"DO YOU KNOW of any robust high-spirited girl of eleven who has never been tempted to run down a flight of steps, at least once?" I asked a friend one day, out of the blue.
She looked at me with surprise before replying: "Certainly not!"
More than six decades have passed since I left St. Mary's Boarding School for Girls, but I still feel a twinge of indignation at the injustice of the punishment meted out to me by the Superintendent of the boarding school (i.e., the hostel) whom we nicknamed Birdy.
Her surname was Bird, and she had a sharp beak of a nose, set off by green, piercing eyes. She firmly believed that adults could do no wrong, and fervently enforced the dictum, "Spare the rod and spoil the child."
My father was stationed in Temerloh, in the backwoods of Pahang, and there were scarcely any schools around, not to mention good ones. My mother had envisaged my sister and I growing up well-educated and refined. If she put us in a high-class boarding school run along the same lines as those in England, we had a better chance of turning into respectable young ladies. And so she scrimped and saved to achieve her ambition for us.
St. Mary's was indeed "high-class" in terms of fees. Each month, it took more than a Chinese school headmaster's salary to keep us both there. And the rules, to say the least, were unbelievably strict.
Boarders were only allowed three changes of every thing in their wardrobe, e.g., three cotton dresses for school, three silk ones for church, three pairs of underclothes, three pairs of socks, and so on. The idea was to have one set in the wash, one set in the wardrobe, and one on the body.
Senior girls were addressed as Miss, and they had no problems, but we Juniors had to be on our toes the whole time. To add to our discomfort, we had to run errands for the dignified seniors and end up dishevelled and sweaty. Between the Seniors and the Juniors there was no love lost. How does it feel to be constantly discriminated against? Especially at bath time, when an impatient knock on the door meant we had to come out at once and let them use the bathroom first.
This unwholesome rank-pulling seems prevalent everywhere - not only in the army, but also in schools and offices. No doubt a similar sort of pecking order occurs in the animal kingdom, but surely we can invent a better way of achieving social harmony?
I recall flashing my eyes in defiance when Birdy punished me for using the rickety sewing machine on a Sabbath. No one had informed me that on the Sabbath only hand-sewing was permitted. Furthermore, Juniors were forbidden to operate a sewing machine. The penalty was six strokes on the cushy part of one's anatomy with a hairbrush, or Birdy's slippers.
As an "Asiatic" child in a white expatriate environment, I was subjected to treatment which aroused in me a sense of inequality and injustice. It was easy to suspect that the white race was prejudiced against everybody else, even if they didn't actually despise us. At any rate, this early exposure to the insidious humiliation of racial discrimination made me shun anything Anglican - schools, churches, clubs. When it was time for me to find employment, I chose to teach in a Chinese school. This loathing lasted many decades.
On weekdays, we played croquet and tennis, and on Saturdays we went on long walks in the evening. Here again, if I lagged behind the group, the penalty would be to do forty sums. Ironically, I fared very badly in my math exams. And I barely passed my Religious Knowledge, on account of the numerous penalties I had to endure for failing to memorize the scriptures correctly. I suppose in those days no one had heard of "positive feedback"!
There was no way of describing the oppression my sister and I felt at St. Mary's, and no way of even informing our parents that we were miserable, for all letters home were censored by Birdy. And we couldn't go home till the end of the term.
My mother probably suspected that all wasn't well with her daughters, but she was a great believer in perseverance. One day, Birdy carried her disciplinary notions a little too far. My sister Loy, who was only nine, arrived late for dinner and was sent to bed without it. Later, a jug of milk was delivered to her. No questions were asked as to why she was late (she had to let all the almighty Seniors use the bathroom ahead of her). The next morning, Loy was too sick to have breakfast or attend school. She was a frail child and, like most "Asiatic" children, she disliked milk. The Asian way would have been punishment after dinner - at least the child would be well fortified!
This incident led to our being released from St. Mary's. Our stay there had caused my mother more hardship than her daughters. She had had to commute between Temerloh and Kuala Lumpur (on one of the most hazardous roads in the country), and she had had to rent a house in Kuala Lumpur because of us. This had put a terrible strain on her physically, emotionally, mentally and financially; with her having to budget for two separate households, including maids, while constantly worrying about our well-being.
