By Marina Mahathir

Dear all, my Mum turns 90 on July 12. On July 20, she will be publishing a book of her stories about her life, from her childhood, to the war years, to studying medicine in Singapore and meeting Dad to marriage, children, career and of course being the PM’s wife and beyond.

In conjunction with that, I thought I would complement her stories with some of mine. So am trying to post something at least once a week up to her birthday.

So here’s the first one:

My Mother …and education

My memory of my mother when I was little was that she was very fierce. In fact both my parents were very strict, especially about school. But while my father didn’t get angry very often but was fearsome when he did, Mummy was the daily discipline enforcer, going after us about homework and exams and bad behaviour.

I remember when I was in Standard One, I came 17th in class in the term exams. This was not good enough for Mum. So before the next exams she decided to take me in hand. In the weeks before my next exams she would sit with me every night to go over my lessons. This episode I remember as being completely sodden in tears. I would get scolded because my pencils or ruler were missing or because I simply could not answer the questions she asked in the subject we were revising. I thought of it as simply torture and she was A Cruel Witch!

But came the exam results and to my utter surprise, I came first in class! I went home all excited and waited for Mum to come home for lunch. When she arrived in her little car, I hid my report card behind me and asked her, flushed with excitement, “Mummy, I got my results! Guess what I got?” And she smiled and said, “Well, last time you came 17th in class. This time you must be 7th?” “No Mummy, I am first!” and she laughed with delight.

I guess Mum knew that I was not stupid, simply lazy. All I needed was some polishing up on my brains and I would be ok. And indeed she was right because for the next few years, the top three positions in class were monopolised by Lim Saw Bee, Ong Mei Ling or me. We were in Express class too, which meant that we completed two years’ work in one year and therefore skipped a year and were younger than everyone else by 12 months when we got to Standard Five.

Unfortunately Mum’s little lesson didn’t make me more hardworking. As I advanced in Primary school and lessons got more difficult, my position in class started to slip out of the top three. By this time Mum had become more busy with work and three more children to care for that she didn’t have time to sit and revise with me anymore.

Actually I was terrified of going through that whole tearful process again so I would not even tell her that I had exams coming. But I could not go through the exams without Mum’s good luck wish so on the morning of my term exams, I would sneak into her room while she was still in bed and whisper in her ear that I had exams that day. She’d murmur good luck and I would swiftly leave for school, secure that I at least had told her albeit belatedly.

Mum (and Dad) also taught us to be scrupulously honest. Lying was a major sin in our house. One time my teacher was going through our answers in some Mathematics papers that she already marked. I had barely scraped through a pass. But while going through the questions, I realised that she had wrongly marked one of my answers as correct when it should have been wrong. If she revised my marks then, I would score 24 out of 50, a red mark, instead of 26. But unable to go against what I was taught about honesty, I owned up.

That evening I went home clutching my report card very nervously. I went to show it to both my parents and there it was, amidst the blue pass marks, one red mark glaring like a beacon declaring my shame. My father’s face turned dark, my mother went quiet (sympathetically I hoped). My father had many words to say about this aberration in my report card and had no use for my explanation of how it came to be. Admittedly a barely passing mark was hardly impressive either but I thought I would get some marks for honesty!

Funnily enough Mum seemed to soften over the years. I don’t recall that she was as hard on me in Form 3 when I sat for my Lower Certificate of Education and I did reasonably well. (Of course it is a moot point how much better I might have done if she had taken me in hand once again!) For my Form 5 I was away in boarding school where I was in good hands as far as studying was concerned.

And when I went to university, it was Mum who helped to type up my final thesis. It was not brilliant (my thesis, not Mum’s typing) but still she very proudly attended my graduation at the University of Sussex and watched as I got my scroll from both Sir David Attenborough the Chancellor and his brother Sir Richard Attenborough, the naturalist and guest-of-honour that year.

In later years when Mum and Dad had my youngest siblings, Mazhar and Maizura, Mum became interested in more modern forms of learning for children. She came to know Dr Glenn Doman, a pioneer in early childhood learning, and put many of his ideas to use. I remember getting a whole set of Dr Doman’s flashcards to teach my new baby Ineza to read and understand maths. Unfortunately I didn’t have the discipline to keep flashing those cards every day but still Ineza learnt to read soon enough, thanks mostly to Dr Seuss books.

Marina Mahathir is a social activist.

With a firm belief in freedom of expression and without prejudice, FMT tries its best to share reliable content from third parties. Such articles are strictly the writer’s personal opinion. FMT does not necessarily endorse the views or opinions given by any third party content provider.