Confessions of a Cikgu Melayu (warning: long)

It’s Special Week this week with each day being a subject day and I had a wonderful time just now. We had Nuradee who brought in traditional instruments, and an impromptu jamming of sorts. I asked Nuradee if they could please please please sing Ke Makam Bonda for me, which they did, along with Tekad and the kids’ (weird)requests of the MUIS theme song for Zakat and that show on the underprivileged zakat recipients ‘Kau Istimewa’.

 

Being the jocks that they are, these kids can be rather myopic when it comes to the finer side of life – music (except the mtv trash/mat emo stuff they are weaned on) and poetry. I passed around copies of Usman Awang’s classic poem Ke Makam Bonda to a chorus of groans, and HA! They shut up when Nuradee brought the poem to life. Amik kau! Ternganga.

 

And I had that feeling I had when I did these kind of stuff at BP, you know, seeing the wonder in kids’ eyes and their jaws dropping in awe at discovering something new. At the risk of sounding like the poster-child for MOE, that is the (only) reward for teaching that I crave for. And it’s something that I’ve not gotten here where I am for a long time.

 

Which brings me to the issue which I’ve been mulling over for the past 2 years. At the risk of raising the ire of fellow cikgu melayus, I wonder if I should say this out loud. I hate being a cikgu melayu.

 

I was inspired enough by Dr Hadijah Rahmat to set out, very ra ra about nurturing this love for the language et cetera. Never mind that I majored in something else and could be teaching something else but was channeled here due to manpower needs. This ra ra va va voom got me going for the first 3 years at BP when I had the almost perfect combination of management, colleagues and most importantly, students.

 

When it felt like I was losing my mojo last year, I thought a change of environment would do me good. Hence I skipped over here, hoping the independent system and the promise of disciplined students (an oxymoron, that!) would be an interesting environment. One where I could just teach, sans the usual titik-bengik nonsense so characteristic of the civil service.

 

True enough, this place is La La Land for teachers; there's the visionary Yoda of a principal, the no-hierarchy-everyone-goes-by-first-names non-structure, amazing infrastructure, generous-funds–we-can-play-around-in-so-many-way-with (whether it’s going on study trips to the Microsoft High School of the Future in Philadelphia or Legoland in Denmark – for learning – or taking a postgrad degree or anything), the wonderful hours, very dedicated team of colleagues, etc.

 

But alas, you can’t have it all, can you? Because the most important factor in the equation is rather odd. Coming here required a massive paradigm shift, something I’m still grappling with.

 

The kids seem to operate with this structure in their mind; top of the list are their coaches, then their managers, and somewhere at the bottom are well…us teachers. Coaches teach them how to perform better, managers decide on their overseas trips and competitions, while teachers…well…just teach. Since I figured out this unspoken hierarchy among the students, I sort of understand the attitude. 

 

Example. N spotted the right questions for the ‘O’ level papers (not ML, but an ‘important’ subject). She received a flood of sms-es from her former pupils in a neighbourhood school thanking her for the tip and guidance. Here? Zilch. She had to ask them how it was, to which they shrugged and said ‘yeah, it was ok, familiar, can answer’. Notice no thanks, no appreciation. It’s as if everything is a race; if they were first in the sprint, they have themselves to thank, for it is them who ran the race. Not anybody else. Coaches might coach, but they ran.

 

This I-ism or Me-mentality seems to spill onto every other aspect of their lives.

 

It’s disturbing, as a teacher. But wait. Add ‘malay teacher’ or ‘subject: malay language’ to the equation and you get an even bleak-er picture.

 

Alah..Malay…tak important/significant (from the students’ point of view. It gets on my nerves..like malay what? Malay food? Malay clothes? They can’t even say ‘bahasa melayu’)

 

Ok, so I get that from one hand.

 

On the other hand, as a cikgu melayu you are also entitled to the following benefits:

 

1)       you are assumed to be of only certain capabilities

2)       you are relegated to taking care of malay dance/malay this/malay that (i do like these things, and i did start and 'manage' a gamelan group, but i hate being stereotyped)

3)       you miss out on being in some committees because they assume you don’t know anything about other fields (like outdoor activities/expeditions etc, things not malay)

4)       you get gasps of admiration when you speak English (oh please, as in normal proper English, not as if it’s BBC or Queen’s English or something)

5)       realizing you speak better English than your HOD

6)       you are left out of ‘discussion clubs’ or ‘discuss-movies-and-books-club’

7)       you are basically on your own.

 

Wonderful, isn’t it? Who wouldn’t want all these perks?

 

I'm thankful for the upcoming few-years hiatus coming up soon. perhaps i can think deeper into what is it that i would really like to do.

 

excuse me while i go lick my wounds.