Faridah's Story

Faridah

I was asked to help, one of the teachers I work with, on her university assignment. The Malaysian government are encouraging all the non degree teachers to do a part-time degree course and Faridah has recently embarked on her four year course. The assignment was about reading and was asking about her personal relationship with reading -  what she reads, her interests in reading, her earliest memories of reading, her parents attitudes to reading etc....She was unsure whether she should write the truth or whether she should  reinvent herself for the assignment. After she told me her story I was not only moved, humbled but I felt that her story was inspiring and one that should be shared, especially with her university.
  Faridah's father left her mother when she was 6 months old. Her mother married again but her step-father led an itinerant lifestyle coming and going leaving her mother with seven more children before she divorced him. Her mother had a stall selling fish in the market which meant she had to be up very early. Faridah would get her brothers and sisters up and walk an hour to bring them to the market on the way to school from the age of seven years old.. She would then collect her brothers and sisters on the way home from school and  look after them until her mother returned. She remembers that she sat through three years of school  not knowing how to read. The teachers would ignore her and dismiss her as stupid and often she would fall asleep as she was so tired. She would try to watch television with her friends but she couldn't understand anything because it was in English and the subtitles were in Malay. The frustration of that finally encouraged her to try and learn to read by herself. There were no books at home but she began to read signs and packet labels and by the time the exams came in Year 6 she was able to read sufficiently well enough to allow her to go on to secondary school. She began teaching in a rural school where qualifications were not expected and she found that she had a talent and empathy of teaching the pupils with learning difficulties. She has now been a teacher for over 20 years but to have a degree is something she never imagined she ever would have. I will be so proud of her when I attend her graduation.