William,
Your blog on St Patrick's, Kulim is coming up nicely. More and more people are now emailing you old pictures with the latest being my brother's Form 3 Class in 1958 with Form Teacher Lau Tuck Sung. I'm glad I sent you a picture of my class of Std 5 in 1956 to start the ball rolling. Let's hope more and more old boys will send you more similar pictures.
I'll try to give some snapshots and impressions of St Patrick's and also Kulim gleaned from my reminiscences of 1953- 60 while I was in the school from Std 1 - Form 3.
Hopefully this will prompt others to do the same to eventually piece together a comprehensive and near complete history of our old alma mater with accompanying photographs, worn out and tattered these may be.
When I joined Std 1 in 1953, there was no school uniform yet and we just came in the clothes we wore at home everyday. The standard green shorts and white shirt came only in 1955 when I was in Std 3, but if I am wrong, could someone please correct me.In my first year at school in 1953, the school system of 11 years structured into Pri 1 & Pri 2, followed by Std 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 & 9, where in the last year students sat for Senior Cambridge, was still pre-War.
I think the system was re-structured when I was in Pri 2 in 1954 into primary and secondardy with 6 years of primary (Std 1-6) and 5 years of secondary education (Form 1- 5) where at the end of Form 5, the equivalent of Std 9, we sat for the Senior Cambridge .
I still remember very clearly our Form Teacher Mr Hong Bak Keah kept on telling us that we were in "Std 2" and no more "Primary 2" as some of us used to being in Pri 1 the previous year (1953) still referred to Pri 2.
The books we used in Primary school were all about England was Malaya was still a British colony and the British Empire reigned supreme.I remember the Radiant Way series with colourful pictures of the English country side complete with oak trees, daffodils, etc. There were nursery rhymes of Jack & Jill, Tom, Tom the Pipers Son, Old Kind Cole, and countless others which many of us still remember to this day.
For arithmetic, we started adding, subtracting, dividing and multiplying in pounds, shillings and pence, feet & inches, lbs & ozs rather than dolllars and cents and katis, gantangs, chupaks, whatever, though eventually we also used this.
There was also Malayan English in the Oxford English Course series, where in Std 3 or the old Std 1, we learnt about A man and a Pan, etc...
I remember we had to pay $2.50 a month for school fees in primary school and $5 a month for secondary school, a lot of money in those days. Though I was one of the fortunate ones in that I never had any problem in paying school fees, I can still recall there were some poor chaps who were made to go home when they could no longer pay their fees. I wasn't sure they were entitled to school grants. Perhaps they were. Education was solely in English and I remember Malay was only introduced in 1956, when I was in Std 5. (I had a double promotion from Std 3 - 5 in 1955 & 56). Mr Lim Thean Poh taught us Malay.
I do not know when the Std 6 govt examination was introduced, but it could be in 1955 when my brother Stewart sat for it. This primary school leaving examination weeded out about 1/4 of the class enrolment from Std 6 to Form I in most classes then. I remember our Std 6 class in 1957 (Form Teacher Clifford de Souza) was 40+, but when we proceeded to Form 1 in 1958, only 30+ students were left. Those who failed joined the afternoon school (more of that later). We went to Badlishah School to sit for our Std 6 exam as there were no facilities in the school then.The LCE (Lower cert of exam) at the end of Form 3 was first introduced in 1958, 1 year after independence or Merdeka the previous year. Again my brother's class was the first batch or pioneers to sit for this exam. I think about half of the 30 odd students passed, not large enough to form a Form 4. Those who passed LCE went to Badlishah School for their Form 4 and eventually Form 5. In 1959, St Patrick's secondary school had the odd situation of having Forms 1, 2,3 and 5, but no Form 4 because not enough students passed the LCE in Form 3 to form a class as required by Ministry of Education regulations. This trend was to continue for the next few years until 1964 when the school was able to have its first Form 4 with the required number of students, made possible from larger enrolments of A & B classes from the primary all the way up to Form 3 in the later years.
You did mention that St Patrick's started in 1933. Who was the HM then? Was it Mr Auyong Teik Yoon? He was at least there during our years until he died in 1965 and I think Lau Tuck Sung took over as acting HM for many years right up to the 1970s.St Patrick's functioned as some sort of a branch school to the main premier Christian Brothers' school, St Xavier's Penang. That was where the De La Salle Christian Brothers ( I remember Brother Bernard and later Brother Edward) were based and the commuted daily to Kulim in a small car (Morris Minor) driven by a Chinese a driver. The other missionary branch schools in Kedah and PW were St Theresa's in Sungei Patani, St Michael's in Alor Star and St Mark's in Butterworth. I think the Brothers were in charge of the secondary school while Mr Auyong took charge of the primary school and Mr Lim Thean Poh the afternoon school.But in sports, the morning and afternoon sessions functioned as one school. The afternoon boys were bigger (also older) and stronger than we morning chaps who were better in our studies. I remember Mr Auyong and Mr Lim Thean Poh used to put all those overaged (15 and above) Malay and Indian boys in the school (Div 2) football team for the inter-school soccer competition. In 1959, we made it to the Finals and the school chartered a bus for us to go to St Xavier's to watch the final. We beat St Theresa's and the next day we got a school holiday.
I think the school did not have more than 300 students at any one time as it was a partly-assisted school. The school office-cum-book shop was in fact an open air garage for Brother's car up to 1954 while I was in Std 1or 2, and it was later converted into the HM's office and book shop. There was no electric bell until many years later to tell us when classes would begin from 7.45 am until and school adjourned for the day round 1.15 pm. One of the senior boys used a big bell like the one used by the ice-cream vendor and he would walk up the steps to the upper storey of back portion of the main building and ring it. Our toilets too were very unhygienic. There was no running water for the boy's urinal and of course the latrines were the bucket type. The teachers' toilet was just a bathroom. But we did not mind at all.
The school grounds were not spacious compared to those of others like Badlishah with a big playing field. We did make do with a basketball court, badminton court and mini-playing field. Our annual school sports had to be held in the town padang at the back our our house in Jalan Raya.
The Kulim people, or at least our neighbours in Jalan Raya, used to call St Patrick's "Sampah thang" or literally "rubbish" school. "Sampah Thung" is the Hokkien coloqualism for the Malay word "tong sampah" or rubbish bin. However our boys, schooled in the missionary tradition were anything but the rubbish type and most of us did well in our examinations, whether in St Patrick's up to Form 3 or in other schools. Many of us either went on to further our studies in the university later on or became successful in whatever occupations and professions.Today of course everything has changed after what happened in KL in 1969.
The school is now a Malay school in all aspects except in name and it is very sad for old boys like us who like to associate with it, but can't do so wholeheartedly so because it has lost its tradition.
Regards,
David
Comment. Gilbert and I were the first of the Dielenberg family to join the school in 1946.The teachers were Auyong Teik Yoon, Lim Thean Poh, Boudville. Bro Cornelius (De La Salle Brother, (principal), Stephen Loo, and Kamalapan and a few others. You are right, David, we did not have any uniform. Most of us were fast tracked with double promotions. The after school activities were scouting, and sports. There was a prefect system in place. The rest is buried in the dim past. If people are willing to add their experiences we should be able to construct the history in small steps as we go along. I have nothing to add regarding the period between 1933 and the war years.Your contribution is welcome. Bill
