Two years ago, upon receiving his PT3 results, my son’s teacher asked him about his academic ambitions for the coming year.
“Which stream are you planning to pursue in Form Four – Science or Arts?” she asked.
“Science,” my son answered confidently.
“But your Science and Mathematics results for PT3 are not good,” she said as she looked at his result slip.
“He has always been interested in science, especially in physics and astronomy,” I explained to the teacher.
“I am not trying to discourage your son but having an interest alone is not enough if he is incapable of scoring in those subjects,” the teacher said bluntly.
I was taken aback by her remark. I always thought of school as a place to nurture young people to believe in themselves and gain the self-esteem they needed to study what they were passionate about. However, listening to the teacher advise my son in this way was somewhat unexpected.
Now do not get me wrong. The teacher must have had her own reasons for advising my son to forgo his passion and base his future academic plans entirely on a slip of paper. Perhaps the As, Bs and Cs on the paper glaring back at her made more sense compared to the testimony of a mother who has witnessed her child’s interests first hand.
Or perhaps there were studies proving young people who pursued their studies based on their results were more successful than those who followed their passion. Honestly, I don’t know and my son’s teacher did not care to enlighten me about her school of thought.
So I turned to my son and asked his opinion.
“Let me think about it,” he said calmly.
“Okay, but you only have one week. You can’t change your academic stream after that. Right now I will put your name under the Arts stream because you do not qualify for Science,” she said with finality.
For the entire following week, my son kept thinking and rethinking what he should do. Meetings with school counsellors proved useless.
“What is your ambition?” they’d ask.
“I am not sure yet,” my son would answer.
“Hmm…what did you get for Science and Math?”
“Not so good.”
“Ah, then take up Arts!”
My son then sought advise from his relatives and my group of friends. Uniformly they advised him to pick a path towards a career that would generate a good income for him.
Doctor.
Lawyer.
Engineer.
Confused as a chameleon in a bag of Skittles, my son was still unsure up to the last day about what he should study. Luckily for us, on our way to school that fine morning, he turned on the radio to an ongoing discussion on a morning breakfast show about how most people end up working in industries they never studied for. Most of them blamed it on pressure from family members and school teachers to pursue subjects they had no interest in.
“What do you think I should do, Ma?” my son asked me for the millionth time.
“Choose something that would not require you to drag yourself out of bed every morning for the rest of your life,” I said with my hands firmly on the steering wheel.
“What if I am incapable of doing well? What if my SPM results suffer because of my bad decision?”
“Making bad decisions and being incapable of excelling in your studies are not signs of weakness. Weakness is when you doubt your capabilities even before trying.”
Two years have passed since that long and tiring week of indecision.
On Thursday morning I waited for my son outside his school as he collected his SPM results slip. One hour filled with minor heart attacks later, I saw him walk out proudly with a big smile planted on his lips.
“Ma, do you know who you are looking at?” he asked.
“An annoying brat?” I joked.
“No. You are looking at a future geologist.”
“Nothing is as important as passion. No matter what you want to do with your life, be passionate.” – Jon Bon Jovi.
Fa Abdul is an FMT columnist.
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