October
14, 2002
the 'exam' state of mind
Listening to: Miles Davis - the Kind of Blue album
Reading: more, more study books
It's Monday and the sticky, haunting arms of the physics and biology exams still
have me in their wrath. And after school...
"All of you are not progressing. You are all still stuck in that PMR mentality, that
unfortunate state of mind."
The stern pair of eyes stare back at all six of us daring him to say otherwise. He's
telling the truth anyway. Mr Nathan is my tuition teacher, and as far as I'm concerned, one
of my only real teachers.
I don't know how it works anywhere else, but here in KL it's perfectly normal to go to
school for seven hours or so and then after, a string of tuition and extra classes
elsewhere where other teachers seeking to make more money repeat the same things you've
learnt in school (hopefully to be faster than the school teachers) and for a crazier
amount of fees. Virtually everyone I know has tuition for at least 4 subjects in at least
2 different places. Some of them even go for two or more classes teaching the SAME
subject.
Personally I find it all very ridiculous. But the entire KL high school and middle school
children and their parents see it as an absolutely ordinary thing. They've become so
dependent on it that when their children get low marks, one of the first things a parent
would say is "But I've sent you to tuition!"
They can't seem to grasp the fact that they can't just pay hundreds of dollars a month to
various centres and go "Oh, I've put in so much money, Jemmy will definitely get
As." What is tuition really, but paying people to repeat lessons to their children
that they themselves could do at home, in their room, with revision books. And then when
it comes to grades, it's all up to the those taking the exam. But then again, I guess I
can't blame some who do seek tuition, because when it comes to my school I could give you
an entire list of incompetent teachers off the top of my head.
Which brings me, after the spontaneous carousel ride, back to the first paragraph. Mr
Nathan is my only tuition teacher,
and as far as I'm concerned, one of my only real teachers. He's an old fashioned guy who
teaches in a hastily-renovated room at the back of his house that constantly smells mildly
of sewerage and mildew. He has this aura about him that obliges all of us to call him Sir,
something from the 70s and 80s, and he still believes in making you write a hundred lines
if you can't answer the questions he asks at the start of each class. Hmm. I'm putting
this in the cast page.
Sometimes we get lucky and he forgets to hand out those punishments. He forgot today, but
he was mad at us anyway. He
was asking us questions that I knew he had exasperatedly asked us before, and we're still
fumbling and sounding like an audio textbook when we reply. It happens to me too, and
occasionally, when my lips press back together tightly after an answer while waiting for
his approval, I realise that I have no idea what I just said, just that I said it.
PMR is one of the 'big' exams in Malaysia. I don't know what to compare it to, but it's
two years before our SPM. We spend the first three years of high school prepping up for it
only to realise that in Form Four afterwards it's an entirely new ball game, culminating
in SPM (equivalent to British O levels I think) next year. We take almost nothing from
Form Three's PMR exam with us. In fact, Mr Nathan is right. PMR is mindless child's play.
I don't know what's the point of having us prepare for it if they're going to confuse us
immediately after because SPM and PMR are worlds apart. And in Form Four, that year after
PMR and before SPM, we're supposed to know exactly what's going on and shift gears, quick.
Mind you, it's a radical gear shift. In almost all aspects; subjects, exam formats,
methods, and most importantly, way of
thinking.
Isn't it ironic that low SPM results translates to the students' failure to have recovered
entirely from PMR related studies because really, they have almost nothing to do with each
other. Mr Nathan's PMR mentality sentence rings over and
over again in my head, that automatic textbook state of mind will be our downfall when
sitting for SPM next year.
What if, after SPM, it's another 360 turn of the wheel?