Throughout my life of experiencing myself as a student, a learner, a kid who sits in class while listening (or trying to listen and keeping my ears and eyes wide open) to the teacher teach, I find knowledge is boring. I see no fun in it. But in my mind I wanted a bright future. A future that everybody wants is where we obtain our own income; buy anything that we want with the income. That is something positive for a student to think about. That was what I had in mind when I stepped into Form 3 – the year where my battle against PMR started. I remembered waking up at 3 in the morning just to study for the 7 subjects that I had to sit for during that time. I was thinking about my future. But then, it was only PMR. As a future teacher myself, what I can see in my 15 year old self is that, I’m not praising myself here but the value that I had was off course the value that every teacher wants their students to have.
Then SPM came, I remembered one of my cousins said that this is the time where you have to struggle and focus seriously on exams. It’s all about the sake of passing and getting many A’s so that we are qualified to be accepted into any tertiary education institution. That was me. That’s what I thought. All the way through out until the last day of SPM that was how my mind worked regarding education. I don’t know how many of us seemed to have thought of that way regarding education. I bet there are many.
The moment I stepped out of the world of secondary school, I have forgotten everything that I learned. I’ve forgotten mathematics – well, not the basic plus-minus-multiplication-division part off course. I’ve even forgotten what I learned in ‘Perdagangan’ and ‘Ekonomi Asas’. I got A1s for those 3 subjects and now I can’t remember anything. Is there something wrong in our education system or is it just me? I do not want to comment on our education system but I would like to comment on myself. I didn’t appreciate knowledge. I took it for granted. Now I feel as if I didn’t learn anything during secondary school.
Only after stepping into tertiary education have I been able to recognize the importance of knowledge - and that was only after a year. It was probably because we had to look for study & reference materials on our own and not being spoon fed by our educators unlike during primary and secondary school years. Not only do I learn the things that I am suppose to learn in college but I’m trying to learn other things by myself - be it from books, newspapers, inspiring movies, etc. I want to see the world in another different light and another different perspective. While getting high pointers for exams are highly beneficial and well respected, let’s not make that as our only purpose for education. For me, eventhough I don’t get the expected pointer, the experience of being able to learn and appreciate the knowledge is good enough for me. I know I sound like a nerd right now, but I’m typing this out with a sincere heart. Just like art, knowledge is everywhere – appreciate it while it’s there. I would love to tell this to my students one day.
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