Children are ‘colour blind’ until they reach Tingkatan 1??

This article from Screenshots (Jeff Ooi’s blog) caught my eyes as well as hit my heart!! It’s so true and sad to admit it caused I have gone through this before …. I was enrolled to co-ed SRK (Malay+Eng Ed) primary school when I was 7 years-old. Both my elder sister and brother were in SRJK (Chinese Ed) while my second sister go to all-girls SRK (Eng Ed). I think, my mum’s intention was to build a ‘trully Malaysia ’ culture at our home. Although my sister did teach me to write and read mandarin, but I couldn’t ‘catch’ any of them. A little stroke here and there will make the whole words meaning change tremendously. I thought to myself then, what the heck, english alphabet only gt a-z and that’s relatively easy to remember. But now, I regretted for not learning up the Mainland China’s mother tongue language. Well, talk about my own experience during my day at primary school, I must admit, it’s the best in my childhood memory!! I still remember my first day (back to 1987) at school. I was seated to the front row (due to my height) and next to me was a Malay girl called Murni. Seating opposite me was Erna and the malay boy next to her is Salleh. And there is another chinese guy who called Yuen Yew was seated next to Murni and a chinese girl, Choon Wei seated next to Salleh. That’s the structure of our classroom then … 2(row)x3(column) with of us facing each other. Our form teacher was the friendly lady called Cikgu Kamsiah. I remembered her well because I ‘adored’ her so much (nope, she isn’t young and sexy but a 40 something married lady). She taught me a lot of things (tatatertib and kesopanan) and I ‘manja’ her very much. She appointed a tall and slim Indian girl, Geeta ( we used to tease her and called her ‘guitar’ …) as our ‘ketua darjah’. While Safie was appointed as ‘penolong ketua darjah’. We have about 40 students and our class was called ‘1 Chempaka’ (1 mean standard 1 while Chempaka is flower name as there are others classroom are called Dahlia, Ros, Anggerik, etc) I always looking forward to go to school then and I never miss or 'ponteng' (play truant). That time, I don’t understand why there are students want to ponteng cause for me, schooling is already ‘a given permission to play’ unlike at home where playtime is limited. :P Back then, I was only managed to speak 2 languages, whenever I talked with teachers and my Malay or Indian classmates, or the ‘kacang putih’ seller, I spoke B.M. (every now and then, they change the ‘M’ with Malaysia or Melayu .. and I am not sure why they change at the first place!!) with them. Whenever I am at home or speaking to my chinese classmates, chinese vendor who sell ice-cream and noodles, I spoke cantonese. I picked up my BM quite fast and well; and I always scored 100% during ‘ejaan’ (spelling) but one word, this little one word really killing me that time … it’s ARNAB!!! In English, it mean rabbit. I always mispelled them because I was confused between the ‘b’ and ‘d’. I remembered my BM paper was 98 mark and the only mistake I made is ‘arnad’ … my mum scolded me for the whole damn day like I had killed someone!!! Although I scored pretty well in BM, English and Alam & Manusia (it’s a Science paper) papers but my Maths was suck!!! Well if I compared with my sisters and brother!! They can memerized all the ‘sifir’ (multiplication) from 2x2 till 12x12!!! I always stuck half way till 7 or 8. And I have problem reading the time from the analogue clock!! My eldest sister was my tutor in Maths and the worst part is, my mum gave her authority to ‘rotan’ (wipe) me whenever I make mistake!! I am not sure is it differences in the teaching method at SRJK and SRK that caused me so ‘dumb’ in Maths or it’s my own ‘number’ problem. Still, I am glad that my sister ‘guided’ me … or else, I can’t even enrolled myself in Double Maths during my high school :D. During recess period, we were not allowed to stay in class or do our homework. ( I believe that’s the way they reduce the stress from kids). Since I always bring my own food, I will normally sit outside the classroom along the corridor with my gang and ate our bread, biscuits, kuih-muih or muruku!! My mum didn’t give me any ‘allowance’ to spend at the canteen, so after we finish our meal, we will start our ‘game’. Anything, we created any games just to occupy our time while waiting for the second bell to ring. We played ice-cream stick, rubber band, guli (marble), card game (ali-baba, happy family), gasing (it was made illegal in school later because the ‘paku’ (nail) at the bottom seem like a potential deadly weapon from the eyes of the adults, but as for us, what we can see was the ‘paku’ can cause the gasing spin!!! … ), pepsi-cola (shoes stamping), kala-panjang, AEIOU, and many more. At that time, I was so