If Birdy had possessed the most rudimental insight into child psychology, or if only she had been inspired by the feeblest promptings of the heart, my memories of St. Mary's boarding school would have been as happy as those of the mornings I spent in the classroom with the day students. I greatly enjoyed learning literature and history. I also loved the chances I had to perform on stage. The role of a buccaneer inspired strength and courage. I was also a terrible prankster. In class, the standard mischief among us junior girls was to hide the senior girls' high-heeled shoes when they changed into rubber ones for games.
On reflection, then, I should allow my happy school hours to offset the unhappy times in the school hostel. To quote Jean Juares: "We should take from the past its fire, and not its ashes."
Showing posts with label St Mary's Boarding School. Show all posts
Showing posts with label St Mary's Boarding School. Show all posts
Monday, 30 January 2012
Tuesday, 27 December 2011
TO MADGE, WITH LOVE
SCHOOLS AND FACTORIES have much in common: they are places where "raw" materials are methodically processed into useful products - hopefully of some quality.
This was very much the case even in the early 1920's. In my school, the students were expected to be prim and proper, scrupulously clean at all times. We had to keep a straight back and a straight face - unless the teacher happened to be telling a joke, which wasn't often. It was, in fact, just like being in the army; it's hardly surprising that soldiers tend to go berserk in times of war!
In later years, there were moments when I considered myself fortunate to have been educated in such a mechanical, military fashion. Perhaps the discipline inflicted on me did equip me with an inner strength, which has served me well in the face of many hardships and setbacks I have experienced on the road of life. Yet I sometimes wonder: isn't it possible to cultivate the necessary grit and determination, to learn how to accept challenges without flinching, by less painful means?
My teachers were all efficient robots, save one - and she was looked upon as the weak link in an otherwise steely chain of command. It is conceivable that these "robots" might have had a soft spot in their hearts - even for us "Asiatics" - but they had to maintain the hallowed tradition of the army and keep us all in our places.
A rigid sense of decorum and dignity established and widened the gulf between the British teachers and their Asian students. We knew nothing of one another's background, culture and religion, and had absolutely no inkling of one another's personal opinions and expectations.
It was during the last stage of my school life that Madge showed up and radically changed the meaning of education for me. Madge was our literature teacher, and the whole class fell headlong in love with her almost on sight.
She could have passed off as a Brit except for her dark hair and eyes; but not being indisputably British, she didn't have that air of sternness, that stiff upper lip, that subtle sneer of condescension. Madge was Anglo-Indian, and exquisitely lovely blend of cultures and genes.
Miss McNeil, our crotchety missionary Principal, and Miss Bird, the seedy-looking Superintendent of St. Mary's Boarding School, did not approve of Madge one bit. They took particular objection to Madge's style of dressing and her lively mannerisms. Madge, you see, dressed comfortably for the tropics, in collarless, sleeveless, unfrilly dresses - just long enough to cover her knees. Moreover, Madge didn't wear a straw hat, nor did she ever don a white cocked hat when leaving the school building.
Madge had been accepted as a teacher on account of her excellent qualifications. As a part-Asian, her salary was probably about half that of a "full-blooded" B.A. imported from England.
She couldn't have been more than twenty-three: fresh as a lily she was, and she walked with such a bouncy step, she appeared to be bobbing, especially when she was in a hurry. She was just a little under five feet, and slightly rounded. Her tailor-cut outfits matched her petite form to a "T" - in enviable contrast to our own sack-like attire (designed by our thrifty mothers to last us several years, and therefore deliberately sewn three sizes too large). While we girls had to wear three-quarter length sleeves, Madge wore daring sleeveless dresses that revealed her fair and shapely arms. Her hair, so smooth and sleek, was tied in a neat knot at the nape of her neck; ours had to be plaited or cut very short. In comparison with our completely outdated appearance, Madge was a veritable fashion plate. And apart from being so approachably small, she had the most enormous heart ever.
Because of her, we all made excellent progress in English and Literature. We learned to appreciate poetry without being forced to commit every line to memory. My enthusiasm soared to such giddy heights that I even attempted to read Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.
