THE MEMOIRS OF MUSTAPHA HUSSAIN - Malaysia Today

Malay School Education 43
This especially enraged the older and larger-sized students. One afternoon,
a ‘big’ student whom he had caned mercilessly waylaid and attacked him
with a thick coconut palm branch.
The Principal of the Matang Teachers’ College, Alexander Keir,
recognised this teacher’s natural talents and accepted him for a two-year
course. Mr Keir, who later became Perak State Inspector of Schools, was
one white man who cared about the fate of the Malays and who gave
his all to help them get ahead in life, especially in education.
In his mission for excellence, my Assistant Headmaster took English
lessons from my oldest brother, Ahmed, but it was often a series of
arguments, rather than classes. For example, my brother would try to
explain that certain nouns could become verbs with the addition of the
word ‘to’ as in ‘to fish’. The teacher would then respond, “Oh, that is
real easy. So can we say ‘to bird’ then?”
My brother’s attempt to clarify why ‘to bird’ was unacceptable led
to such a heated argument that the class ended prematurely. My wise
mother calmed the situation by advising my brother, “Perhaps it is better
that you take care of your own education instead of giving him lessons.”
I joined the Matang Malay School as a starry-eyed pupil of ‘Standard
Nought’. For several months, we sat cross-legged on the rough wooden
floor as school furniture was in short supply. Alphabets and numbers were
learnt by copying them onto slate boards placed on our sarong-clad laps.
Bit by bit, we carried more items to school, including a ruler, a bottle of
water and some ari-ari leaves, which, when soaked in water, was excellent
for wiping the slate board clean.
By observing the older pupils, we pre-schoolers learnt that the
school’s wide outdoor banisters had other uses, among them, for sharpening
slate-pencils and for sliding down on.
In 1917, I entered Standard One, where we graduated to sitting on
large creaky chairs joined to flap-topped desks. What pride it gave us to
sit there! It gave me courage to ask my mother for more pocket money.
Was I not in a higher class now? Furthermore, the two brothers sitting
next to me were eating several packets of rice cooked in coconut milk
(nasi lemak) every day. Was I not entitled to that privilege too? My mother
responded dryly, “What? Are you going to school to learn or to eat?”
Some schoolboys, being schoolboys, were rather naughty. From them,
I learnt to play truant, not for many hours, but just a few minutes. After
gaining permission to go to the toilet, I would instead slip under the school
building to collect lion-ants found in the sandy soil. A strand of hair,
usually pulled from a friend’s scalp, was slowly lowered into a nesting
hole. After a short while, I could feel the hair being tugged, again and