Imposed upon us all, as we were, growing up, going to school, something that’s, truly, AWFUL! Translated…
It was in the 1970s, when the nine years of mandatory education was set up, and yet, the dark clouds of continuing one’s education still draped over all of our elementary school years, and that joyous sun of learning, never tilted its head.
what it’d looked like on the outside…
not my photo still…
The second week of my fifth grade year, the homeroom instructor asked the class, if anybody wasn’t into the cram sessions offered, and, a couple of us, children who’d rather spend the days outdoors raised our hands without a thought, and we were all, led into another classroom, and inquired about what we wouldn’t go to the cram sessions offered.
“I’d taught both your older siblings, and, they’d all gone to the cram sessions, why don’t you want to do the same? Aren’t you afraid you won’t get into a good enough school?”, back then, the cram school sessions were during the illegal eighth period, and, being young as I, I just wanted to play outside after school, and, I didn’t have the grasp of “very important” in the adults’ views of test taking. Besides, the textbooks weren’t so hard, why would I need to spend the extra money, and keep myself locked up for an extra hour in the classrooms? I’d stated clearly, that I didn’t want to be a part of any of that.
My homeroom instructor’s “reasoning with me” didn’t work, so, it came, the Chinese instructor’s turn, to attempt to, persuade me, he didn’t say a single world, just told us to head up to the blackboards and wrote out the characters, and if someone wrote it wrong, he’d asked, “You don’t even know how to write this character, and you don’t think it’s necessary for you to attend the cram sessions after school?” that student was taken to his original classroom, and, became the added-on member of the afterschool cram programs.
inside the walls, not my photoraph…
And now, there was, just me, the teacher, and the blackboard, filled with writings, the last term was “peaceful”, I’d not written all the strokes in the characters, and, the instructor acted like he’d caught be doing something awful, and, grilled me on my self-righteousness, wanted me to stand in front of the board, to think about how the character SHOULD be written correctly, that if I didn’t get it right, I wasn’t allowed to go home. And yet, I’d written the character like that for years on end already, how was I to know, how it’s supposed to be written correctly? And so, I’d started crying from sometime around three o’clock, all the way to a little past five, and, I was, chased home, by the janitor of the school.
I’d finally, bent to my mother’s will for me to go to the cram school sessions, and after that, I couldn’t, escape its tightened grasps on my life, but, it’d become, something I’d absolutely, abhorred in my life as well.
And yes, that, would be how, learning WAS forced upon us during those years, and back then, the adults just believed, that what they’re imposing on the younger generations WAS for their own good, that if they didn’t cram, they will NOT amount to anything as they grow up, and yet, so many of the greats in the world, had never sat still throughout her/his classroom sessions, so, what do you say to that, huh???
Life, the Obstacle Course 