When I think back on my final year at school, I can picture Madge sitting so prettily behind her desk, which seemed too large for her. The chair had been specially modified for her and held an extra-thick cushion, without which we would all have towered over her. Our gaze often rested on her lips and not on our books as she read to us our favourite poems: The Miller of the Dee, Young Lochinvar, Casablanca, Longfellow's Psalm of Life.
We acted out Shakespeare's plays with great delight - A Midsummer Night's Dream, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night. We shed tears over Dicken's David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, and laughed uproariously or wept over his Pickwick Papers. We were so very human during our Literature lessons. It was indeed wonderfully therapeutic for our souls to feel such a range of emotions. However, we had to restrain ourselves whenever we heard the "squeaky approach" of our Principal. Thank goodness she had those shoes - otherwise hers would have been a "sneaky approach"!
Madge typified the Ideal Woman for us. When we heard she was going on leave, we immediately suspected that she was planning to get married and we rejoiced on her behalf, for in our hearts we all harboured hopes of someday being allowed to choose our own spouses. Some of my classmates were already betrothed to young men they had never met. Alas, they were compelled to be obedient and filial daughters, as tradition dictated.
Those few months with Madge were the happiest period of my school life. But the Chinese have a saying: "Let us not be too happy lest the gods begin to envy us!" And sure enough, we were soon deprived of our ecstasy. Madge came in one morning, her cheeks pale, eyes hollow and dull. The sun seemed to have disappeared behind the clouds. We stood up in silent discomfort as she entered the classroom, all of us instinctively aware of her distress, and so we spared her the customary chorus of cheery greetings. With a grateful nod, she bade us be seated.
The lesson began in an unexpected way. One of the girls was asked to read a particular scene from Twelfth Night. Our minds were definitely not on Shakespeare. How could we savour the Bard when it was so evident that some terrible tragedy had befallen our favourite teacher? But what the nature of the disaster was, we could only speculate. Madge didn't utter a sound until the girl had reached that excruciatingly poignant line:
She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i' th' bud,
Feed on her damask cheek. She pin'd in thought;
And with a green and yellow melancholy
She sat like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief.
Then, struggling to control her emotions, Madge thanked the girl and asked her to sit down. saying she had had a bad night and was suffering from a splitting headache, Madge told us all to carry on reading quietly. But we knew it was her heart that ached and not her head.
As soon as class was over, we urged one of the Eurasian girls, whom everyone called The Official Reporter (as she was well-connected to "reliable sources"), to investigate the exact cause of Madge's grief.
Early the next day, our Official Reporter turned in a story that generated a tidal wave of shock and anger throughout the entire class. Our hearts were moved to profound outrage at the injustice done to our beloved Madge.
This was what we learned: Madge had a beau of French and Dutch descent whose family had strongly objected to his wanting to marry an Anglo-Indian girl. Such a case of unmitigated bigotry! The young man's family was known to be wealthy, but that didn't make them a better class of half-breed than Madge! Or was it simply because half of Madge was asian? The young man had suggested elopement - but Madge felt that such an unseemly recourse went against the grain of her character. Was it wrong to be in love? Why must they run away and hide their faces from society? In any event, Madge must surely have felt deeply stricken by such overt rejection.
We debated this topic amongst ourselves for over a week. What would constitute a morally impeccable solution? The more impulsive or romantic ones argued that true love should triumph over all else, and that Madge would be perfectly justified if she threw convention and social mores to the winds. The more sober or timid ones maintained that love was far too noble a thing to be sullied with scandal, and that the truly high-minded lover must sacrifice love for the sake of love.
In the end, we jointly penned a letter a message of sympathy to Madge, in which we promised to pray hard for her future happiness. We added that it might be a blessing in disguise for her not to have anything to do with such a snobbish family, and reminded her that time would heal all wounds.
We never knew how she felt about our letter, which she graciously accepted, thanking us for our heartfelt concern. But Madge was never the same again. She had lost her effervescence, her buoyancy and bright confidence. We could only hope that she would meet someone worthy of her and live happily ever after. She certainly deserved it.
