prized student, Saiful, the son of a top brass in FRU (Federal Reserve Unit) situated nearby. Mr Bala will personally be teaching him over at the table at the corner of the room whilst all the other low-lives will be trashing it on the linoleum paved floor. Being a born again to discover Christ, Mr Bala was active in pursuit of lost souls and shows them the way, the truth and the light. This probably took a lot of time off his tuition class. I have also witnessed having a beer or two at the B block coffee shop with fellow comrade Simon. I think he must have somehow be instrumental in our (sisters and I) attendance at a Sunday school which was conducted at B-1-22. I remember we were coerced to bring friends to the Sunday school. In return, we would receive small goodies and 'fish' stickers on the soft board against our name. There was an instant when it was story time. The teacher was telling a biblical tale about various sacrifices offered to God. I was a bit confused when God chose lamb over fruits, produce and live stock. We were told that the blood of the lamb is pure. And off she sang..., "There is pau (power, pow'r) pau, wonder working pau, in the blood...of the lamb..." I did enjoy the free biscuits and sweet tea offered there. After some time, Mr Bala was no longer the flavour of the season, somebody somewhere said that some other tuition teacher is better and there ended our stint at Mr. Bala's and we moved on in life.
Then there was a stint with Mr Louis Pious, a blind master (he was probably teaching blind students!). His daughter, Ruby, used to run a nursery at the Youth Club building, a debilitated wooden building sandwiched between Block E and the cemetery. Going to this centre (situated at G-0-23) was a pure exercise in futility, as the fellow attendees were goons and write offs. Mr Pious used to conduct oral spelling test by placing students to be seated in front of him. If one were to give the wrong answer, he would just swing his cane (rotan) at the direction of the sound (voice) of the answer. In spite of being not so bright, these kids were street smart. They would bend down, dodge their body and tilt their head to make their voices resonate from a different angle! Innocent bystanders like yours truly will be in the line of fire of wrath of Mr Pious and the path of his cane. We did not last there.
For a short duration, tuition was with Mr Sundram's daughter at D-4-22. Mr Sundram, Appa's contemporary, worked as a peon in a bank. Due to his problem with the bottle and debts, his Form 6 daughter had to rope in extra cash to make ends meet at the household. Our stint there did not last long either as Mr Sundram died and his daughter was given his job in the bank and she went up the ladder fast.
Then there was Cikgu Zakaria, a Bahasa Malaysia teacher in Jalan Thean Teik. Again we were there after strong recommendations by someone. We particularly enjoyed the long walk through the kampong road (a short cut) to the Cikgu's house. Here, I befriended a particular boy by the name Subramaniam who was a barber's son and would forever talk about Tamil movies in particular MGR's.
Ms Veni was another teacher we use to go, albeit a short time. Her mother, a Chinese by birth would talk fluent Tamil but in a very entertaining way. Her brother, Raja, is still in touch these days.

Children are the future?(Whitney Houston)
I wonder if Houston actually cared for her
kids when she was in and out of rehabs
fighting her drug habit and holding on to
what remained of her relationship with
hubby, Bobby Brown? 

As I went on to the higher forms, I guess I got too sexy for my clothes! Amma still convinced me to attend tuition. In Form 3, I was attending tuition with Mr Laxmanan in Youth Club. He was teaching English and Maths. It was more of a time to unwind there. My friends there were Ananthan, Aidid, Puva and another guy from PFS (in the back classes) who used to bring a dagger to class! Well, he will invariably sit with me, not the way around.
My verdict after attending all the above classes is that the actual learning that I did was in the school classroom when the teacher was teaching. In spite of this, my kids still attend tuition classes in selected subjects, to keep up with the Joneses and the 'kiasu' attitude that we a Malaysian have acquired over the years to survive in this land of plenty to those who try!