Generation Gap?

I am taking a que from a remark by one of our readers who says " Is there really a Generation Gap? ", which on pondering back, it is something worthwhile thinking about - and seriously too for that matter !

It is very common for all of us to look back and say, our time has always been better off than it is now, be that with our former school, our village or home town and the people thereat, our childhood life and friends, even the foods that we used to eat and going a bit further , even the movies too ?. The question is, is that really so ? In the process of trying to understand these things, we try to console ourselves that this is indeed the "generation gap" that we all seem to talk about a lot these days.

Let me try to ponder about one or two of the subjects that I mention above, less I run into endless writing on all of them, which might bore my readers . Take for instance our school. Let me begin with the kind of schools that I first experience then. In the small village of Sri Menanti, although it is always considered a Royal town, with "town" as a misnomer really because Sri Menanti hardly has any town by definition of the word "town". What it has then is a two row thatched attap roofs small shops to cater to basic needs of the village in such thing as the grocery shop which also sells fish and what little meat is available.Then thre is the bicycle repair shop which is considered most essential since there is hardly that many cars around the place and the bicycle is the mode of transport then ! Just a two shops away there is the hair-cut shop which is far fetched from the air-conditioned hair cut saloon that we have these days, and a coffee shop that sells basic foods such as fried noodle and kuayteow and very occasionally nasi lemak, and an ice shop that sells ice for home needs and these ice blocks are conveniently cut in small six inches or a foot square and wrap in sawmill wood powder to retain its moisture.

Sri Menanti as it is today is no better than what it was then. In fact if we talk about the town proper, the rows of shop houses of old is even today reduced to only three today ! On the bright side of it though, the town today boasts of an 36-holed golf course and the Sri Menanti Royal Golf Club , a couple of chalets, a three star hotel and the Royal Sri Menanti Museum, which displays historical artifacts of the Negri Sembilan Royal Family. Of course the Royal Palace of the Yang Di Pertuan Besar of the State forms another landmark of the place. Where previously there is an open playing fields of sorts, today though, part of it has been taken up by the local mosque. Strutting between the mosque and the museum stands the Tunku Besar Burhanuddin’s residence which is today unoccupied although still well-taken care of by the Tuanku Ampuan herself since it is our birth place and we all grow up there too.

Can I rightly say that the Sri Menanti of old is a lot better than what it is today ? This is a very subjective and emotional matter to consider just as the rest of this article’s contents are going to reveal later on. Sri Menanti town today, apart from its golf activities which is confined to a small area of the place and the occasional Royal functions and the tourists visitors, cannot today be considered as interesting to live in anymore. Virtually all the young men have left the place to seek better employment elsewhere. Thus, if at all, only the very old are left to stay here and perhaps of late some retirees, all of whom accounts for the almost deserted look of the place. That is not at all interesting to me. However if I want just to be in isolation and away from the city crowds and noise, Sri Menanti is the place to live in without any disturbances. In fact, Ainul always challenge me to the idea of my living here in my old age, which is not far to go by common reckoning of my sixty nineth birthday which is around the corner ! Heh ! heh! Of course I am very fond of the place because of the nostalgic memories that it holds, but Sri Menanti is no longer the village town that I fancy to live in. It is the people that makes the place and in the absence of such, how can a place be livable ?

It is common for old boys and old girls of any school or college to say that their time was better off than what it is today. Never mind the more innovative food that is now served at the College and the ever availability of the tuck shop cuisine to cater for present day taste buds and the general cleanliness of the place or the College kitchen for that matter and the freedom to have another plateful of rice etc. Hence present day College boys ( I am basing my writing on my former MCKK of course ) do not seem to look lean and hungry like they were then during my time, as a result of better food on the breakfast, lunch and dinner tables and more pocket money too. They no longer talk or indulge in "double ration" like it used to be then. In those days, when someone fails to turn up for dinner due to sickness or just plain late, someone is bound to have a "double ration" on the "extra food" ! Sometimes it does happen, the food owner do turn up, albeit delayed , and his dinner is gone. However it does not matter, the head-cook will find a replacement or substitute in the form of bread and butter plus a cup of hot milk. More often than not, that is the stuff that everyone likes to have to break from the monotony of only eating those rice dishes. Hence the late comer feels fully compensated to the envy of his immediate fellow diners !

Of course we all then eat using forks and spoons and proper crokeries but minus serviettes or table napkins. In those days, paper napkins or serviettes are nonexistence. The College cannot afford to provide proper table napkins to the boys. The only exception is when we are at the High Table dinner ,( which everyone looks forward to) - an elegant and proper dining with excellent cuisine plus desserts and of course proper cloth table napkins ! The temptation for some to "keep" these napkins as substitute for handkerchieves is very great indeed when boys being boys, the handkerchief is never considered an essential to have in the trousers pocket if not for the College rule that stipulates evryone to have one at all times. The desperation to have a handkerchief is reflected in one of the Friday Inspection incidence in my dormitory at one time. I am then the Dormitory Prefect as well as the Duty Prefect for the week. Friday Inspection is one of the most important disciplinary event of the College in that it is expected of everyone to change new bed sheets and pillow cases as well as display clean and well polished shoes . The bedside lockers where the shirts and pants etc. are kept are expected to be in neat order too. Hence on this particular Friday Inspection, a certain Malay teacher Encik Ahmad Yusoff Tajuddin, who is referred to as "Mat Salleh Hitam", since he behaves and talks like the English and always condemns us boys as lazy Malays, happens to be the teacher doing the College inspection for the morning. All seems well as he passes by each bed where the boys line up and for a moment I thought he is going to be very pleased with the general inspection turn out for the week, until he decides to stop at Suhaimi Kamaruddin’s bed. Of course Suhaimi greets him with a heartiest good morning to which Encik Ahmad Tajuddin replies in return. I thought he is going to move on . No, it is not so. He politely asks Suhaimi to show him his handkerchief from his left trousers pocket. What comes out of that is most unexpected. If it is a dirty and unwashed handkerchief , it is quite acceptable. To the astonishment of all of us, much so , the duty teacher, Suhaimi produces a yellow shoe polished cloth !

