MORE THAN JUST A TEACHER
He was more than a teacher to a motley bunch of underprivileged students, writes Elena Koshy
IT’S a hot muggy afternoon. The windows are drawn and he’s settled for a short nap. “Sir! Sir! Sir!” Urgent voices call out, breaking through his reverie. “Sir! Sir!” He glances at his watch. It’s 3pm. Practice isn’t until 4. The boys are early. Again. “Sir! Sir!” He sighs. “What?” he asks brusquely. The group of boys gathered outside his home shift around nudging each other. “Cakaplah!” someone hisses to another. “We want... the... key,” one boy finally says hesitantly. “What key?” He knows what key, but he waits patiently for the answer. “Store room key!” another boy finishes triumphantly.
Under the blazing sun in rural backwater Kelantan — Kuala Krai, to be precise — this gaggle of youngsters traipse off, clutching headmaster Jerome Fernandez’s storeroom key, to start playing what’s often been known as the ultimate ‘white man’s game’ — cricket. For these kampung boys, cricket was an alien game with strange rules but as Fernandez would attest, it transported them to a bigger world filled with possibilities. “They were enthusiastic,” chuckles Fernandez as he retells the story tome.
The 71-year-old retired headmaster hardly looks like he’s ready to throw in the towel anytime soon. He bounces into the cafe, accompanied by his son, breezy and lithe. He’s sound in wind and limb, vision and hearing, his eyes sparkle, and his face is scarcely rumpled by time.
“What do you need to become a photographer? Did you need to study for it?” he asks my colleague who’s preparing to take photographs of him. “Yes uncle, you need to learn a lot!” she responds, laughing. “That’s too bad. I thought maybe I can take it up and get a job as a photographer” he quips, grinning. While other people’s worlds tend to shrink with age, his seems to expand. “Age as they say, is just a number,” he says, chuckling again. The sprightly old man is full of stories of his experiences in the teaching trenches.
He was part of the cadre of men and women initially recruited and trained as teachers to fill the gaps left when the Standard Six promotional examinations were abolished back in the 1960s and where the instant promotion to Form 1 meant more teachers were needed in schools around the nation; and who, despite being looked down upon by many of the more established professions, were dedicated to developing all aspects of pupils’ lives.
With Father’s Day today, Fernandez also represents a league of diverse father figures: the other men who come into young lives at the right time, with the right gifts, to help guide them in the right direction.
NAME OF THE GAME
“Back then there were not many jobs available. You either became a JKR technician, teacher, nurse or police inspector,” recalls Fernandez. “Those were the only choices we had. So we became teachers-lah!” he says, laughing.
The school most trainee teachers gravitated to were in urban areas. But the real problems were further afield, where it was and has always been hard to retain the best staff. He was no different. “Kelantan never figured on my list of choices,” he admits. But the stoic teacher soon found himself in a place so far removed from the urban cities that he’d hoped to settle in. It would seem that Kelantan figured in Fernandez’s destiny, having ended up being trained as a teacher in Kota Baru and spending the rest of his teaching career in Kelantan.
When Fernandez was promoted to headmaster at Sekolah Kebangsaan SultanYahyaPetra2inKualaKrai,another challenge awaited him. “This was a
school built from the funding given by the World Bank. Most disadvantaged students and those with obvious learning difficulties were sent here from the other nearby schools,” he recalls.
A school of discards? I ask incredulously. He shrugs his shoulders, replying thoughtfully: “Well, the school wasn’t known for its academic excellence. For one, it was a fairly new school. Secondly, the neighbouring schools in their efforts to boost their academic results sent their weaker students here. These were students who couldn’t read or write for their level.” Pausing to take a sip of his tea, he adds candidly: “There was a sense of hopelessness there.”
He wasn’t one to concede defeat. “I wanted to do something for the boys,” he explains simply. So when the state education authorities asked him to start a cricket team at the school, Fernandez jumped at the opportunity. Here was a chance for them to excel. He approached class teachers and asked them to send in their weakest students to the field. “Which is the weakest class?” he asked, and they pointed him to the weakest class saying: “These boys here can’t even pass their Bahasa exams!”
He walked into the class and asked: “Siapa mahu main cricket?” (“Who wants to play cricket?”). His request was greeted
by a stunned silence bf before someone piped up: “Apa itu cricket, cikgu?” (What is cricket, teacher?). “They were familiar with the game of rounders known back there as bola katok . SoItold them:‘ Macam bola katok’ (“Like rounders”)” he recalls, grinning. The enthusiastic choruses of “Saya mahu! Saya mahu!” encouraged him, he shares, eyes twinkling. And so he started coaching a motley group of disadvantaged students to play a game he himself was unfamiliar with. “I was a hockey coach and a national umpire,” he says. “I was probably asked under the presumption that since I was Indian and knew hockey, I should therefore know cricket!” Whatold-schoolteacherslikeFernandez had however, were unbounded enthusiasm for their subjects, respect and ambition for their pupils — especially those who were socially or economically-disadvantaged — and an adventurous sense of fun. They were also excellent pedagogues, able to evoke enthusiastic responses from pupils. They could recognise learners’ difficulties and find innovative ways to help.
