A Primary School Girl's Intercultural Experience (Edited)

I attended Sekolah Kebangsaan St Anne’s Convent for primary education. Although it is a convent, it is predominantly Malay (some national schools have more Chinese and Indian kids especially reputable ones like La Salle and Anglo Chinese School Klang) where in my class of 30 there were only three Chinese and a few Indians. That did not seem to bother me or any of my non-Malay friends as we got along well with the Malay kids. Malay was spoken almost all the time and English occasionally. Languages other than these two were strictly forbidden – you would be fined (20 cents each time) if you were caught speaking in mandarin, hokkien or tamil. A slip of the tongue occurred once in a while, which would immediately be hushed as though a disgusting swear word had been uttered.

A day in a typical Malay school starts with the morning prayer. The Malays will pray while the non-Malays will stand in silence with their heads bowed. When a Malay teacher enters a class, she will be greeted with Selamat Pagi Cikgu (Good Morning Teacher) by the whole class followed by Assalamualaikum Cikgu from the Malay students only. Not knowing initially that non-Malays are not required to do the latter, I followed suit, only to induce hoots of laughter from my Malay friends. A pretty humiliating experience that I am sure did not happen to me alone.

For the Malays, if you have to walk in front of an elderly person, you should bend your body as a sign of respect. I did that once at home when walking in front of my late grandfather and got reprimanded for being hunchbacked and not walking properly. And when you walk past a teacher, you are expected to greet the teacher. What I used to do was bending my body and greeting my teacher at the same time. Now when I think about it, it was not a good practice as I did not establish eye contact with my teacher and I was actually greeting the floor by bending my body!

As a kid, you would most probably be eager to learn new stuffs. I did, much to the displeasure of my parents. I tried singing syair (poem recited in the form of a song) at home. My parents, not understanding Malay well, thought I had been converted to some sort of religious fanatic. There was one thing which I feel upset my parents the most. In Year 3, we were assigned to make slippers from cardboard during one of my arts lessons. We measured the size of our feet so that we could wear the shoes when they were done. Coloured papers and beads were used for decoration. At home, I proudly wore my masterpiece. My mother was not impressed and felt that my Malay teacher was insensitive to the Chinese culture. I freaked out after learning that paper-made shoes are among the items burnt for the dead besides silver paper. Since my shoes had been graded, I immediately threw them away.

Despite all the intercultural differences, I know my parents never regret their decision in
sending me to a Malay school. It was nevertheless, not an easy decision, not when you have a Chinese school with excellent reputation and facilities (courtesy of many Chinese philanthropists) just across the street while the Malay school has no reputation, lousy facilities, and the best part is, they had to drive me to school. This is what my parents used to tell me :"Speak Malay with the Malay kids, speak English with the Indian kids, and Mandarin? Speak at home-lah".