My Primary School Years


As I was walking down memory lane to my primary school years about 50 years ago, school was just like a fun fair to us, especially among the boys. We played all sorts of games with much enthusiasm. On the other hand, study was our secondary concern, especially the language subjects like English and Malay which seemed to be foreign to us. We were very noisy during these linguistic lessons. Our English teacher in Standard Six was Mr. Khor Peng Chong. He had no way to induce us to be interested in his subject. He would thank God if we did not make noise during his lessons. Once he was very angry with a very notorious boy by the name of Lim Su Kuang that he swore that if that boy could pass the Secondary School Entrance Examination by the end of the year, he would jump from the Nibong Tebal Bridge into the River Krian to commit suicide. Unfortunately, he had to 'eat his words' as Su Kuang not only passed the examination; he passed it with Grade A.

I was another mischievous fellow who pulled the Malay language teacher’s leg during the Standard Six year. I remembered once the 'cikgu' was very delighted when I volunteered to stand up to construct a sentence in the Malay language. The sentence that I constructed was "Saya suka makan kopi dan minum roti." [Literally it means "I like to eat coffee and to drink bread."]I could not recall what was the punishment I got from the 'cikgu' after he had heard it.

At that time we did not realize the importance of these two subjects. What we were really concerned was the games we would play after the lessons were over. It was no wonder that our command of the English language was next to nil when we entered the Methodist Secondary School of Nibong Tebal the following year. We got frequent scolding of “Idiots” from Mr. Liew Jui Siong,our Form Teacher of the Remove Class.

Of course, there was always an exception. Khor Boon Seah was a real mugger. At home he had to study all day long under the scrutiny of his mother. Every day he was compelled to study for a fixed number of hours before he was allowed to come out to play with us at the Pai Teik School Union compound in the evening. He and Chin Phaik Hooi, another girl in the same class, were keen contenders for the first position in the class since Standard Two. There was a secret which I kept with Boon Seah for almost half a century. Once, during our Standard Four year (1961), Boon Seah was not satisfied with his performance in a written test for not being able to secure high marks. He worried that this test might affect his overall performance for the year. As such he urged me to go along with him to the school in that very afternoon to alter the answers on the answer script. I duly complied with his request as he used to grant me favours such as permitting me to learn riding on his bicycle and to play table tennis in his backyard. He ferried me to school on his bicycle. We stole the answer scripts from the staff room and made alterations of the answers under a papaya tree outside the staff room. We obtained perfect scores for the test.

Swimming was another extra-curricular activity of our own creation. A few of us among the boys would jump into a stream by the roadside on our way to school for afternoon activities.

On one occasion when we were having a 'swimming session' in the stream, Mr. Tan Choon Huat, a horrible teacher who seemed to be meddling with whatever things we did, was passing by in a Honda motorbike when he saw us. He stopped to confiscate our clothes to frighten us. As we were worried about how to leave the scene in the nude, the busy-bodied teacher came back minutes later to return us our clothes. Once bitten, twice shy. For the future swimming sessions, we made it a point to transfer our clothes on the other side of the stream to avoid ‘history repeating itself’.

School life in the primary school years was full of joy as most of us at that time did not know what and how to worry about our future. We let our future take its own course.

Undoubtedly,up to today, many of us still regard the primary school years as the best part of our school days as we liked to go to school not to study,but to play until there would be no tomorrows.