The pragmatic headmaster understood that aiming for high academic achievements wasn’t realistic nor was it the answer. He wanted to give these boys something else — hope. From checking absentee reports and visiting the homes of youngsters who were habitually absent, to giving them opportunities at participating in co-curricular activities, he explains: “We discovered that this kind of attention to the children and their families was effective in keeping them in school.” “There was a huge need there, and somebody had to fill it,” he reiterates. “Once I started doing it, the joy of seeing the light bulb go off in their mind — that they can actually get a job, they can function in the business world, they can go to college, they can succeed in sports, or whatever it is they decide they want to do — is really an incredible thing.”
Of his ragtag team of would-be cricketers, the father-of-three adds: “There’s more than just one way to succeed. I told my boys and I even told my children this: they didn’t have to become
If people remember me as a good teacher, then that will be the biggest honour for me. Jerome Fernandez
doctors or engineers to be successful. All they needed were discipline, hard work and perseverance.”
BLOWING THE WHISTLE
Coaching didn’t come easy. “We didn’t have sporting equipment, and there weren’t any shops selling cricket equipment in Kelantan,” he says. There was a cricket association at the state level but it was almost defunct back then, recalls Fernandez. “I had nobody to fall back on and ask: ‘Hey, how do I do this?’”
With no equipment in sight, Fernandez fell to creative ways to make it happen. “There was no bat, no ball. So I brought a picture of a cricket bat to my gardener and told him to forge one out of discarded planks. We used a tennis ball to play!”
The boys, ranging from 10 to 12 years old, soon discovered that Fernandez had strict rules about the game. The main one — they could only speak in English at practice. Anyone resorting to their Kelantanese dialect were punished. “They were made to run around the field!” says Fernandez. Surprisingly, his students acquiesced. It took time, but they tried hard. “Why are you late?” the stern headmaster would ask. “Errr... I late... because...” they’d look desperately at their friends before adding: “I late... because my mother work!” “Well, at least it was in English!” quips Fernandez.
He took his newly-formed under-12 team for their first MSSM (Majlis Sukan Sekolah-Sekolah Malaysia or Malaysian Schools Sports Council) national games in the late 90s. “We were the underdogs,” he recalls. The boys felt intimidated by the more urbane teams who came with crisp uniforms, shoes and new equipment.
“We used borrowed equipment and wore plain white tee shirts!” recounts Fernandez. The boys, he recalls, pointed to the other teams and said: “Look Sir... look at their shoes. Sure we’re going to lose!” He in turn told them that they deserved their place and that they should play to win. And they did. “We beat one of the better Johor teams that first time!” he says proudly.
The rest, they say, is history. Fernandez’s team went on to improve themselves game after game. “I made the boys study the complicated rules of the game so they’d understand it thoroughly. I impressed upon them discipline and didn’t hesitate to punish them if they didn’t follow the rules.” They went on to take third place in the next MSSM games the following year.
“I followed their progress through the years. They moved on to a different school after their Standard Six but they’d still come to play in the evenings. I soon introduced the adult bat and ball. Eventually I found myself coaching the under-12, under-15 and the under-18 teams!” recounts Fernandez. He tells me proudly that his teams produced two national players. “I convinced their parents to send these boys to the sports school in Bukit Jalil. It was a chance for them to shine.”
For most of the village boys who played cricket under his watch, Fernandez was the father figure who offered them hope that they could better their lives and make something of themselves. National cricketer Mohamad
Shukri Abdul Rahim declares that Cikgu
Jerome opened his eyes to the opportunities presented by the game. “He made me join the sports school in Bukit Jalil. My parents and I were worried that I wasn’t ready to move out of the village into a boarding school hundreds of kilometres away,” he recalls. “Cikgu told me that I had the talent and I’d be foolish to squander that opportunity.”
He adds that Fernandez also convinced his parents to let their son go off to the city. “Cikgu Jerome is like a father figure,” he says. “If you have that much trust in that person, you listen to him and take in what he says. My family and I owe him a debt of gratitude. He changed my life.”
Mohd Saifful Hawari who represented Malaysia in both the junior and senior teams laughingly recounts how strict Fernandez was back in the days. “I got my first lempang (slap) from him when I crept in late from a night out with my friends during a tournament. There was no game the next day but Cikgu was firm in ensuring that we were disciplined throughout. It’s a lesson I never forgot!”
He continues: “At the beginning, I didn’t know any English. But thanks to Cikgu’s rules, I picked it up. It was useful because cricket rules are in English!” he says, before adding vehemently: “I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for Cikgu. I’m a teacher today and I can now better understand and appreciate his challenges with us budak kampung! (village boys)”
“That’s what being a teacher is about,” Fernandez concludes simply, shrugging his shoulders nonchalantly. But I could see his eyes glistening with pride as he talks about his students. “If we can help make a difference and provide the tools to help a child succeed, then we’ve done our jobs.” A pause and he adds: “If people remember me as a good teacher, then that will be the biggest honour for me.”