Saturday, February 06, 2010

my early primary school era....

I was born in the 70's .... early 70s - could be the era of kindergarden being introduced in my country. My parent didn't send me to kindergarden , no money and mum didn't know too ... When I went to standard one , all I could remembered was - teacher kept scolding me, every day I never failed standing in front of the classroom - hands carried the textbook - it's like a punishment for not knowing things or not doing the homework. One time, my standard one teacher met my mother, I was standing next to mum... that time I was 7 yrs old, today I'm 37 yrs old , yet I could rememberd her statement well : "Mrs, your daughter is hopelss, very stupid" ..... wah lau eh , that was such a harsh statement on me , a young little girl leh. standard 1 to 3 , I remained 'stupid' , every nite cried at home when sisters all forced me to study , or helped revised my homeworks .... I cried a lot back then , until my first brother in law nicknamed me 'ham pou chin' ( in cantonese ). Then entah what happened, suddenly standard 4 - I got transferred into the 'A' class - hipppie , at least tukar kulit liow , upgraded to the 'not stupid' class , haaa. I think the reason I was not able to catch up was that I didn't attend kindergarden whereas other students did. In standard one, while I was just started to learn A, B, C - most of the rest already learned this , and teacher also expected that I knew A, B, C .....
talking about being left out and being labelled as 'stupid'. Today, if the family is poor and the children cannot attend kindergardens, I could imagine their early primary school lives could be the same as mine, very the poor thing hor ...

The role of a teacher is very significant, he or she ought to be sensitive to the students. Plus a teacher should not labelled and used the word 'stupid' , everyone is different , everyone has his or her gifts and no one is 'stupid' ..... aiiiii

1 comment:

MG said...

yeah man, i agree that teachers are very important. What they say leaves a mark in our lives. I had a Math teacher in Form 6 who told me that I will never be successful in life, I would be nothing. Until today i can still see her facial expression when she said that. Then after I started working, I saw her at one of the buildings near my office, I told my ex-col about this story then she told me, U have to go up to her and tell her, hey see I am successfully today unlike the negative thoughts you put in my head years ago !. But I didn't then I found out later on that she is suffering from cancer... hmmm.... So I still think the role of a teacher is very crucial in a child's life. What they say can impact us for the rest of our lives.