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My enrolment into primary school

 



Education in public schools was not readily available to everyone in the past.


You had to be rich as your father had to make a donation to the school that would enable you to get admitted to a Government school. Otherwise you had to attend a private school where the monthly school fees could be exorbitant and above the means of poor parents. 


My elder brother got admitted to a private school for these reasons.  When it looked like I might have to miss out on schooling altogether by reason of poverty as my parents could not afford the fees in a private school for a second child - an uncle of mine took me to his old school, Anglo Chinese Saxon School (ACS Ipoh) and told the  headmaster he was an old boy and that  I was his son who wished to pursue education in his school . 


Thus it came to be that I was admitted to a Government school with my surname changed to Thamotharan (my uncle’s name). I was known as the son of Thamotharan for three years. 


One fine day when I was in Standard 3, my English teacher asked the students to provide details of their father’s occupation. When it came to my turn  I had to state the vocation of my uncle. He paused for a while and told me not to leave the class at the end of the period. I was confused as I had not committed any mischief (that day). After class I waited for the interrogation by my class teacher. 


He told me he and Thamotharan (my uncle) were good friends, as they were both cricketers. He had been  to my uncle’s house and he knew that he had 3 daughters and no sons. “Now  tell me the truth. Why did you lie?” I knew I could not lie any further as he was a friend of my uncle. I told him the truth regarding my admission to the school. I thought he would send me to the supervisor for disciplinary action. But he was a kind man. He understood why I had to lie, took out his pen, deleted my uncle’s name and substituted my father’s name in its place. On reflection I think he was a kind man and understood the problems I would encounter with a false name. Just imagine going through life with duplicate surnames. Besides explaining to the authorities, I would have had a tough time explaining the presence of two surnames in all my documents. My teacher did me a big favour by correcting an anomaly that would pose inexplainable problems at every stage of my life’s journey. I had got up to Standard 3 and had seen numerous teachers but none bothered to look at the names of their students to identify flaws or anomalies. I was grateful to  my teacher for correcting a flaw, which would have presented problems when  I was growing up. 


All contents (c) Ganapathy Ramasamy, mynameisgana@blogspot.com


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