'I NOT STUPID?'

The brunt of exam has finally come to an end. No more staying up in the middle of the night, burning the midnight oil.

Alhamdulillah. Finally.

Finally the freedom is uttered. I guess it is just for awhile before the final results are announced. I would say my last paper was not a cinch since I found out the MCQ was pretty hard. I was struggling to fathom out each and every questions carefully as my brain started to work slowly - since I did not sleep last night and spent the whole night studying and.. facebooking! (Caution! Facebook is so addictive! Make sure you are away from your computer before start studying). But now, I'm still deprived of my sleep since I spent my time sleeping during the day rather than at night.

Three friends from I NOT STUPID movie

Ok.Whatever it is, that's not the main point that I really want to narrate in this blog. Perhaps I just want to simply share with others about a Singaporean movie that I watched a few weeks ago. The title of the movie - I Not Stupid and you can watch it here. Apparently I'd really love to watch Jack Neo's movies since most of his movies depict the reality of life nowadays. Eventhough to the fact I could not agree 100% with everything been shown in the movie but still there are heaps of moral value that can be learnt from his movies. I Not Stupid movie is about three students who have distinct background and personalities - facing their daily life as a student in Singaporean school.

My Humble Opinion

Numeorus points can be learnt from this movie - especially life as a student. Maybe the one could just share thoughts and past experiences to reflect the moral of value from this movie.

Story 1

I vividly remember when I was in primary school in Penang when there was a quarrel between a student and parent after the school ended. On that time, I was wondering why the parent infuriated so much with the student and scolding the boy like hell. After figuring out from my friend for what happened, now I knew what they were dispute over. They were just bickering and squabbling for such a petty issue - it all started when that boy started teasing and mocking their son. The matter of fact it was a mere petty issue - you know, it is common and natural for a kid to act childishly by mocking and teasing their friends. The thing I could not grasp was; why the heck the parents got themself involved and scolded that kid. Perhaps shouldn't they simply knock off the dispute and tell the kid nicely not to do that again or perhaps any such better way for not to exacerbate this situation. However, it was the other way round - the parents furiously scolded him and eventually the kid started to cry.

It was getting worse since on the next day, both parents came to the school and bickering with the same issue. Perhaps it was so despicable to watch these so-called 'grown-up' parents to dispute over this trivial matter. Perhaps some parents are over-protective with their kids and to the certain extent, pampering them too much and preclude them from learning to be independent and fend-off this 'childish' matter by themself. Otherwise, in the future the parents will make these kids like a spoilt brat in the Charlie & The Chocolate Factory movie! Haha..

"Daddy! Daddy! I want a squirrel! I wannit now!!" - (Charlie & The Chocolate Factory Movie)

I once told this story to Ayah and he said:

"Hal budak-budak kecik, mak ayah tak perlu masuk campur. Benda-benda budak kecik lagi pun."

Besides that, I still remember when I was in Form 1 - during the first time I registered into MCKK. Prior to Ayah and Mak left me here at the Prep School, Ayah spoke to me personally. His message was clear and more like this:

"Angah, kalau kena buli sikit-sikit dengan senior tu, kena lari padang ramai-ramai, kena ambik nama senior, tahanlah sikit ye. Kalau kena ramai-ramai dengan satu batch tak pe. Tapi kalau ramai-ramai senior datang belasah sorang tu kena cakap kat ayah."

(Perhaps by the time Mak and Ayah vanished from my view, the horror-fairy tale came true. Haha)

Story 2
I still remembered when I had been to one of this scholarship assessment after SPM results were announced. There were two sessions for this assesment -first session, I need to present my own solutions about the problem and motion given in front of the interviewers and second session, a group discussion from the interviewees to find the final solution for the problem. The motion and the problem that I got was about academic excellence and discipline problems amongst the students nowadays.

So, during the first session, I presented my ideas to the interviewers on how to deal with these problems amongst the students nowadays. Indeed, the first thing that I said to them was; to delve on the background of each of these problematic students. Why are these students creating discipline problem? Is it due to family problem? What I mentioned was to delve on their family background and seek the particular relevant information pertaining to the student. Each counselling department of that particular school must have a full profile record on these students - so that they can delve and find the solution with this information. Then, it happened that one of the interviewers glared at me with battling eyes as he looked unconvincingly with my ideas. That was merely beginning of my ideas. And then, I continued saying that - by looking at this background information, we could find the solution and perhaps by advocating a new program that pretty similar to mentor-mentee program but this new program works more and beyond than mentor-mentee program. The teachers would be opted to act as foster-parent to these students based on the student's background-personality, interests etc.