Our Official Reporter had overheard that Madge intended to resign at the end of the term and emigrate. We couldn't help but regret that she wasn't going to be around to congratulate us for the wonderful results we were going to obtain in English and Literature. Still, we were glad to think that we would soon be graduating from school. The experience of losing such a good teacher and friend was too traumatic to bear for long.
Without Madge, I might never have acquired a taste for literature, for drama and poetry. She evoked sympathy and understanding for our fellow-beings by her sheer generosity and vitality of spirit. These are what I consider the best things in life - the rightful heritage of all humankind.
This was very much the case even in the early 1920's. In my school, the students were expected to be prim and proper, scrupulously clean at all times. We had to keep a straight back and a straight face - unless the teacher happened to be telling a joke, which wasn't often. It was, in fact, just like being in the army; it's hardly surprising that soldiers tend to go berserk in times of war!
In later years, there were moments when I considered myself fortunate to have been educated in such a mechanical, military fashion. Perhaps the discipline inflicted on me did equip me with an inner strength, which has served me well in the face of many hardships and setbacks I have experienced on the road of life. Yet I sometimes wonder: isn't it possible to cultivate the necessary grit and determination, to learn how to accept challenges without flinching, by less painful means?
My teachers were all efficient robots, save one - and she was looked upon as the weak link in an otherwise steely chain of command. It is conceivable that these "robots" might have had a soft spot in their hearts - even for us "Asiatics" - but they had to maintain the hallowed tradition of the army and keep us all in our places.
A rigid sense of decorum and dignity established and widened the gulf between the British teachers and their Asian students. We knew nothing of one another's background, culture and religion, and had absolutely no inkling of one another's personal opinions and expectations.
It was during the last stage of my school life that Madge showed up and radically changed the meaning of education for me. Madge was our literature teacher, and the whole class fell headlong in love with her almost on sight.
She could have passed off as a Brit except for her dark hair and eyes; but not being indisputably British, she didn't have that air of sternness, that stiff upper lip, that subtle sneer of condescension. Madge was Anglo-Indian, and exquisitely lovely blend of cultures and genes.
Miss McNeil, our crotchety missionary Principal, and Miss Bird, the seedy-looking Superintendent of St. Mary's Boarding School, did not approve of Madge one bit. They took particular objection to Madge's style of dressing and her lively mannerisms. Madge, you see, dressed comfortably for the tropics, in collarless, sleeveless, unfrilly dresses - just long enough to cover her knees. Moreover, Madge didn't wear a straw hat, nor did she ever don a white cocked hat when leaving the school building.
Madge had been accepted as a teacher on account of her excellent qualifications. As a part-Asian, her salary was probably about half that of a "full-blooded" B.A. imported from England.
She couldn't have been more than twenty-three: fresh as a lily she was, and she walked with such a bouncy step, she appeared to be bobbing, especially when she was in a hurry. She was just a little under five feet, and slightly rounded. Her tailor-cut outfits matched her petite form to a "T" - in enviable contrast to our own sack-like attire (designed by our thrifty mothers to last us several years, and therefore deliberately sewn three sizes too large). While we girls had to wear three-quarter length sleeves, Madge wore daring sleeveless dresses that revealed her fair and shapely arms. Her hair, so smooth and sleek, was tied in a neat knot at the nape of her neck; ours had to be plaited or cut very short. In comparison with our completely outdated appearance, Madge was a veritable fashion plate. And apart from being so approachably small, she had the most enormous heart ever.
Because of her, we all made excellent progress in English and Literature. We learned to appreciate poetry without being forced to commit every line to memory. My enthusiasm soared to such giddy heights that I even attempted to read Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.
When I think back on my final year at school, I can picture Madge sitting so prettily behind her desk, which seemed too large for her. The chair had been specially modified for her and held an extra-thick cushion, without which we would all have towered over her. Our gaze often rested on her lips and not on our books as she read to us our favourite poems: The Miller of the Dee, Young Lochinvar, Casablanca, Longfellow's Psalm of Life.