Anyway, coming back to the dinner table, where we then have forks and spoons, nowadays the boys have their food on metal trays with food compartments. It is more like cafeteria style serving. Hence it does not look neat and most definitely the boys will not learn proper table manners. The clattering of the fork and spoons of those days have to be kept to the minimum, just as the table conversation too has to be civil enough as not to be considered as noisy. At the end of each dining table, a Prefect is seated to ensure that everyone behaves. What can you expect from the present metal trays style. How can you instill proper table etiquette ?

Being discipline is very important in all facets of our life and this should be instilled to our children right from infant, so that the child will adhere and learn to accept and adapt to it and eventually appreciate its purpose. Hence at the College, being disciplined is the cardinal rule of everyday life that is expected of all of us then. The enforcement of the discipline is left entirely to the Prefects. Hence the College Prefects of my time are highly respected besides being feared by the boys. It is the aspiration of a Collegian to be a Prefect and hence the need to be disciplined at all times. At a glance it does seem rather rigid and perhaps torturous to live with. However, if the whole school revolves around it, it becomes just another way of life which can be termed as a normal College life to all of us. These days I have been informed that the College Prefects no longer hold as much authority. If a Prefect decides to impose a Detention Class to an offender of the College rules, the final decision will fall on the teachers on duty to decide. This is not at all good for leadership training because the role of the Prefect as the extension of teacher-student responsibility of old is completely eroded here. The Prefect is no better than a puppet now ! In those days a Prefect decision stays and no teacher will intefere with it. In fact, if the Detention Book records no names for the Detention Class for the week, both the Head Boy and the Deputy Head Boy will be quieried by the Headmaster for the exceptional happening. The Headmaster would wish to be assured that the Prefects are observant of rule breakers and that they are really doing their duties to enforce these rules and maintain the College discipline.

What about academic achievements then ? Just a few months ago, both Ainul and I happen to have a visitor who is a retired Director General of Education. When we ask him if he is still involved in the same line now that he is retired and what he thinks of present day education standard, we are surprised by his remarks that generally the education standard in our country has gone down a lot. For instance, now that we have done away with the First, Second and Third Grades categories of Form Five and instead only base a student’s passes on meritorious achievement on subjects alone, students are free to do and choose their own subjects for the exam. Hence we get instances of students sitting for more than ten subjects at one time, which put undue pressure of work on teachers to correct these papers. The fact that they all can do all these subjects and achieve excellent results on those is no indication that they are more intelligent than the students of old. For instance, the English standard , both written and speaking , is very low and the same can be said for anything that involves word expression because examination papers are almost all based on objective method. Essay type answers are quite limited unlike in those days where almost everything has to be expressed in written answers. Hence the needs for proper English and Malay and their vocabularies too !

Whilst I might agree with him on the low standard of English and written compositions and even public speaking, the kids of today are superior to us old folks in the technical lines such as math's, sciences and information technology or IT. The math's that a primary school child does today is far different from our time and more advanced too. In fact , there is no way that we can teach them Math's our style or for that matter for us to understand how they do theirs. To me it kind of looks like, it is all ‘mental sums’ method, which does not leave any room for revision of work to correct any mistake. My conclusion here is, I think present day kids are a lot brighter than we were then. Each time we are with our grandchildren, we are amused and marvelled at the words and expressions that they use to convey their thoughts and message to us. With the kind of wide exposures that they all indirectly and directly get from the televisions and radios these days, they grow up a lot faster than we all used to be. Take a look at their science books - biology, chemistry - those meant for Form One. The stuffs they learn today are what we had when we were in Form Five then ! How can we say they are not smarter than us ? Well, if they seem lost in thoughts whenever we talk or question them, we cannot assume that they cannot understand us. In fact they have digested so much school work that they become muddled up in thoughts. Their brains trying to sort out the puzzles that are now entering it and hence the slight delay in response, but that does not mean that they are dumb ? I tell you, they are survivors or the surviving breed of future generation. With the way things are generated over the IT, it takes a special kind of people with instinctive brains to survive in today’s world.

There is so much we can delve out thoughts on this so called Generation Gap. Can we just conclude, that there is no Generation Gap. It is just how we old folks wish to perceive and protect our "good old world" of yesteryear. To put it more bluntly, we are the ones that are warped in the "time zone" whilst the world is moving on ! Cheers !

written by Tunku Farid