By Tyler Wong
By Tyler Wong
Keep Forward
21 years ago , I opened my eyes for the first time to see what the world looked like . But that didn ’ t give me a strong impression , for I continued to see different versions of the world when being brought to different places by my parents . Later , when I could crawl and step firmly on the ground to travel by myself , I could choose where I wanted to explore . The whole process of learning to walk is natural , no matter where you were born and whom you are with . At first , we cannot even undergo the easiest act of moving somewhere , until our brains and bodies slowly develop to a point where we can focus on our movements and flex certain muscles to complete the action of crawling and later walking . In retrospect , you may think that this is just some easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy thing we all have to go through in our lives . This , in fact , took months . We tried to stand up and we fell . We stood up and we fell . We walked and we fell over . But , however hard it was , we never stopped trying to walk when we were young .
There is Kin , a 15-year-old teenager whom I have been tutoring on and off for two years . He was depressed because he failed his maths and could hardly catch up with his classmates . His self-esteem was scraped off little by little every time his parents scolded him for not putting in enough effort to improve his maths scores . But he did put effort into it ! He was just too behind and got discouraged . As a maths tutor , I could not do anything but keep helping with his maths by cramming our lessons with a myriad of mundane drills that had nothing to do with his well-being and enjoyment , but everything to do with the expectations of society . Society equates success with excellent academic performance . But Kin does not fit into this definition . Because his examination results in maths and a few other subjects were far from the minimum requirement to step up to the next grade , he was due to repeat a year unless he could pass the make-up examination .
Strenuously , he passed his make-up test in Form 1 . But he failed again in Form 2 . He took the make-up examination and luckily passed that . Then he failed again in Form 3 . The fortunate events of barely passing the make-up test have never struck him as a token of competence ; rather , they further upset him as he knew he was at the bottom of his class . His situation was like drowning . Even the worst of his classmates had at least a leaky wooden boat to use , and could spend tutorial time repairing these vessels . Kin was , however , in the water and struggling to get to the surface to grasp a breath of air ; sometimes he did , but he then needed to swim arduously upwards again for another stream of air to survive .
MAY 2018 6