Right towards the end of my first year at school, the word “exams” was heard frequently enough around me for me to pick up that there was a solemn significance about it.
Somwhere in the middle of all this significance, I sat at my desk in Malay class. (I did Malay as a second language at school because my sister and brother who were older than me had taken Mandarin but failed, so my parents thought that therefore I would fail in Mandarin too.)
I suddenly realised that I was being tapped on my shoulder and being herded forward towards the front of the classroom and being asked to stand next to the teacher’s table. The herding and encouraging were from the other pupils in the class, half of whom were 2 years older than me.
“It’s exam!” they explained to me.
The teacher looked down the list in his book, then looked at me in all seriousness and asked me (in Malay) what my name was. I looked at him in astonishment. I could not believe that I had been in his class for almost a year and he not known my name. He repeated his question. I held my stare.
The other pupils prompted me: “It’s exam!”
For the third time he asked me in Malay what my name was, and for the third time he received an astonished stare in response.
He smiled and tried again, with a slightly different question. This time, he asked me what the name of my teacher was. Gracious me! They were colleagues. I had seen them together lots of times, talking, laughing, walking and all sorts, and he didn’t know what her name was and so he had to ask me!
He asked me again, this time even more seriously. Oh well, I thought, I had to put him out of his misery. “Mrs Tan” I told him.
“Just Mrs Tan?” he asked in Malay. I nodded.
“My teacher’s name is …..?” he prompted me in Malay. This was the limit. This time, he wanted to know who his own teacher was!
I looked at him in disbelief. Then suddenly, the bell rang, and he said that we all could go. I returned to Mrs Tan’s class filled with disbelief. The other pupils reminded me: “It’s exam!”
A few weeks later, I saw my father talking to my teacher. I heard her say to him, “That’s because Leonie wasn’t paying attention in her Malay class.”
Only many months later did I understand the significance of the questions from the Malay teacher. He had to ask me questions in Malay only to test my verbal proficiency – not to gain knowledge for himself.
Well, if only one of the many adults and older pupils had bothered to explain to me the mechanics of it all, instead of just exclaiming: “It’s exam!”