For instance, if that problematic student is so into rugby, we can devise and arrange them with their rugby coach as their parent-foster to look after them as they are more closed and attached to them. Why do I say so? The reason why is because that's what my basketball coach, Mr Liew Yong Choon did to me when I was in high school. He called us during the school holidays merely to know whether we were studying or not. He even advised us to study for 10 hours solid time since he used to do that before. Indeed, I still remembered that I was not allowed to play in the first team since I did not manage to attain at least 6 A's for my exam. Haha. Apart from that, not to brag about myself but a mere sharing to others - I was a former President of Peer Counselling Group in MCKK and I had been to numerous camp to learn about psychology, personality and vice versa. Thus, I conceived that by combining these factors, it would help (at least) these problematic students to stimulate their interest in study since they are more concerned for not allowing to play for the team rather than focussing on their study. Believe it or not, I used to fail 3 papers (add maths, physics & chemistry), barely passed for a paper (biology) and ranked above 100 in my batch for the Peperiksaan Akhir Tahun Analisa SBP Tingkatan 4 . I wonder if MCKK admin would have expelled me on that time for not performing well in my study , frankly speaking I reckon I won't be here studying in New Zealand right now. ( On that time, Ayahanda Dato Hj Alimuddin was the MCKK principal and I was so fortunate to have him )

Back to the story, when it came to the 2nd session, we all needed to discuss and figure out the best solution for this matter. There were four of us in this discussion, so everyone came out with their own ideas and required to seek the best solution for this matter. There was a student came out an idea to make a program that pretty similar like BTN. Err. I wonder don't you think it is time-consuming and wasting a lots of money? Next, there was a Malay guy who happened to be an English debater suggested to deal this problem by conducting a PIBG meeting. Huh? Just that simple? Amongst four of us, I was the only one against them. They were all supporting each other with the idea but still, I was so adamant with my stance and attempted to justify to them with my idea since the PIBG meeting was a mere simple and 'twelve-year-old-mentality idea'. Indeed, it was not that I was being so stubborn and reluctant to accept their idea but it was a bloody nonsense idea. Plus, it was so embarrasing that the idea came from the so-called English debater. I knew that I had blown up this assessment and prior to this assessment, I still remembered the tips for the group discussion assessment that I learned - when it comes to a group discussion, you need to be a neutral party and acting more like a mediator. But in this case, it was an unacceptable idea for me to accept it since personally I did not think it would ever solve the problem. Finally, the final consensus had been reached. The three of them except me, unanimously agreed to conduct a PIBG meeting as a final decison to deal this problem. Duh! Subsequently after that, I came out from the room with a devastated face, came to think again bout these three students' background. Now I came to realise that these three lads were never been to asrama before and perhaps that's the reason why they were so 'eager' with the PIBG-meeting idea. (Pardon me, I didn't mean to undermine students that never live in asrama before.)

On another note, it was about SBP ranking or what-so-ever ranking nowadays. Personally I reckon this ranking system is certainly unfair to certain schools since it is determined by the overall GPA of the all subjects. Why? For instance, if there's a school which got 50 students straight A's over 100 students in SPM - and should be in top 10 ranking in SBP for the total numbers of excellent students. However, unfortunately it happens that there is a student who fails in one of the subjects; consequently haul the overal GPA and make that school out of the top 10 ranking in SBP. In fact, a school with only 15 students who got straight A's over 100 students but the remain students in the batch manage to attain all straight B's in all subjects to be included into top 10 ranking. Indeed, this is totally unfair. Thus, who's going to be the victim in this circumstance? Teachers and students. Why? These two groups will be blatantly blamed by for not performing in the previous SPM results. In the future, the school admin will attempt to get rid of these problemetic students prior to SPM exam since they are afraid their school reputation will be jeopardized and tarnished by these group of students. Perhaps the school should glimpse and delve at the other side of these students -maybe perhaps they are not interested in doing pure science subjects and makes them not performing well in these subjects. (this situation same goes to me and my sister). Indeed, the school admin should not impetuosly take a dead-end decison by expelling these students. (You won't know what's gonna happened to these students in future, they might become an artist, lecturer, etc). In this case, we should not simply dragging our feet or perhaps blatantly pointing up our fingers to other people. You, me and others should help these students instead of blaming them for not performing well.

Conclusion

All in all, you can judge by your ownself by relating my stories with the movie I Not Stupid. Indeed, I'm not personally 100% agree with the movie since some of parts of the movie are correct and acceptable (the part when your Mak starts babbling you - perhaps that's their responsiblity as a parent)

P/S: I just want to wish my cayang adik, Ruwaida, in Seseri, all the best for your SPM this tuesday! Just do your best! ;)