We acted out Shakespeare's plays with great delight - A Midsummer Night's Dream, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night. We shed tears over Dicken's David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, and laughed uproariously or wept over his Pickwick Papers. We were so very human during our Literature lessons. It was indeed wonderfully therapeutic for our souls to feel such a range of emotions. However, we had to restrain ourselves whenever we heard the "squeaky approach" of our Principal. Thank goodness she had those shoes - otherwise hers would have been a "sneaky approach"!
Madge typified the Ideal Woman for us. When we heard she was going on leave, we immediately suspected that she was planning to get married and we rejoiced on her behalf, for in our hearts we all harboured hopes of someday being allowed to choose our own spouses. Some of my classmates were already betrothed to young men they had never met. Alas, they were compelled to be obedient and filial daughters, as tradition dictated.
Those few months with Madge were the happiest period of my school life. But the Chinese have a saying: "Let us not be too happy lest the gods begin to envy us!" And sure enough, we were soon deprived of our ecstasy. Madge came in one morning, her cheeks pale, eyes hollow and dull. The sun seemed to have disappeared behind the clouds. We stood up in silent discomfort as she entered the classroom, all of us instinctively aware of her distress, and so we spared her the customary chorus of cheery greetings. With a grateful nod, she bade us be seated.
The lesson began in an unexpected way. One of the girls was asked to read a particular scene from Twelfth Night. Our minds were definitely not on Shakespeare. How could we savour the Bard when it was so evident that some terrible tragedy had befallen our favourite teacher? But what the nature of the disaster was, we could only speculate. Madge didn't utter a sound until the girl had reached that excruciatingly poignant line:
She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i' th' bud,
Feed on her damask cheek. She pin'd in thought;
And with a green and yellow melancholy
She sat like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief.
Then, struggling to control her emotions, Madge thanked the girl and asked her to sit down. saying she had had a bad night and was suffering from a splitting headache, Madge told us all to carry on reading quietly. But we knew it was her heart that ached and not her head.
As soon as class was over, we urged one of the Eurasian girls, whom everyone called The Official Reporter (as she was well-connected to "reliable sources"), to investigate the exact cause of Madge's grief.
Early the next day, our Official Reporter turned in a story that generated a tidal wave of shock and anger throughout the entire class. Our hearts were moved to profound outrage at the injustice done to our beloved Madge.
This was what we learned: Madge had a beau of French and Dutch descent whose family had strongly objected to his wanting to marry an Anglo-Indian girl. Such a case of unmitigated bigotry! The young man's family was known to be wealthy, but that didn't make them a better class of half-breed than Madge! Or was it simply because half of Madge was asian? The young man had suggested elopement - but Madge felt that such an unseemly recourse went against the grain of her character. Was it wrong to be in love? Why must they run away and hide their faces from society? In any event, Madge must surely have felt deeply stricken by such overt rejection.
We debated this topic amongst ourselves for over a week. What would constitute a morally impeccable solution? The more impulsive or romantic ones argued that true love should triumph over all else, and that Madge would be perfectly justified if she threw convention and social mores to the winds. The more sober or timid ones maintained that love was far too noble a thing to be sullied with scandal, and that the truly high-minded lover must sacrifice love for the sake of love.
In the end, we jointly penned a letter a message of sympathy to Madge, in which we promised to pray hard for her future happiness. We added that it might be a blessing in disguise for her not to have anything to do with such a snobbish family, and reminded her that time would heal all wounds.
We never knew how she felt about our letter, which she graciously accepted, thanking us for our heartfelt concern. But Madge was never the same again. She had lost her effervescence, her buoyancy and bright confidence. We could only hope that she would meet someone worthy of her and live happily ever after. She certainly deserved it.
Our Official Reporter had overheard that Madge intended to resign at the end of the term and emigrate. We couldn't help but regret that she wasn't going to be around to congratulate us for the wonderful results we were going to obtain in English and Literature. Still, we were glad to think that we would soon be graduating from school. The experience of losing such a good teacher and friend was too traumatic to bear for long.
Without Madge, I might never have acquired a taste for literature, for drama and poetry. She evoked sympathy and understanding for our fellow-beings by her sheer generosity and vitality of spirit. These are what I consider the best things in life - the rightful heritage of all humankind.
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