Clapping for Malaysia

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PRIOR to last week the only school I had visited in Perak was the Malay College Kuala Kangsar: to speak at their Youth Development Summit and to see their robotics club get underway prior to a world robotics competition in California — in fact their team just left this week to repeat their participation, but this time students from Kolej Yayasan Saad and the National Advanced Youth Vocational Institute Sepang joined them too.

Last Friday, I went to SMK Dato’ Wan Ahmad Rasdi, 20km south of beautiful Taiping despoiled by political banners, to be a participant for Teach For Malaysia’s TFM Week, in which guests are asked to teach a class.

I was to accompany Stephanie Tan, the only one out of the so-far 100 fellows in two years to be teaching music.

IDEAS chief executive Wan Saiful taught history at another school the previous day, enacting the struggle between Sultan Ismail and Raja Abdullah of Perak amidst the conflict between Chinese secret
societies in the late 19th century.

In Oct 2010, IDEAS helped TFM organise one of their first events with educational stakeholders on attracting top talent into the teaching profession.

By now, most readers will know what TFM is about.

Part of the international Teach For All network adopting similar strategies to end education inequity, it places exceptionally bright and able graduates into high-need schools.

These inspiring people may stay in the educational sector or develop careers elsewhere, but the hope is that they will favourably influence education policy in the future.

TFM Week enables the students to meet professionals from different sectors and also enables outsiders to better appreciate the realities of Malaysia’s education system.

The school I was assigned to was like some rural schools I have visited in Negeri Sembilan, featuring the typical courtyard set-up, inspiring messages dotted around the corridors, a mixture of noisy and quiet kids and very friendly staff.

The idiosyncrasy here was the dedicated music room, containing guitars, kompangs, a mostly intact drum kit and a keyboard.

Certainly, this was not the most destitute school in the country.

However, as many Malaysians will recognise, good equipment does not necessarily mean proper application (First World infrastructure, Third World mentality), and the principal was frank about some of the challenges that he faced in moving the school up the attainment ladder.

Talking about democracy to university students is straightforward compared to music to 25 shy Form 2 students, and I hoped that a class on percussion would pop some of their inhibitions.

First, I introduced myself and spoke about my (limited) musical background.

Then Stephanie and I showed the children examples of the use of percussion in different cultural contexts – Malay wedding kompangs, nobat, Chinese lion dances, Kavadi dances, Iban folk songs, military bands and a traditional dance from South Africa performed at a wedding (that’s their kompang equivalent).

The next part was copied from a memorable music class I experienced 15 years ago – splitting the class into three groups and having them clap a simple rhythm in 3/4 — crotchet, crotchet, quaver-quaver — but each group starting on a different beat so that the off-beat syncopates around the room.

The final part of the lesson involved the three teams going off for 10 minutes to create their own rhythm pattern, with the winning team receiving batons of Choki Choki.

What was so rewarding about this experience was witnessing how the students’ attitudes changed throughout the lesson.

If at first they showed a lack of interest, even hints of disdain, by the end their enthusiasm and confidence had soared.

In an aside during the group session one of the boys told me that he enjoyed playing Counter-Strike at the cybercafe with his buddies.

“That’s exactly what I used to do with my friends,” I remarked, and we exchanged notes on the best guns and tactics.

There is so much assumed about the rural-urban divide in Malaysia that both he and I might have expressed surprise that our childhood experiences shared this hobby in common.

Hopefully it will be so with music.

Stephanie has promised to update me on the children’s progress (may it be sempre accelerando) but I recommend that next time, TFM asks a professional musician to be the guest participant.

I’d suggest Foo Mei Yi from Seremban, who was awarded the Setiawan Tuanku Muhriz during the Yang di-Pertuan Besar’s 2011 Birthday Honours while serving as artist-in-residence with the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra.

Just this month in London, she won the BBC Music Magazine Newcomer of the Year Award.

This sort of state, national and overseas recognition is precisely what should inspire young Malaysians in any field.

TFM’s deadline for the 2014 Fellowship Programme is this Monday (April 22).

Visit www.teachformalaysia.org to apply.

Tunku Abidin Muhriz is president of IDEAS.