fluent in BM that occassionaly I was mistaken as a Malay boy (due to my dark skin and big eyes as well). And most of my friends are malays. My mum was so freak out that she feared that one day I will married a malay girl and turn into a muslim!!! Anyway, that time, I always convince my mum by saying that, I still love all your ‘pork’ cooking, how could I turn my back on that :P … and I don’t like the idea of ‘allowing’ man to have 4 wives while the wife only allow to have one husband .. not fair mah, although the idea is quite tempting!!! Still majority of my classmates from Standard One – Six were brilliant Malay whereby many of them are fighting for the top performance with the Chinese. At that time, after Standard 3, we were seperated according to our merit achievement. Those who were top40 will grouped into one class called 4 Ungu (Purple) and then followed by Merah (Red), Kuning (Yelow), Hijau (Green) and finally Jingga ( Orange ). I was lucky to be in top40(thanks to my strict parents as well as my fierce big sister) , so here I go, to the Purple class. Let me try to recall my classmates name (as many as possible .. that’s 1992) … Ah Yu, Yit Hong, Wai Yee, Kah Hoo, Aisrin, Siew Lam, Yiu Hun, Geeta, Azlinda, Hartini, Syarif, Sharil, Choon Wei, Thoo Leem, Chung Yi, Sui Loong, Hamdan, Johnson, Peter, Kelvin, Boon Keong, Abdullah Sani, Irwin, Swee Keong, Norazlina, Hamid, Han Guang, Jeeva, Yaacob's son …. ( I think I miss out some and added in some from other class as well .. you see, there are buggers who loved to ‘lepak’ around our class .. that’s why I still remember their names but luckily, not their faces …hehe). Anyway, how I wished that I have the group photo to publish here ... too bad, camera and photos are not cheap at that time ... Obviously we are all ‘colour blinded’ … we don’t really care what race you are, all we care is how fun to be with you. If you are arrogant or ‘hidung tinggi’, you don’t expect to have many friends to hang around. Even if you are from poor or rich family, it doesn’t matter, caused the exam result will speak itself. You can’t buy or beg for a good result to join the elite class. If a small group of classmates make noise, the whole class will be wiped if get caught by our most fearsome, disciplinary teacher, Cikgu Musa. His ‘rotan’ (whip) never leave his hand, whenever he strolled pass any classrooms, one can felt immediate silence … no matter who you are, where you from, what you made of, how you come to school, when is your birthday, why you don’t understand … if your class is ‘bising’ (noisy) .. all of us will have to stand on the chairs and gt a nice whip on our hands …. It’s really super damn painful!!! The best part is … no parents will come forward complaining the next day, or next week or the following years … because no one dare to tell our parents about it. In those day, you whipped mean you are naughty or mischieving (even though you are innocent)… and if you tell your parents, you might end up having ‘bonus’ whip from them as well. So, to play safe, we keep our mouth tightly shut!! That’s was the time in primary school … Once I graduated with 2A’s and 2B’s in my pocket on the annual UPSR exam, I proceeded to ‘Tingkat Satu’ (Form One) … and there is where my culture shock began …. It’s the first time, I was mixed together with the Chinese Ed students from the other SRJK primary schools. It’s simply a different way of making friends. Their aggression in order to do something is tremendously different from the way I used to be in SRK experience. No matter in studies, sports or organizing functions, they are always hunger for information and success. It’s like either you do it, you must do it very well, or else forget about it. You can’t be do it half-way or else, you are a let-down to them. And one more thing that impressed me the most was their Maths skills. They are incredibly fast and precise ... and I wonder .. .what's went wrong in SRK!! So here is where 'colour blind' disease cured ... you will start to realize that ... Malay, Chinese and Indian don't mixed around anymore ... they are still some, but not as much as we see in my primary school time ... it's weird and shocking!! Everyone seem to be divided into small political party ... UMNO, MCA and MIC ... and there is no BN to combine us all ... everyone will has their own activities, clubs and interests ... it's really sickening scenerio ... is it because we can only be 'colour blind' when we are innocent-primary pupils ... why there is this invisible fence keeping us away from each other ... Even my close Malay friends from primary school shunned me ... our friendship turn from 'lot of talking' to 'hi-smile-bye' ... it's sadly true to admit that although we are already 50-years old, we got a long long way to achieve a trully Malaysia culture among us ...