The High School Choice

Coming from a place called Malaysia, here is my starting story.

There are few types of school in Malaysia. There are those normal government school, those super-funded tier one government schools, vernacular Chinese school, religious school, international school.

When I was small, I had my pre-school using Montessori method. All I remember from there is playing, sleeping, some exams, and maybe some cookies baking. It was a happy time.

Then, I grow up a bit, my mother put me into some-sort of tier 1 government school. It is a public SJCK(C)schools (which means private-government funded national schools), weirdly have their own “Singapore” Syllabus, provided an afternoon classes for students with teachers from Singapore. I guess having air-cond class back then is a cool thing. The homework is heavy loaded one, in addition I got tuition classes. Discipline is quite rigid one, but the teachers is good and guarantee your result if you are that kind of result orientated parents. Maybe it works for me too for this stage, as I am able to use my guts to creatively solve problems (MCQs questions), so I graduated there without any incidents, and with a recommendation letter from the principal.

Armed with the recommendation letter, I was offered two types of schools: Chinese Independent high school or a Methodist high school. I choose the Chinese Independent high school, thinking that it might be more well suited for me. For a time, things seems OK for me. The homework work load started to increase, but at least I can cope with it. But soon, not only I was over-flooded with homeworks, but the rigidness of disciple set in. There is NO IMAGINATIONS there. No shortcuts. The expectation is high, but I guess it is just a myth. People expects results, and results comes from A) Doing more homeworks; B) Deferring and forcing bad apples out. For A), students are given out more homework, which we can’t possibly finished and had to resorted to copying. And the teachers are forced to mark even more homework and giving out more “progressing” syllabus. For B), well, there is some students who are unable to move upward, so they stay in lower grad while their friends move up.

Not only the homework is killing me, but the rigidness of disciple also kills everyone else. They have this merits systems, which ranks students based the subjects classes. Let’s said we got 10 classes of math, but only 5 classes of History. They will rank it based on the weighted average of classes. If you are excel in math but poor in history, you are an excel student, but if you are excel in history but poor in math, then you are a bad apple. So every time when people says Chinese Independent is good at Math, I guess that is a compliment cause the only things is that they excel in Math, except for the specials one who excel in everything. And not only your marks are calculated in academic, but they have this disciplinary penalty too. If you didn’t hand in assignments, your marks will be deducted. If you are late, you will be penalised. And on top of that, you can’t have too much sickness leave (less you are in hospital) and for every leave you take there is penalty. Oh, and you got cane in front of everyone if you don’t pass up your homework.

For your information, everyday the classes start at 7.30am, last until 3.15pm. In between, there is two recession: a resting time of 30 minutes, and a lunch time of 45 minutes. You will have to go toilet between that time, or else you are not allowed to wander out the class room during classes. No one is allowed to be in the canteen after recession, and you must queue for your food, which left you 15 minutes to eat at most. After eating, you either start doing or copying homeworks so that you can pass it up on time. After lunch, basically I will be very sleepy, and classes will be boring that it seems like ages for me. The only thing I am waiting is the school bell to ring, to end my day there. Tomorrow, I have to wait up at 6am again. Days after days.

There are some good teachers there, some very kind heart one. I still remembered them. But basically it is a choice, a choice of my future. Am I going to do this all my life? Even getting A++ might means nothing despite those around my saying so. What’s the future hold for me? This system is killing me, but leaving it and fighting it doesn’t seems to hold any future for me. And I struggle there for 2 years, but decided enough is enough. By the third years, I throw my bag and leave. Despite the uncertainties that I am going to face, I prefer to have my destiny in my hands rather than putting it into an unknown big bother face that doesn’t accountable to me. Ironically, I excelled at Geography, History, and Investment, the former two doesn’t give high weight, the latter doesn’t even carry a single mark which I will found out is the single most important lesson in the world.

Leaving it out isn’t easy. I will have to find a way. Fortunately, the system in Malaysia is a BOLEH(everything OK) one, which means you can take national exams at your own initiative. I home school (study my own) for some years and take my SPM (final exams before tertiary) exams. Contrary to what people thought, SPM isn’t the end. It is only the end of the beginning. Getting poor results means you can be any university, maybe University of Greenwich? Who cares anyway? So, I enrolled in the University of Greenwich (yup, the one you saw in Thor 2 is my uni campus), and when the time is ripe, I drop out of it to try my own startup.

And now, who cares about my past? It exist as only a story for me to tell. Now I can tell why it doesn’t suits me. Tell me why it suits your son or anyone, then you are basically good into it. Or else, think about it. If one day our children expect to ask “Why” instead of “What”, then it is a progress. But I never saw my future in it, and now I know “why”. And I decided “when” to leave. Unfortunately, many still can’t distinguish.

If asked am I regretting not taking the right choice, I will say life is a responsibility, once you made you mind, keep it up and never look back. We are not tested only once, but everyday for the decision we are going to make. It will also affect others, influence generations to come. Remember Nobita? Maybe your Doraemon will come up to save you when you failed. So, I am not worrying too much, for I didn’t see any Doraemon from my future coming for me.