Hi Dear World
It's been a while since I last wrote a blog post. I hope that you are doing fine.
Today, I'm going to talk about one of my childhood memories.
When I was around 10 years old i.e. when I was in 5th grade & 6th grade in Primary school I used to attend some kind of small cram school or more specifically private tuitions. It was the norm during my school days and it still is the norm today where I live that most kids at that age had to take private tuitions or else how will they be able to pass the CPE exam to move on to middle school.
That was the logic behind most parents' mind. Passing the CPE exam was the gateway to obtaining entrance to a good middle school or maybe gain a seat in a prestigious star school i.e. the school where only the elites can attend.
Well anyway, this article is not meant to discuss all about our education system but to talk more about some anecdotes I remember from my childhood.
My parents sent me to attend private tuitions in Mr. M's class (lets call that teacher Mr. M; sorry but I won't disclose his real name ^^'') twice a week if I remember correctly, i.e. once on a week day after school and once on Saturdays. Like I said before, this is the norm for many children who were at my age. There's nothing surprising about it, this is the system that exists here.
Mr. M would teach us maths, english, french, geography and science at primary school level. We were a bunch of about 36 kids listening to him attentively in a small, old and ragged classroom that he rented. When I say small, I really mean it. The class was so small that there was probably less than 1 meters distance between the blackboard and the front row of students.
It was so small that kids had to duck down below the table to get to their seats in the front row because there was no space behind each seat for even a small child to pass through.
So bear in mind that if you came in late you would have to sit at the small table outside the class and only be able to listen to the whole class without seeing what Mr. M was writing on the blackboard.
Definitely not the ideal seat I would say...^^'' unless you were one of those kids who didn't take studying seriously and preferred to play all the time. If you were seated in the back row then you would have to wait for the kids next to you to move out so that you can leave the desk. It was actually a long desk behind which about 6 students sat next to each other. Dunno if you can imagine what the classroom looks like from my descriptions ^^''
Now that I think of it, it's quite funny to recall these moments as I write them down. The more I write, the more I remember things like they happened just yesterday although they happened about 14 years ago ^^''
Ok coming back to the story, I think most kids in that class had good results. In fact, we would not be in that class if we didn't have good grades, you know where we would be? we would be in Mr, M's other batch of students with lower grades. Yes that's how we were classified, the best students are regrouped in the 'A' grade class and the ones with inferior results in a different class, lets call it the 'B' grade class. The reason for this separation was simply because the speed of learning and targets are different between class A and class B. But even among students in class A, there are the brilliant ones, the average ones and the less studious ones ^^'' Some students were aiming to attend the elite schools while others just wanted to obtain a seat in a good reputable school. This is funny right ^^
I was probably someone stuck in between the average ones and the less studious ones. I also wasn't focused on getting into a star school, my parents also didn't push me towards that goal. Sure they would have been really happy & proud if I could get a seat in an elite school but they put no pressure or high expectations on me to achieve that. They just wanted me to have good grades and get a good school.
Private tuitions was also a place where you could meet kids from other primary schools and make new friends but you would also miss your friends from your own school because they attended tuitions elsewhere.
Anyway, Mr. M was quite a well-known teacher especially among strict & no-nonsense parents and the latter recommended him as being a good teacher who taught really well.
On the other hand, kids saw Mr. M as a scary and quirky teacher.
Parents who were less authoritarian sent their kids to more lenient teachers who used more of an easy-going or orthodox teaching style and avoided sending their children to the notorious Mr. M's class.
My parents just went with the recommendations from people they know and sent me to attend Mr. M's class. Their target was to have my grades improve so that I would be ready to tackle the CPE exam. The teacher at school just sucked or maybe my attention span was too short for me to concentrate in the latter's class.
Mr. M made us work a lot on past exam papers so that we get really familiar with the type of questions that come up during the exams. We were hit once on the palm with a very thin bamboo stick for every wrong answer we made so the kids felt really pressured to do their homework correctly.
I remember getting hit maybe twice...it didn't really hurt because Mr. M did not use that much strength when he striked the rod on our palm. I don't know about the other kids, but my pride was a little bit hurt at that time...because I knew then that kids who did not get a single hit got all the answers right and on top of that they are constantly praised by the teacher...That probably kinda pushed me to work even harder in my studies.
I also remember that Mr. M really liked to use the expression: 'Suddenly the unexpected happened...' in our short essay writing in english and french as well. As his students we could not miss out this quote from our english or french essays...It's like this quote was Mr. M's trademark or signature on our essays ^^ Funny right :D I'm sure that when they are correcting our essays, the examiners probably noticed how this expression was so commonly. Well chances are really high that all the kids who used this expression in their essays were in Mr. M's class ^^''
Anyway with Mr. M's strict teaching techniques, I was able to pass my CPE exam with brilliant results ^^
That's all for now...enough of my rambling ^^'' this feels like I'm writing a biography... ^^''
I actually wrote this post several months ago but decided not to publish it at that time...because it seemed kinda boring and uninteresting but since I didn't write much lately, I had a change of mind and decided to publish it now... ^^''
If you have similar experiences, please let me know in the comment section below ^^
Ciao Ciao
See you next time with a new blog post ;)
Take care
Kalin Lyfe
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