I was fetching my baby girl home from the babysitter’s when I saw a yellow bus. For those who do not know what it means, yellow busses usually represents school busses. That image spurred my memory back to the good old days of my primary school.
There are two prominent memories from then. And one was how unimaginative teachers can be. As an art assignment, the class was asked to draw our own house. Mind you, not our dream house, but our own house. Therefore I set out to mull over the humble house I grew up in. I decided to draw the outside because I thought that the inside would just be too much to draw. I had to draw chairs, tables, the television set, ah, definitely too much work.
Needless to say, I met with many problems while doing this. My first problem was drawing the stone slabs that are in my garden. It formed a tick-tack-like layout and the grass ran in between the stone slabs. So I decided some squares and some green coloured spikes that reaches different heights will clearly depict how my garden looked because no one bothered to cut the grass except for Chinese New Year. I had to be honest about this drawing right?
When I was done doing that, I looked at my drawing paper. Hmm, something didn’t look right. The stone slabs in my house had small holes in it. So I decided that these stone slabs had to have small holes in them too. I added them in. And the garden was done.
Next I started on the house itself. My house had a majestic looking sliding door that reaches up to somewhere that I, at 8 years old could not reach and had a black grill protecting us from robbers who might come at night to steal my pink rabbit. And beside it, there is a brown and white striped awning shading our big van from the sun. Also, we had a gate with black swirly patterns.
As the sliding door is transparent, I decided to draw three panels and filled them up with thick black lines that are supposed to be the grill. Then I drew a bigger rectangle to frame these hard work to make sure that my teacher knows that there is a sliding door and then a grill. Then I drew the awning that definitely looked cacat. And I drew the butt of our van. And tada!! My house. Before taking a last looks at it, I handed it up because time was up anyway.
On the next class, I was called up to the teacher’s desk. I went meekly and when I reached her table, she turned her face to mine and on it was a ferocious look. She pointed forcefully at my drawing and asked me what it was. I could not answer because all I was thinking was “I know my drawing is nothing much to look at but if she is going to poke any harder than that, she is going to form a hole in my drawing!” and I was not happy. Then she continued to jibber on about how that can not be my house and that no one’s house looks like that and repeatedly asked me does my house look like that, but never once waiting for me to answer. And after that embarrassing episode, I was made to stand on my chair for the rest of the class for disobedience.
From then on, I decided that I hate that teacher and that maybe some people prefer to believe in a lie than to accept the truth and that Chinese school teachers and just that way, unimaginative. However I do not detest my school. In fact I am considering sending my baby girl to a Chinese school when the time comes. But has these chinese teacher’s mindset changed at all?
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