To Educate is to be Educated.

In his tender age, he was sent to Singapore to study. It is not out of the ordinary if it happens today but when it was back in late 1950’s, it is something. What more when it was in a traditional kampong and the folks were generally not having awareness in the importance of educations due to not being educated themselves. But, that is what happened to my uncle when my grandpa decided to send him there, and until now he has made Singapore a place for him to reside, happily with his kids that now already bring joy to him with presence of the grandchildren. He is in Woodlands.

Singapore is not a strange place to me. I grew up not having an attitude to differentiate between Malaysia and Singapore unlike what generally is now in the minds of younger generations. May be when I was small, I knew my uncle was there and thought it was just another place out of the area we were staying in. The blame goes to the politicians (on both sides) to have us separated in early 60’s as two different nations. It worsens with the political agendas come to play in 80’s and 90’s and to this day, that seemingly put the sharing of history and cultures remotely and thus out of place.

I digress.

Ustaz Luqman retired as a school teacher years ago. His last posting was at a boarding school somewhere in the East Coast of the peninsular. He too has a lot of stories to tell about his younger days. He was sent to Indonesia to study. Ustaz Luqman is later known to me as an uncle too when I marry his niece – my wife now. The irony is he went over to Indonesia together with Abang Lazim, my mom’s cousin that also now retired after serving in the Engineering Ground Support Department with Malaysia Airline System – MAS. Until today, his Indonesian wife is still heavily accented with her Java tongue – I know, that’s beside the point.

Considering the poor living state those years in the rural area where they lacked in facilities and opportunities, in my adulthood, the admiration grew in me for what the old folks had done to educate their children. They looked for ways not to have their children deprived from educations. It was not an outlandish thing during my childhood when I heard people had their grown up children study abroad. The popular destinations back then were Egypt and Saudi Arabia, while India was a place of choice too. They worked hard to support their children’s studies though they were literally lived a hard living with merely make ends meet. The word scholarship is only recent.

Started from my time onward, we can be considered lucky. We have a very good education system in the country. I can say it loud and clear because I am the product of the system. Well not too good, but not that bad either. To the very least I can feel that I am contributing my small part to the nation. No doubt the ideal formula for the whole education system is yet to mature relative to what have been achieved in the developed countries like USA and UK, but in many aspects we are not far behind if not better in certain areas. The biggest achievement is perhaps our end product is not a “kiasu”.

And, look at another angle. How many countries in the world give free educations until the age of 17? (Until the age of 19 in some cases) How many countries in the world spend big chunks of their budgets in scholarships for their students for higher learning?

We are one.

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