RUDIMENTARY: Basic needs for a
rural boarding school such as decent bunks in an airy dorm. (photo Chang Yi)
a primary boarding school in
Belaga, sleeping all crammed up in a stuffy room.
The girls’ dormitory of the
school -- SK Punan Ba -- collapsed on Jan 31 this year, and after the initial
knee-jerk
pledge to build a new one as
a replacement, nothing has been done so far and the pupils have been sleeping ‘like
packed sardines’ in one of the school offices.
A concerned parent sent a handphone
snapshot to highlight the plight of the pupils in the hope that the authorities
could be stirred into action.
The next day, Assistant
Minister of Culture and Heritage Liwan Lagang sent out another shockwave when
he said SK Punan Ba was not the only school to be neglected in the district.
According to Liwan, the Belaga
assemblyman, many other schools also faced similar harsh conditions and needed
urgent repairs, including the dormitory at Long Busang, another settlement in
the area, which was gutted recently.
Although it is an open secret
that many of our rural schools are old or poorly maintained, the furious reader
reactions
to the pathetic condition of
SK Punan Ba show they feel strongly against the lackadaisical attitude of the
authorities in addressing this shameful situation.
The angry feelings of the
readers remind me of James Taylor’s song: There
is a feeling like the clenching of a
fist, there is a hunger in the centre of the chest,
there is a passage through the darkness and the mist … someone shed a little
light to the gloomy day.
Happily, it is not all gloom for
rural schools as an email
I received from Chang Yi, a
former educationist, now leading a very enriching retirement life travelling,
writing and doing researches on Chinese tradition and food,
would attest to.
“Not all rural schools are in
such poor shape,” she said.
Chang Yi had just visited
Sekolah Kebangsaan Bario, the second school adopted by the Sarawak Women for
Women Society (SWS) under the Smart Partnership Programme.
“Management is good as every
arm of the machinery is functioning at its best -- right down to the gardener
and cook in this school,” she noted.
She shared with me pictures
of the school and the students’ activities, singling out, in particular, a
snapshot of the dormitory with this observation: “The double-decker beds of SK
Bario are very well-maintained. Dora Tigan is a good headmistress. She is a
computer science teacher and had attended some courses in the Maktab Perguruan
in
Miri when I was a lecturer.
“Schools in the rural are
badly managed because although very often headmasters or headmistresses are
willing to work hard, there is no response from the real bosses
in Kuala Lumpur. The
communication is bad.”
SK Bario, located in the
Kelabit Highlands in Baram,
has 162 pre-school and
primary one pupils, and 12 teachers. The vast majority of the pupils are
Kelabits while the rest comprise Penan, Malay, Lun Bawang, Chinese, Indian and
Kadazan.
From the perspective of SK
Bario, I see the picture of able leadership in the headmistress, backed by her
team of dedicated teachers and staff, and most importantly, supported by a
pro-active community.
From my childhood experience
of going to a small rural school, I know the bonds run deep in small rural
communities.
We might not have the best
facilities but the community ensured the most basic needs of a school such as a
conducive learning environment and an adequate and
safe building -- were
provided for the children.
Back in the good old days,
there was no unnecessary bureaucracy -- all we had was a community thriving with
strong ties of love and hope and a burning desire to see their children grow
and bond in a decent place of learning.
However, the role of the
community in maintaining a school has shifted more to the government. The
attitude now is that it is the government’s duty to provide financial support to
schools although it must be emphasised that
the community’s continued
support for education,
especially in the rural
areas, remains indisputably vital.
The close link between a school
and the community can enhance our children’s sense of purpose in complementing
efforts to prepare them to become useful citizens and productive workers in the
future.
Sharing the same line of
thought is this reader’s email to the Borneo Post: “Let us move forward with
positive action and do something about this. Will Borneo Post shoulder this
move as a civic duty towards humanity?”
It is heartening to note from
a recent interview that Welfare, Women and Community Development Minister Datuk
Fatimah Abdullah is now promoting the value of volunteerism through her
ministry’s We care and we share
programme.
She said: “We want to promote
the value of love, kindness, generosity and compassion. We want to instill and
nurture the culture of social responsibility through community involvement, and
encourage people to care and share with one another.
“We must not let modernity
take away the kindness of human nature as the country continues to progress and
move forward. In fact, the government has declared 2013 as year of
volunteerism.”
As Jack Shekton, founder of
small schools cooperative, aptly put it in an interview on a life connected to
community: In schools not connected to place, kids
don’t have a role and they’re anonymous; the teachers are anonymous; the places
are anonymous. I don’t believe morality is a function of anonymity.
Now that we have marked Sk
Punan Ba on the map, it’s no longer anonymous. So
what’s the task standing before us now?
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