Cast From The Herd: Excerpt # 85: No Eton of the East

 Cast From The Herd:  Memories of Matriarchal Malaysia

M. Bakri Musa

Excerpt # 85: No Eton Of The East

By late February of my first year at Malay College the results of the Higher School Certificate (HSC) examination held the previous November for the just-graduated Upper Six class (1960) were released. They were appalling; more than half of the class did not secure their full certificate because they failed the critical General Paper. I was shocked. Here was the country’s premier school that took in the best young Malay minds, yet the aggregate results were atrocious. 

            That worried me. I had worked so hard to be in Sixth Form and gone through the foolish disciplinary problem in the last quarter of my Fifth Form because I was bored. I was not about to let the chance of furthering my studies slip by me now. Whatever those College boys ahead of me were doing, I was determined not to follow in their disastrous footsteps. 

            A month later the results of the Cambridge School Certificate (CSC) Examination (taken at Form Five) that we sat for during the previous November were released. This time the college did better. A few from that class like Atan Aziz and Ismail Hamzah who did not pass their Sixth Form Entrance Examination but did well in their CSC were invited to join us in Lower Six. My old TMS class also did well. I scored Grade One, as did eleven of my former classmates. We exceeded the performance of the previous year’s class, the one that our physics teacher Mr. Pritam pronounced to be the brightest to have passed through the school. So much for his assessment! 

            My old TMS produced as many first graders as Malay College. While I was proud of my old school, I thought the college’s performance was underwhelming. That combined with the disastrous HSC results announced a month earlier made me nervous of putting my future with this “school of kings, king of schools.” The results mocked its “Eton of the East” moniker. I questioned my earlier decision to come to Kuala Kangsar. I had mistaken the glint of a pebble for the sparkle of a diamond. I should have stuck with the de facto decision to continue my Sixth Form at KGV Seremban. Without the prestige I knew I would have to work hard there to excel. Now that I was at supposedly ‘elite’ Malay College, I was in danger of succumbing to its culture of mediocrity. 

            A few of my new fellow Sixth Formers, Yusof Sidek, my tennis partner, Abu Hassan Nikmat from Malacca, and Ramli, shared my anxiety. All of us except for Abu aspired to be doctors. He was a budding engineer; he was brilliant in mathematics. We committed ourselves to avoid the fate of those before us, of being slaughtered come examination time. We were determined to buck the trend. 

            Ramli crystallized the problem well. Malay College boys had been praised once too often, and that had gotten to their heads. They had been told – and way too often – by their parents, teachers, girlfriends, and everyone else that they were the crème de la crème, the best that the Malay race could produce. Thus they need not prove themselves anymore. Getting into Malay College was the pinnacle of their achievement. There was nothing else to prove beyond that. If they did not succeed in any subsequent academic or other endeavor, then the fault must not be with them. 

            Studying hard or in any way exerting intellectual effort was for those less gifted. To be fair, this affliction was not unique to Malay College. This was the early sixties. In America, the Ivy League was still the preserve of children of the WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) elite where a gentleman’s C was the aspired grade. Forgive my pretension in comparing Malay College to the Ivy League. 

            Over time a pernicious culture developed. Studying and other intellectual strivings were seen not as exemplary rather the contrary. If you were really smart you did not have to study. That was the prevailing mindset. The idolized character was the fella who scored all As without seemingly putting any effort. The operative word there is “seemingly.” That bred some bizarre behaviors. Once I woke up late at night to go to the bathroom and was surprised to see those boys surreptitiously studying in the stalls just to protect their image of not being a “mugger.” Pathetic! 

            It was significant that the top student in the Arts stream at Malay College at that time who would have been joining us at Sixth Form that year instead opted to leave in favor of doing it at Victoria Institution, Kuala Lumpur. The year after that when I was in Upper Sixth two other top students in Form Five also opted to leave the college to pursue their Sixth Form elsewhere.

            Within a decade of my leaving Malay College in 1962, now under local leadership, it decided to give up its Sixth Form entirely, satisfied with its status as a glorified Middle School. Beyond that, it dropped its emphasis on STEM. In 2011 after decades of planning, it resurrected its Sixth Form under the International Baccalaureate Program. In its initial few years (or even today) Malay College had difficulty filling the slots with its own students, reminiscent of my Sixth Form days there in the early 1960s.

Next:  Excerpt # 86:  Stunted Malay Minds