Bridging the Gap

11 children, 2 adults with $300 aid and some rations?

You wonder what is life like? And with the need to survive, are they able to send their children to preschool? In the first place, do they even bother about preschool education for their children. I doubt it.

I used to wonder, what were their parents thinking? Especially when they knew that with their limited educational level, they have very little income and yet they decide to have many children. How are they going to feed their children well much less educate them. Thus the vicious cycle of being uneducated, being unemployable continues.

More than 13 years ago, I was at an “L” flat – those HDB housing with dark lanes as both sides would be dwellings of bedroom-less space. In one of these, a family of nine children and their parents, all crammed into it. They have been cut of their water and electricity supplies because their father cannot afford to pay. I was there to inform them to come down to the self-help center to receive their voucher aid so that their bills would be settle and they would have water and electricity. Another flat had a simple-minded young girl living with her father and simple-minded mother on cardboards and whatever abandoned and broken furniture they can pick up in their “L” flat. What was more eye opening was the stench of poverty that fills my nostrils from their abode that they call home.

At that time, I was young and naïve, and the things that I see was enough to put me in a daze. How could life be so harsh to this people? What tragedy or circumstances that have befallen them that they were reduced to such a state? Why didn’t the parents study harder during their school days so that they would have better jobs and better income to support their children? Why aren’t some of the so-called breadwinners working? And why are they having so many children, if they can’t give a better life to each and everyone of them?

I was told that the mentality of these parents is that “children are rezeki or gifts from God.” The more children, the more rezeki you will have from Him.

Yes, children are blessings. But these blessings will become a burden if you don’t or can’t work hard and have the means for all of them. Why have nine or eleven, when one or four are still blessings to be grateful with?

13 years on, some of these low social-economic-strata families are still having large families, and at times, the breadwinner ridden with sickness. Thus, they are still not able to cope with the demands of life itself.

According to the Straits Times January 27th report, at least 5% of children annually do not enter preschool at all. And I do believe that somehow or rather, the Malays form a higher proportion of these children. In 1997, a report by the then Minister for Education, Rear Admiral Teo Chee Hean, cited that about 5%-6% of Malay children do not register for primary one, while the Indians is at 4.5% and the Chinese, 1.5%.

At that time, part of the reason, besides dropping out of school, some of these Malay families send their children for a madrasah route. That aside, even the madrasah education, was without its criticism. And as such, by next year, it will be compulsory for all primary six madrasah students in all the six madrasahs in Singapore to sit for their Primary School Leaving Examination. Those madrasah that produces results below the national level for a number of years, will be asked to close.

Though many have felt marginalized by this rule, I see many good in this. Madrasah Al-Maarif, for instance, have move on to a bigger and better building, with more facilities. Al-Irsyad will also soon have their new building that will synergise with the needs of education in this era. That’s only the façade, and of course, many things are yet to be seen especially in terms of state-of-the-art facilities, curriculum, materials, and quality of teachers etc.

All the changes and help in the community are in the hope of bridging the gap. But more than 30 years of independence, the Malays are still left behind. We definitely have seen some good, however, the gap will continue to be there if there are no in-depth programmes to tackle every facet of underachievement in the Malays. By the time we close the preschool, primary and secondary gaps, the gap is even wider in the higher level. When we beam and shout with pride that are our kids have gotten a degree, the other races have raced to attain double degrees, masters and phDs.

So where are we at again?