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Photo shows (squatting, from left) the columnist, Ong Siang Chwan and Geoffrey Wong, as well as (standing, from left) David Ting, Bujang Abon and Tan Wai Pheng, taken at the St Thomas’ School, Kuching in 1963.
IT took the Prime Minister himself to raise the issue of and instruct the Ministry of Education to ensure and enforce an activity that one would surmise as being part of the education system’s overall curriculum, and be in force since Day 1.
This entails the overall cleanliness, hygiene and environment of the school in total – its classrooms, the compound, the common areas, the toilets and changing rooms and other spaces like libraries, gyms and running tracks or football fields and badminton and tennis courts, and whatever other facilities are available for both students and staff.
Since around the mid-1960s, the toilets at the urban schools in the towns and cities of Sarawak have been upgraded and modernised to include water-closets with flushing systems as well as sitting toilets rather than just solely-squatting ones.
When my peers and I had entered school in the town – at St Thomas’ Primary School at MacDougall Road in Kuching, in 1956, we were still using those old-fashioned ‘night-soil buckets’ tucked underneath an elevated hole in the floor of a small 4ft by 6ft wooden walled toilet with asbestos roofing and wired grills for ventilation.
These night-soil buckets were emptied early every morning by the local council who would come by in their trucks loaded with several levels of compartments, all specifically made just for the transportation of these human waste material to a dump site some distance from town.
This system was in place for many years until the more modern water-closet flushing system of toilets and septic tanks were constructed from around the mid-1960s.
As students, even during the primary schools (we were from seven years old onwards), we were already tasked with the proper cleaning, washing and general upkeep of the school toilets, the surrounding areas and the pathways leading to and from the lavatories.
If you happened to be an ‘Old Thomian’, you would know that although we were the prime and biggest and the best school in the state, we were very shy when it came to the state of our student toilets.
Another photo of ‘Old Thomians’ (from left) Bujang Abon, Tan Sri Datuk Amar Wilson Baya Dandot, Ruping Ratep, Uthman Jas (a.k.a. Sindu), Yusup Sobeng and Hakim Ibrahim, as well as (squatting, from left) Beno Assau, John Najod and Philip Mejin – taken in 1965.
If only someone had taken or kept a photo or two, I would be able to share it here.
Very briefly, I would just describe it as decrepit, squalid and they had actually smell worse than they had looked – no amount of cleaning could ever get rid of the stench and the aura of the entire ‘longhouse of wooden sheds’, which was a place of dread and suffering for us for so many years.
They were sited in a valley and to get to them, you had to walk down a flight of small concrete steps: for most of us then, it was like a walk to the torture chamber!
Yet, we had to keep it as clean as we could. We all breathed a big sigh of relief when the water-closet flushing system of toilets made its long overdue appearance sometime in the mid-1960s.
It was the discipline like this that was instilled upon us in school way back then.
I am not certain when, if ever, the school had stopped or ceased these ‘Learning and Facilitation (PdPc) activities’ since those times, so many years ago.
As a long-serving chairman of the school management board of St Thomas’ Primary and Secondary Schools, I agree completely with Minister of Tourism, Creative Industry and Performing Arts Sarawak Dato Sri Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah when he had come out in full support of this as it would contribute in ‘efforts to build character and provide young people with a deeper understanding towards those doing manual labour like grass-cutting, street-sweeping and such.”
He had further gone on to say: “A school is one of the places to start the practice, and students need to be trained regardless of their family’s status. It needs to be practised regardless of whether you are rich or not – for those families who think this is ridiculous and say that school is only for learning, cleaning the toilet is also part of learning.”
I am all for a well-rounded education: going to school is not just to study and to pass exams and obtain your certificates so that you can find a good job and pay your taxes and start a family and perhaps, grow rich and prosperous.
Any good teacher in a well-regarded school with all the skills and facilities and the educational aids and extra-curricular programmes and tools available, would tell you that hundreds and maybe even thousands of students would pass through their classrooms over the years that they were actively teaching; but which are the ones that they would always remember most?
No, not the brightest or the best student or those who had obtained the top marks, the most number of As, or who had excelled at everything that they had gone into – it would be the ones who had made some extra effort or done something out of the ordinary.
The teachers I have met, without a single exception, would tell me that they would remember mostly mediocre students, those who were not the best or the smartest, although strangely enough, many would remember the ones who did not do well in their studies.
An unusual number of those with not much academic shine had gone on in adult life to become either very successful businessmen, or very rich and famous.
In my own time and with my own peers, who are now all either semi-retired or happily so, I can assure you that a majority of us had ended up pretty well-rounded with a full education academically as well as had our off-studies and extra-curricular activities well-fulfilled, and we had all led mostly interesting and full lives.
We continue to hold our regular class reunions now and then.
We had all, without an exception, paid our dues – washed, cleaned and even scrubbed toilets, bathrooms, gyms, cleaned shelves of libraries; helped moved appliances and classroom furniture.
In addition during the annual food and fun fairs, we did everything asked of us by our teachers or seniors and others in need of help.
For those of us involved in other organisations in church, or as Boy Scouts or Boys Brigade, or others, we would have also done our bit and our time with ‘Job Weeks’, church parish sales and helping raise funds, or had donated and given our time.
Photo taken in 2015 at the Mayor’s Office in Kuching South City Council shows members of the St Thomas’ Class of 1969. Also in the photo are former Datuk Bandar of Kuching North Datuk Abang Abdul Wahap Abang Julai, and former Kuching South Mayor Datuk James Chan (seated – left and right, respectively).
Today, I am proud to be able to ‘show and tell’ with three photos of some of my peers during the 1960s at St Thomas’ School, and a group class reunion photo taken in 2015 with the then-twin mayors of Kuching – Datuk Bandar of Kuching North and Mayor of Kuching South – who were my peers and who had toiled the toilets and other disciplines with me when we were just teens in school.
Maybe we should have some T-shirts printed that says: “Look – we have cleaned our own toilets!”
May God bless you all!
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