Tuesday, February 07, 2006
~ 10:11 AM ~
"I actually went through all that?!"
Was watching the movie "I not stupid" on tv a couple of nights back. It's a singapore movie that aired in year 2002 and was a resounding success as it spoke about the education system's overemphasis on exams and competitiveness...
As i watched the movie, my primary school and early secondary school days began to surface in my mind...which gave me a sense of nostalgia...hmmz..Nostalgia may not be the appropriate word coz i dun really yearn to go back to the past..but couldnt find a better word..hmmz...
I remember myself to be 'stupid' during primary school days (my parents can testify to tt and i believe tt they should be nodding their heads when they see this..haha!). When i say 'stupid', it's because i couldnt do well in exams. My english was bad, my mathematics was atrocious..i think only my chinese CMI (Can Make It).
I remembered doing stacks of assessment books tt my mother so diligently bought and i so reluctantly did..haha! my mum would always assign me homework frm this big blue eng vocab book which i found it tough to do. my mum would tear the answer sheets frm the back of the book and hide it somewhere so tt i would not be able to find the answer sheets and copy them...i remember my performances in those vocab exercises to be inconsistent...i could score well at times..but i scored badly most of the times..haha! then my mum would patiently sit and go thru the mistakes with me...
My dad would spend sunday afternoons revising mathematics with me. i kinda hated it..coz i wanted to play and watch tv on sundays! haha! i mean, i was a kid then mahz...only wanna play and watch. My dad would patiently go thru the math problems while i would impatiently wait for my dad to give me the answers..which he never did..coz he wanted me to work the answers out myself, under his guidance...pressure manz! haha!
some of the tv scenes made me remember things tt i have forgotten long ago.. one of these things was the way how teachers passed down exam papers. we took exams in classrooms and whenever the teacher walked in with a huge stack of exam papers, all of us would start to panic and wish each other good luck. Then the teacher would count the no. of students in each row and put the correct no. of scripts on the front of the row and the 1st student in tt row was to pass the paper backwards to the students behind him/her. I remembered trying to see some of the questions in the midst of passing but i never did succeed..haha!
Another thing i hated during primary school days was the policy of letting parents sign ur exam papers....hated it....basically coz i never did well in exams! I was always crippled with fear when i faced my parents with really low exam marks written in red on my exam scripts. Scolding and caning (i think got caning gua..cant remember, dad mum..haha) were the norm in these situations...i really felt tt exam scores gave me a huge blow to my confidence then ..coz it's like, frens are doing well, y m i so unlucky to be The One who does badly...hence, i hated exams! haha!
I remember some of the tricks i would come up with to overcome this policy. I think i once forged my dad's signature on the exam paper and i was caught..haha! i recall myself practising my dad's signature many times b4 signing on tt exam paper for my teacher to inspect...i cant really remember whether it did happen...but i have a hunch feeling tt i did it b4..haha! Another trick tt i thought of but did not materialise was to borrow a fren's script which had high marks for ur dad to sign, since it was highly unlikely tt parents would read thru the script when the marks were good..haha!
Another thing tt i hated during primary school was parent-meet-teachers day, especially if i hated the teacher and felt tt the teacher would take 'revenge' on me by speaking bad about me. Normal comments about me include "Jason's english is bad. He must read more story books" or something abt me needing more practise in certain subjects....yucks manz! but of coz, there were really pleasant teachers who would sing me praises..hehez!
haiz...how time flies...in Uni already...in my final year...I must say that I miss those primary school days..but if you ask me whether I would want to live through them again, I would give u a resounding "NO WAY dude!"
