some evil demented creatures in the form of teachers – part 3 of 4 – an angry abusive ego-driven teacher with zero substance

The whole world around me was swirling so fast and everything seemed to be fizzling out, disappearing. Each blow from my other classmate’s forehead that was violently and incessantly knocked against mine had become numb! The pain was beginning to feel surreal…out of the body. It was there yet not there and I wondered if I was either blacking out or dying! The screams from Mrs. Kwok had become softer, distant. My feet were merely floating, being dragged, like a stringed puppet. I had no more control over them. Instead, they were beginning to learn the rhythm, like dance steps…automatic while I kept crashing onto my classmate’s forehead, retracted a few steps back before going forward as our foreheads collided again and again.

This time, the tears flowing were uncontrollable. I knew somehow that if it was from another boy of the ‘A’ group who miraculously not being able to answer by some mysterious divine intervention that morning, or even some other classmate from my group (‘B’), that boy’s punishment would be much, much milder. It was also “Him”, my classmate from the ‘C’ group whom I had known for the fifth year by now. He was a quiet boy; timid, a bit slow (in retrospect, I don’t think he was slow, he just lacked self –esteem) and pretty much kept to himself at most times and even at that age, I wondered if him being poor had anything to do with his constant predicaments with our teachers. Our uniforms were white shirt and blue shorts and I never saw him in any what seemed to be new clothes. They were slightly off-white, mended and sometimes un-pressed.

The same would go for his pants – faded and mended with mismatched threads. I don’t think neither of us anticipated the severity for not being able to answer the square-route of 49 that morning. It was about 30-minutes after class had begun in the morning. It was year five of primary.

Mrs. Kwok, had the reputation of being the “best” teacher of primary year-five. Her students’ total score average would topple all other year-five classes for the highest in rank in the school and she made sure she maintained her record, or more so her reputation. By doing that, she gave us freaking tests three times a week for the whole entire year. In fact, she was so obsessed with it that shortly before our year-end final examinations she was somehow leaked on all the questions for the upcoming science paper. One morning she made us promise to keep what she was going to “share” with us a “divine” teacher-student secret. Then with a smirk on her face, she wrote down those 50 questions and asked us to study them (I did but I somehow still got two mistakes out of the exact identical 50 questions that were earlier given by her to study before the examination).

By 11, I was made to believe that I was slow, stupid and a failure as what Mr. Chuah had described me to everyone repeatedly in year-three. Even though Mr. Tan from year four was okay, I steered my own believes about myself back to the former when during most recess periods, Mr. Chuah, Mr. Tan, one other teacher from another class would congregate with the Mad Cow (Mrs. Kwok) in our classroom to chat (or gossiped). At most times, they don’t even care on what they were chatting on was within our earshot. They liked discussing on the “weaker” students while nibbling on their food on the big teacher’s desk in front of the classroom! Sometimes, I thought what they were saying about some of my classmates (occasionally the ‘B’ but always the ‘C’ and ‘D’ group of students) or I was exaggerated.

So, to me it didn’t mattered if I studied or not and I was not going to sacrifice my television or play times for constantly studying for the Mad Cow’s never ending tests. After a while, I didn’t even bother about being constantly beaten by her with her old thick hardwood ruler on my palms or knuckles. This Mad Cow by the way was really strong and I am not surprised if she could wrestle and overpower an alligator with her bare hands!

So, throughout that year, I got my regular training in pain management except for the English and Bahasa Malaysia (Malay) languages. I escaped at most times on Science because I enjoyed it but not for math, history and geography. I absolutely hated these three subjects and wondered how it would apply in my adult life (and at my age now, I am still waiting! Besides, we have Google, Yahoo and Wikipedia if we need to know when Shih Hwang Ti burned those books and for local history, try entering, “fabrication” on your search engine because they keep “updating” them from time to time)!

I could still remember vividly on that painful morning when the mad Cow asked me out to the board in front of the classroom. Sure, I wasn’t paying too much attention on my square-routes a few days earlier and I got the answer off from my other classmate that morning. I was sitting at the back and every single one of us had to answer a math question. I was one of the last 6. There were other students who got the answers from their friends but none of them was asked on how they got their answers until my turn. In order to “teach” me there and then, she started asking me on my multiplications table. As usual, her shrills became sharper and sharper as she went on and I felt my brain going blanker at every of her question! By the time she asked what was “7 x 7″, I was totally blank and speechless (by the way, Mom had drilled me on my multiplications table in year 2, and I could answer anything anywhere up to 12 x 12 within a second then). My heart was racing fast and if I had a thinking bubble like those in comic books it would be totally white and blank!

That was when she started the hard slaps continuously! Then she scanned the room and picked this other classmate out by “jumping queue” while still gripping on to the back of my collar. It wasn’t supposed to be his “turn” yet but I felt as though he was also picked on.

Like me, I think he also went into a panic mode but he escaped the slaps. Then, the Mad Cow grabbed the back of his collar and started banging our heads against each other. My head hurt until the next day.

During those days, teachers were well-respected and they could do no wrong to most parents or a guardian’s eyes. Even if I had told my Mom what happened, the mild would be told that I deserved it because I didn’t study; and the worse would be my Mom punishing me as well. If I told her how I was being punished by the Mad Cow, she would think that I had instead exaggerated! Ultimately, think who would the parents believe if they had a sit-down session over me?

Like this other kid who was being punished along with me, we were not noisy, uncontrollable or mischievous students. Yes, we were probably lazy kids or misguided in our own thoughts or beliefs but have any of these teachers actually taken the effort to really help?

No.

They only knew how to instill fear and took the easy way out by constantly punishing us thinking that would “change”, study and get good grades in order for us to avoid punishments. They fail to see that some problems lie deeper any beyond the cane or the ruler (that I was sort of immune to).

It is also shocking that during those days, Psychology 101 was not part of the curriculum in training teachers over here even after it had already been implemented shortly after the second world war.

In the early nineties, the Malaysian government did a research and found that 28% of our teachers were with some forms of mental illness. I wasn’t surprised because I had an aunt who was also a primary school teacher. You go do the math.

To be continued on part 4 (final)

Related links:

“some evil demented creatures disguised as teachers – part 1 of 4 – teachers claiming to have magic powers and eyes behind their heads”

“some evil demented creatures in the form of teachers – part 2 of 4 – a ruling by the cane and a year of psychological torments” ;

“some evil demented creatures in the form of teachers – part 4 of 4 – despite and in-between the bad, there were the good years and better teachers”

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